Shawn McCaney, program director of creative communities at the William Penn Foundation, has been a leader in reimagining Philadelphia’s civic commons, those places that together encourage us to cross paths with our neighbors, encounter new ideas and make broader connections. Sign up for Podcast Alerts Subscribe

Shawn has been an aggressive advocate for better planning, design and land use practice, for model planning initiatives, and for capital investments that demonstrate quality design. Most recently, the William Penn Foundation and Knight Foundation joined in an $11 million investment in five civic assets – old and new – in Philadelphia neighborhoods.

The Reimagining the Civic Commons initiative will support these model projects—Bartram’s Mile, Centennial Commons, Discovery Center, Lovett Library and Park, and Reading Viaduct Rail Park—as they help people reconnect with their neighborhoods and each other, and help us learn about the value of collaboration in making our cities better.

Here are five things you should know from my conversation with Shawn about reimagining the civic commons:

1.     Funders have helped create the problem of nonprofits working on good projects in isolation. We should create efficiency in public space investment in cities and reduce competition for resources by making it possible for leaders of projects to work together.

2.     If you can reimagine neighborhood civic assets — parks, libraries, trails, schoolyards — as places that can attract people from throughout the city, you will have an asset better positioned for private funding and generating earned revenue.

3.     Amenities shouldn’t be developed in isolation. They need to be connected to one another and to the rest of the city if we expect them to become the democratizing places they once were.

4.     Connecting civic assets together in a civic commons makes collective advocacy for more public support possible. Today, they are engaging the city one at a time, but as a group, they can be a real force for advocating for public support.

5.     The public sector will always play a key role in supporting civic assets, continuing to support them financially, but also with policy to ensure that they remain public assets that are accessible to the entire community.

Listen to my conversation with Shawn here. And sign up for the “Knight Cities” newsletter to get alerts as soon as new conversations are posted.

Look for new “Knight Cities” content posted every Wednesday. You can follow us on Twitter at #knightcities or @knightfdn. And if you have ideas for people you’d like to hear from, please email me.

Carol Coletta is vice president of community and national initiatives at Knight Foundation. Follow her on Twitter @ccoletta.