Housing, transportation, and parkland are the essential building blocks in any community. So it stands to reason that advocating for improvements to all three is essential to the work of building age-friendly communities.
Veteran age-friendly community leaders can attest, however, that campaigning for change at the infrastructure-level can be frustrating and often ineffectual.
The Regional Plan Association, with the support of The Henry & Marilyn Taub Foundation, has embarked on an effort to help leaders of age-friendy communities achieve the “built environment” improvements needed in their communities.
RPA has organized three webinars for this month featuring experts in transportation, parks and housing to share advocacy and coalition-building strategies as well as their knowledge of governance structures and funding mechanisms.
Participants who signed up for the webinars will be invited later this year to attend RPA-led workshops focusing on developing community-organizing strategies and increasing engagement with different levels of government. RPA staff also will work with age-friendly community leaders interested in developing local campaigns for specific infrastructure initiatives.
In funding this new collaboration between RPA and age-friendly communities, the Taub Foundation hopes to empower age-friendly leaders to create the grassroots campaigns needed to overcome the local resistance they often encounter when trying to advance their transportation, housing and parkland goals.
“RPA is a multi-state organization that traditionally focuses on large infrastructure projects such as increasing housing options, making parks and open spaces more navigable, implementing traffic-calming measures, and improving transit and ride-share access,” said Julia Stoumbos, director of aging-in-place programs for the Taub Foundation. “These types of community improvements absolutely increase the age-friendliness of a community, but achieving them can take years of active campaigning and coalition-building to get the local buy-in that’s needed.”
This new partnership with RPA is an example of the type of relationships that the Age-Friendly North Jersey alliance has sought to establish with regional and state organizations that share the same goal of making New Jersey communities better places to live for the entire lifespan. With funding support from Taub, RPA has been one of the leading organizations in the state seeking passage of state legislation and local ordinances permitting accessory dwelling units, another key age-friendly goal in northern New Jersey, a region in need of such innovative alternatives because it has little available land to develop more affordable and supportive housing options.
“Our age-friendly community leaders want and need more expert advice in how to enlighten the decision-makers in their towns about the value and the urgency of taking an age-friendly approach to community re-design and future development,” Stoumbos said. “Our alliance leaders are always seeking new strategies for effective advocacy, and not just within their own communities, but also at the county and state government levels.”
The first RPA webinar on the topic of creating more age-friendly and accessible parks and open space was held Aug. 1, featuring speakers from Rutgers University’s Ralph W. Voorhees Center for Civic Engagement, the Trust for Public Land and an advocacy organization for Nat Turner Park in Newark, which is considered a model in “placemaking.” A recording is available here.
The second one, on ways to promote affordable and reliable transportation systems and well-designed streets, was held Aug. 7, with experts from the Placemakers Guild, the New Jersey Transportation Planning Authority and the New Jersey Travel Independence Program at Rutgers. A recording is available here.
A third one on strategies for advancing affordable and well-designed housing is scheduled for Tuesday, Aug. 15. Panelists include the Council President from Princeton, New Jersey’s first age-friendly community, as well as representatives from the Supportive Housing Association of New Jersey and from Shelterforce. Click here to register.