Improving Community Wellbeing from the Ground Up

Our Planning and Community Engagement team supports community leaders in making their neighborhoods more attractive, livable, and sustainable.

A Multitude of Challenges

Baltimore’s disinvested neighborhoods have a range of needs related to their physical conditions. Beyond their persistent abandoned buildings, they are typically home to a patchwork of vacant lots that attract dumping and vermin. Many of these communities have also been disempowered from addressed basic safety concerns—ranging from speeding cars to inadequate street lighting—and from making their communities more attractive and welcoming places. And East Baltimore neighborhoods suffer from especially poor environmental outcomes, including the highest average ground temperatures in the City during Summer months.

A Holistic Response

To help foster more livable and self-determined communities, our work involves more than just rebuilding abandoned homes. We build enduring relationships with community leaders to identify their priorities for their physical environment, then work with them to create community-led vision plans that go beyond housing strategies to include neighborhood projects such as creating new and sustainable greenspaces, installing public art, increasing community safety, and implementing traffic calming solutions. We then provide technical assistance and support to help communities implement these projects—fostering safer, healthier, and more beautiful blocks that provide their residents with a high quality of life.

Our Strategies for Enhancing Communities

ReBUILD’s approach to helping communities improve their wellbeing involves a variety of strategies that are responsive to community priorities and needs, including:

Helping communities develop community-wide and site-specific plans.
Raising funds and supporting implementation of community parks, gardens, and playgrounds.
Supporting efforts to improve local tree coverage and stormwater management.
Supporting the installation of public art and beautification efforts, including street lighting.
Assisting communities in advocating for traffic calming and public safety improvements.
Helping communities with neighborhood clean-ups and other engagement activities.

Hear From the Residents

ReBUILD’s Work is Inspiring People Across Baltimore to Think Big about the Potential of our City

“This is a promise of hope right here. This is not dead grass; it is growing grass. These are not dead trees; they are growing trees. These are not ‘out’ lights; they are new lights. This is not something we have to turn our heads from, but something we can look upon and be proud of.”

— ReBUILD Resident

at 2021 Celebration of Robert and Alice Stokes Triangle Park

“Living in our house and in the area has been very peaceful. We haven’t had any concerns. We feel safe, and the neighbors are very welcoming. We can’t wait to get home from work every day.”

— Johnston Square Homebuyer