It’s an exciting time to be working in transportation and infrastructure. Nearly every day, there is news about opportunities and projects that seek to change the century-old status quo in the United States to center community leadership and wisdom in implementing solutions that address equity and climate.

Community-based organizations have always done this intersectional work, leading the way in developing and enacting projects that specifically target the challenges they face, while laying out a path for a better future. The difference now is that for the first time, community leadership is being prioritized with financial support from a once-in-a-generation investment in American infrastructure to back that commitment up.

This is a large part of the work that NUMO is supporting with the Community Connectors Program. The 15 teams selected for the program are mobilizing to address the destructive and divisive outcomes of infrastructure decisions made in the past, such as the construction of national highways through the hearts of communities. We were thrilled to meet the teams in person last November in Atlanta, Georgia, where we got to know each other and began the process of repairing and reconnecting communities. Read our takeaways from the convening here.

We also learned last week that five of the teams are among a cohort that is being awarded funding from the Reconnecting Communities Pilot and Neighborhood Access and Equity discretionary grant programs! A total of $3.33 billion in grant awards will go toward reconnecting communities that were cut off by transportation infrastructure decades ago. Congratulations to:

• Clean Air + Healthy Future for Albany | Albany, New York

• Pleasant Hill Reconnection and Commercial Planning | Macon, Georgia

• Bailey Avenue Corridor Improvements - Bus Rapid Transit Construction and Context-Sensitive Roadway Retrofit | Buffalo, New York

• Bring Back 6th: Reconnecting, Restoring and Revitalizing the 6th Avenue North Corridor | Minneapolis, Minnesota

• The National City/Southeast San Diego Greenspace Corridor Project | National City, California

This newsletter includes blogs that look at the innovative ways communities around the country are using grants to reimagine their own futures. We hope you will continue to join us as we track and support these efforts.

READ: Connecting Community Infrastructure Projects Through Technical Assistance and Capacity Building

As communities and local governments around the U.S. work together on creative, collaborative infrastructure projects that fundamentally shift the status quo, capacity building and technical assistance are critical to implementing and sustaining each project’s vision and benefits.

But not all efforts have the funding to support the challenging work of building inclusive coalitions to address intersectional problems. That’s why the 15 teams in the Community Connectors program are using capacity-building grants and connections to technical-assistance opportunities to support their needs and make their infrastructure dreams reality.

NUMO’s Madlyn McAuliffe takes a look at technical-assistance and capacity-building asks in a new blog here.

READ: Learning from Success – Centering Community in Infrastructure Development

Complex problems require innovative, intersectional solutions. Knowing that a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t work for them, these communities came together to create far-reaching plans to solve critical infrastructure and social challenges.

NUMO’s Justyn Huckleberry explores how these communities model a new approach here.

New Mobility Atlas Update: A (Last!) Look at Trends in Dockless, Shared Micromobility — and What’s Next

Here’s your chance to view the final update to the NUMO New Mobility Atlas! We are proud to have supported this effort for four years. We’ll still be keeping an eye on shared micromobility, since we believe it is an integral part of any connected, multimodal and low-carbon transportation system.

As for what it all means… NUMO’s Lydia Freehafer digs into the data to understand the trends, why shared micromobility is thriving in Europe and what is on the horizon for mobility policy and access in cities around the world. Learn more here.

*Archived data from this and past versions of the Atlas can be found here.*

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