Our team partnered with a unique non-profit collaboration of community leaders in two neighborhoods in Houston that were seeking to build healthier and more complete communities.
The area has significant needs for immigrant and refugee services. The action plan hopes to equitably strengthen the community through providing workforce development, job training, and multilingual programs.
The Impact Zone is bordered by highways and auto-dominated arterials that make the site unsafe for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users. The action plan calls for safer street design to increase the area’s access to major destination, for all modes.
The action plan recommends enhancing green and public spaces, like pocket parks, green streets, and underutilized private spaces.
The four founding partners, KIPP Texas Public Schools, Legacy Community Health, St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, and the YMCA of Greater Houston, formed the 501(c)3 non-profit organization “Connect Community” to address their community’s needs in housing quality and affordability, education and workforce development, health and wellness, and transportation access.
Asakura Robinson conducted a data-driven gap analysis and developed specific metrics of improvement by gathering and analyzing demographic, economic, mobility, housing, health, and open space information. Community-led focus groups were set up to include voices that are often on the sideline — refugees, teens, and single parents. Community leaders identified and trained neighbors with cultural and language capacity to recruit participants and lead focus groups across eight languages for a qualitative understanding of strengths and challenges.
Connect Community identified four priority projects for the initial two years that include:
As of 2019, three out of the four near-term priority projects are underway. View the final report here.
