Michael Huber
Deputy Mayor for Economic Development
City of Indianapolis, Indiana

We are fortunate that the City of Indianapolis is a member of Living Cities’ Urban Policy Advisory Group (UPAG), which has opened new doors for collaboration not only with our peer cities, but with the a wide variety of national and local philanthropic organizations. The semiannual UPAG sessions at the Harvard Kennedy School provide us with an opportunity (we would not receive anywhere else) to discuss approaches to complex urban problems, including poverty, access to jobs, infrastructure, and labor and pension reform. What is remarkable about the UPAG, which is also know as the Project on Municipal Innovation, is that it convenes not only this community of Deputy Mayors and City Policy Directors, but also the most innovative civic foundations, as well as experts from federal agencies and the business community. These interactive, but incredibly focused, UPAG sessions allow us to create approaches to civic problems that cut across public, private and philanthropic sectors.

One example of how Living Cities has had significant influence over a major Indianapolis initiative is our infrastructure campaign, Rebuild Indy. Through the transfer of the city’s water and wastewater systems to a locally-owned nonprofit utility structure, we have created a community infrastructure program of potentially $400 million for investment in our community over the next five years. Living Cities helped introduce us to Ronn Richard (President of The Cleveland Foundation) and other philanthropic leaders who challenged us to identify ways in which the philanthropic community could help us leverage this $400 million with philanthropic and private dollars. We have responded by involving the Indianapolis philanthropic community in plans for how these infrastructure resources could be best invested in ways that could open the door for neighborhoods to attract private and philanthropic capital for quality of life improvements including public green space, new schools and community centers, building more robust transit corridors, and creating access to housing. These discussions have inspired us to create the Rebuild Indy Bicentennial Initiative, whose goal is to turn $400 million in infrastructure dollars into more than $1 billion in leveraged resources for Indianapolis neighborhoods.

Living Cities also has helped us understand how our transformational mass transit initiative (Indy Connect) can help us redevelop some of our urban neighborhoods and provide greater opportunities for employment in areas of our community with the most need. The Indy Connect initiative, created in 2009, has brought new hope to Indianapolis residents that we can implement a world class mass transit system that provides expanded bus transit, light rail, and stronger urban corridors. While the corporate community led this initiative at its inception two years ago, communities and neighborhoods have gotten on board as they have seen this vision becoming a reality.

A generous grant from Living Cities led to the Harvard Center for Transit Oriented Development (CTOD) study, “Realizing the Potential for Transit and TOD in the Indianapolis Region,” an exhaustive report that not only informs the reader about TOD but incorporates great detail from our own Indy Connect study to help guide our advocacy, land development, and financial strategies for implementing the Indy Connect plan. The report is the type of work product for which cities routinely pay millions of dollars in consulting fees, and it provides a platform for us to collaborate with our network of non-profits and community-based organizations to help neighborhoods understand the economic opportunities created by investment in transit. Living Cities’ support has helped us immensely in taking the next steps with our community to make Indy Connect a reality.