Filling Gaps
Living Cities looks for catalytic opportunities to help improve the quality of life for low-income people and their communities. Sometimes this means supporting the creation of new programs, while at other times it means helping to scale existing efforts.
Admiral Center
In January of 2009, Living Cities launched the Admiral Center for Community Impact with basketball great and philanthropist David Robinson (“the Admiral”), and the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Through Living Cities’ experience and expertise and David Robinson’s personal example of philanthropy, the Admiral Center provides strategic and technical services to top-performing athletes, entertainers and other celebrities who want to bring about effective, sustainable change in the lives of low-income people and the communities in which they live or play.
Project on Municipal Innovation (PMI)
We now have a new generation of municipal leaders who recognize both the challenges that our cities face and the need to implement these new, integrative approaches. But they often lack an effective method for sharing and building upon each other’s ideas, a clear sense of how to bring about these systemic changes, and the resources they need—whether information, technical assistance or money.
Living Cities created the Project on Municipal Innovation with the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School in response to this new generation of city leaders. The project serves as a platform for city leaders to get information on successful systems change, discuss how to apply these changes in their cities and share best practices and lessons learned.