We Don't Have Time for Half Measures
🔎FROM THE FIELD - May 2026
This week I sat in a room full of community leaders, city officials, developers, and civic partners at a convening hosted by Great Rivers Greenway around the Brickline Greenway. The energy was real. The vision—bold. And on the screen behind the panelists: "A Vision This Bold Takes All of Us."
I left that room thinking about Atlanta.
The Atlanta Beltline—a 22-mile loop of trails, transit, and green space threading through city neighborhoods—is the most frequently cited urban infrastructure success story in America right now. What gets less attention is what made it work: sustained, coordinated public and private investment concentrated in the communities along the corridor, with community-based organizations on the ground ensuring residents benefited rather than got displaced.
* Sean Spencer, Executive Director of the Tower Grove Neighborhoods Community Development Corporation, where he has served for 15 years. Founded in 1981, TGCDC is one of St. Louis' longest-operating place-based CDCs.
Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
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