Community Connectors 2

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Community Connectors
Helping small and mid-sized communities repair the damage of divisive infrastructure

With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Smart Growth America is continuing the Community Connectors program to help advance locally driven projects to reconnect communities separated or harmed by transportation infrastructure. In this round, the program will be narrowly focused on communities with divisive or dangerous arterial roads or streets in need of changes to improve safety or reconnect divided neighborhoods.

This call for applications will support three teams from small to mid-sized cities (between approximately 50,000 and 500,000 in population) to participate in a yearlong cohort (September 2025 – June 2026) for training and support, culminating in the design and implementation of a temporary street safety pilot project to test out permanent changes to reconnect the community.

These joint teams must consist of local government and a community-based organization of some kind, and will receive in-depth instruction in building safer, complete streets through virtual training, a $25,000 grant to implement a street safety demonstration project, as much as $20,000 in in-kind support from outside engineering experts to support project design, and travel budget for a mandatory two-day convening in one of the three cities in fall 2025 for a site visit, walk audit, training, and project design.

Applications are due by August 31, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. Find the application and eligibility details and requirements are below.

Apply today

Repairing the damage of divisive infrastructure

Smart Growth America’s ongoing Community Connectors program seeks to equip small and mid-sized communities to identify, remove, or repair the damage of divisive infrastructure. Because Congress has moved to essentially kill the popular Reconnecting Communities program by rescinding and taking back more than $2.4 billion for these projects—much of that already awarded to local communities—one of the best available sources of dedicated funding for these types of projects has disappeared overnight.

But that does not mean these types of projects cannot move forward. Although costly projects to remove or cap an entire highway or repair the damage of an enormous legacy interstate project will be far more difficult without this program, there are countless ways to use existing federal, state, or local money to quickly make unsafe and divisive roadways safer and more accessible. And implementing a quick-build demonstration project on roads like these can be an important first step toward a more ambitious permanent project. This iteration of the Community Connectors program is narrowly focused on divisive arterial highways and other dangerous roads that have divided or damaged communities.

The objectives of this program are to:

  • Make dangerous streets and roads safer; start repairing damage and division. Learn how demonstration projects are a proven strategy to make dangerous streets safer today, while also making the case for permanent changes tomorrow.
  • Develop new skills that can be used on future projects. Create the kind of experience and capacity that can be used on other projects in the future, so that the community can design and implement other safety pilot projects on their own.
  • Learn more about Complete Streets. Learn together and from one another about the role that a Complete Streets approach plays in addressing traffic violence and building great places.
  • Build trust and lasting partnerships. Help these teams build the trust required to tackle more of these sorts of projects, repair past damage, and address what is often a legacy of harm.
  • Bring teams together that include community-based organizations and local governments, but also potentially transit agencies, health advocates, housing non-profits, land trusts, major employers, lenders & others.
  • Share lessons with others. Produce a report with case studies, lessons learned and recommendations to support this work more broadly both in experimental quick-builds and more permanent Complete Streets support.

The Complete Streets Leadership Academy

This iteration of the Community Connectors program will be utilizing a proven training curriculum called the Complete Streets Leadership Academy (CSLA). This model combines a series of virtual sessions and in-person workshops to develop and deploy community-led quick-build projects on a road or street. 

Over the course of the workshop series each participating local team will collectively plan and implement a “quick-build” demonstration project, using proven safety countermeasures, tactical urbanism, and creative placemaking to temporarily transform a street or intersection into a safer route that is also less divisive. SGA will work with each community to help them refine the specific location for their project, but communities do need to have a tentative corridor or intersection(s) identified in their application for a demonstration project.

The ~30-40 hours of sessions and workshops will cover the basics of quick-build projects including site selection, design, community engagement, and data collection. The teams will engage in peer-to-peer learning and work to identify and overcome barriers in policies and practices to implement a Complete Streets approach that can repair the damage of a divisive road.

Learn more about quick builds and CSLA
Apply to become a Community Connector

Applications are due by August 31, 2025 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. We highly recommend downloading this application as a .doc file, preparing your answers in advance in the doc, pasting them into the online application, and submitting them all at once. Please don’t wait until the last minute to prepare and submit your application. 

Before submitting the application, please ensure that you comply with the eligibility details and requirements. 

 

Read the requirements for participating communities Apply here
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