City of Arlington, TX :: Government :: Neighborhood Initiative

CD&P Main Page

ASNI

Neighborhood Matching Grants Program

Neighborhood Network

Neighborhood Action Plans

Building Equitable Communities

Neighborhood Champions

Community Development & Planning
101 W Abram St,
2nd Floor

Phone: 817-459-6652
Fax: 817-459-6671

E-mail

logo for Neighborhood Way

BUILDING EQUITABLE COMMUNITIES (BEC)

Latest Building Equitable Communities Committee agenda

Overall Strategy and Goals

The City of Arlington was chosen by National League of Cities (NLC) as one of four cities to participate in Building Equitable Communities (BEC) Program. The program began with a three-day workshop to which each city brought a team of key community leaders. The BEC program is a component of the larger Stimulating Municipal Action to Reduce Poverty Project undertaken by the National League of Cities, supported by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

The Arlington team chose to include four strategic approaches in their equity agenda: data-driven, collaborative/partnership, participatory governance and market-based/targeted investment as well as identifying several community-wide capacities for employing those strategic approaches.

Arlington’s Building Equitable Communities team started the foundation for a plan to engage the community, in a way that promotes civic participation, to build and sustain strong neighborhoods, for a better Arlington. With this action plan to build strong and active neighborhoods, the community will develop a data-based approach, develop strong community collaborations, empower neighborhood leadership and use targeted investments and strategies.

The rationale for creating an equity agenda is to connect the entire community to opportunity. Access to opportunity is directly connected to quality of life, and quality of life is central in all other aspects of a strong community including economic development and educational attainment.

The City of Arlington BEC Action Plan focuses on the following 7 goals:

Use the Strong Neighborhood Index to categorize neighborhoods/blocks into “strong”, “threatened” or “fragile” categories.
Organize the residents block by block.
Design with the residents individually crafted strategies for investment in their neighborhood with benchmarks.
Create neighborhood collaborations community-wide (not just the city, faith-based, business, etc.).
Use a focused service delivery strategy addressing those most in need first (east, west central and southeast).
Address absenteeism of landlords in neighborhoods.
Focus on youth, literacy, dropouts, crime, and drugs.

Targeted Neighborhoods

The Building Equitable Communities four targeted neighborhoods which are identified as Police Reporting Areas (PRA) include:

PRA 122/126 – Town North (boundary map)
Council Member Mel LeBlanc, District 1

PRA 254 - General Motors (boundary map)
Council Member Lana Wolff, Mayor Pro Tempore, District 5

PRA 310 – California Lane (boundary map)
Council Member Kathryn Wilemon, Deputy Mayor Pro Tempore, District 4

PRA 425 – South of Sublett (boundary map)
Council Member Sheri Capehart, District 2

[ back ]