A Visit from Partners

Earlier this month, GCC was delighted to host our partner transit-oriented development collaboratives from other parts of the country, Mile High Connects in Denver and a nascent Collaborative in Atlanta, as well as the Ford Foundation and Living Cities.

While our regions are significantly different from one another in terms of geography and political landscape, we share the common goal of trying build healthy, affordable communities near transit. We also face many of the same challenges of changing land use patterns from sprawl to compact development, investing in affordable housing, and providing economic opportunities to low and moderate income workers.

It became clear during our partner visit that one of the Bay Area’s strengths is our ability to work with one another and that our cross-sector partnerships are the cornerstone of the GCC’s work. We are fortunate to have a progressive and responsive public sector; we have funders that are willing to take bold positions; we have deep capacity in the non-profit sector including community based organizations, regional advocacy groups, non-profit developers and intermediaries; and we have allies in the private sector. It is these partnerships that critical as we move from plans to implementation, and we hope that we can continue to share lessons learned from our partner collaboratives across the country.