As a part of GCI’s commitment to an engaged university, and its mission to improve quality of life in Chicago, and its metropolitan region, UICNI facilitates participatory community planning processes to give a voice to and advocate for residents’ needs and wishes for their communities. UICNI provides technical assistance for community engagement, development of community plans, and continued support for implementation.
We believe in and are committed to:
- Recognizing and building upon the history and culture of neighborhoods.
- Sustaining neighborhoods through social and economic vitality.
- Advocating for planning processes and development policies that ensure economic equality, political self-representation, cultural preservation, and ecological conservation.
- Ensuring planning processes foster active community participation for just and effective decision making.
- Engaging in planning as multi-disciplinary, intergenerational, responsive to community needs, and developed through on-going, long-term relationships.
- Forming mutually beneficial relationships based on respect and trust that results in positive contributions.
Current and past participatory planning projects include: