Beyond the Trail: Designing for Community Reinvestment
The recent New Shared Mobility Summit hosted by the Shared-Use Mobility Center (SUMC) brought together planners, designers, and community leaders committed to the role that people-centered mobility can play in neighborhood reinvestment. This dynamic salon session explored how trail-oriented development can be a catalyst for equity, empowerment and transformation, especially in communities that have long been overlooked.
While iconic urban trails like New York’s High Line or Atlanta’s BeltLine have demonstrated the power of public space to drive development, both projects have resulted in displacement of long-term residents following new investment. Our conversations at SUMC focused on a trail planning and design process centered around listening and responding to longstanding neighborhood needs and priorities.
The New Shared Mobility Summit explored interactive engagement methods that center trail design around community priorities and needs.
The Trail as a Framework for Community Needs
Projects like the Joe Louis Greenway in Detroit, Brickline Greenway in St. Louis and Bronzeville Trail in Chicago are redefining what trails can be. These initiatives are not just about mobility—they’re about healing, connecting and empowering communities that have experienced decades of disinvestment.
In Detroit, the Joe Louis Greenway’s 29-mile loop connects neighborhoods where residents haven’t seen meaningful investment in generations. The trail’s development began with a simple but radical question: “What outcomes do you want to see from this project?” From there, the trail became a scaffold for broader community priorities: housing, safety, jobs and cultural recognition.
Community engagement for Detroit's Joe Louis Greenway has included a task force tour of Atlanta's BeltLine, interactive trail planning and design sessions, and a separate neighborhood planning study focused on goals and benefits to be realized in addition to the trail.
Design for Empowerment, Not Just Engagement
A recurring theme of the session was the distinction between engagement and empowerment. True empowerment means giving communities agency, co-creating solutions rather than just asking for input. This shift requires humility, flexibility and a willingness to let go of preconceived ideas.
Examples of engagement designed for empowerment included:
- Site walks and large-scale or tactile models that help residents visualize and shape future spaces.
- Community-led events like concerts and art installations that double as informal planning sessions.
- Micro-grants to support residents and community groups in demonstrating their own ideas, like planting flowers along future trail routes.
- Rubber-band mapping exercises that reveal how people actually move through space.
- Community trips to local or regional trail systems to experience and hear first-hand stories from their counterparts in other neighborhoods.
Community input played a vital role in shaping the vision and design for the Brickline Greenway's North Connector in St. Louis.
In St. Louis, the Brickline Greenway’s North Connector became a platform for dozens of community organizations to align their efforts. In Chicago, Bronzeville residents toured the 606 Trail on the North Side to spark ideas and visualize the potential impact a trail could have. While inspired by aspects of the 606, the tour experience helped the community envision how something distinctly their own could manifest and reflect Bronzeville’s history, culture and aspirations.
Lessons Learned
The session closed with a powerful reminder: empowerment starts where people are. Sometimes that means addressing septic systems before talking about trails. Sometimes it means scrapping your visioning phase and revisiting every past plan the community has already contributed to.
Communities often experience planning fatigue; they’ve attended numerous meetings, shared their ideas, and watched the resulting reports gather dust. By acknowledging and building on what’s already been said, planners demonstrate respect for a community’s time and wisdom. More importantly, showing visible advancement and small wins helps to rebuild trust and signals that things can move forward this time. It’s a shift from asking “What do you want?” to saying “Here’s what we’ve heard—how do we make it real?”
Touring the 606 Trail on Chicago's North Side helped Bronzeville residents envision how their trail could connect to and celebrate the community's unique history and culture.
As planners and designers striving to work in the space of community empowerment, we must ask ourselves:
- Are we creating spaces for everyone?
- Are we building coalitions that reflect the priorities of local leadership and current residents?
- Are we willing to let the trail become more than a trail, leveraging its creation as a conduit for justice, joy, and self-determination?
The projects and processes discussed at the New Shared Mobility Summit remind us that the most impactful urban design doesn’t start with a rendering of what the built project will look like. It starts with building trust.