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Past Projects

  • Rebuilding Philly

    “Rebuilding Philly: Perspectives on How the City can Recover from the Pandemic” is a series of expert essays published jointly by Drexel and The Philadelphia Inquirer in late 2021 as Philadelphia grappled with the magnitude of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the civic unrest following the murder of George Floyd.

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  • Swing Bridge 1

    Art @ Bartram's

    The Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation worked with the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia and Historic Bartram’s Garden to create Art@Bartram’s, a vision for the next piece of the Schuylkill River trail.

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  • aerial image of 46th and Market Sts. in West Philadelphia

    46th St. Opportunity Zone

    The Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation is working in partnership with The Enterprise Center to prepare an Investment Prospectus for the Opportunity Zones immediately adjacent to the 46th St Market-Frankford Line stop. The prospectus development process serves a collaboration of stakeholders seeking to collectively share information with potential investors about their development projects and produce positive community impact.

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  • Pittsburgh skyline at night, shown as a case study in The New Localism

    The New Localism

    In their new book, The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism, co-authors Jeremy Nowak and Bruce Katz describe how power is shifting in the world from national governments and states to cities and metropolitan communities.

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  • Richard Florida at Smart City Expo: World Congress

    Philadelphia Fellowship

    The Philadelphia Fellowship was created as a collaboration of Drexel University, Thomas Jefferson University and the University City Science Center to bring scholars to the city for year-long research engagements focused on pressing urban issues. Richard Florida, PhD, was selected as the first recipient because of his groundbreaking research on urban demographic changes and his books, The Rise of the Creative Class and The New Urban Crisis. 

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  • Transatlantic Cities Forum: Re-Envisioning Philadelphia's Industrial Spaces

    The Forum was hosted by The German Marshall Fund of the United States, in collaboration with the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel University and with the support of the William Penn Foundation. 

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  • Lindy Institute Urban Innovation Summit workshop view of Innovation Fellow Michael O'Bryan

    Urban Innovation Fellowship

    The Lindy Urban Innovation Fellowship enables the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation to recognize the extraordinary work that Philadelphians are doing to solve critical urban challenges. The Institute's 2018 Urban Innovation Fellows are Priya Mammen, Michael O'Bryan and Chris Spahr.

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  • Parklet in University City

    Catalyzing Community Capacity

    In 2018, The Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation began to study community-created and stewarded interventions like parklets, pedestrian plazas and bicycle corrals, and the processes by which they are created. The resulting report, Catalyzing Community Capacity, was released in September 2019.

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  • Urban Innovation Summit

    The annual Urban Innovation Summit tackles vexing urban challenges using real-world projects identified by Lindy’s cohort of Urban Innovation Fellows while leveraging Drexel’s unique interdisciplinary approach to urban problem solving.

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  • COVID-19 Research Reports

    Since the advent of the COVID-19 crisis, fellows and staff of the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation and Nowak Metro Finance Lab have worked to respond, both through original research and in adapting existing initiatives to address the evolving effects on communities.

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  • Fiesta Schoolyards

    Fiesta Schoolyards, a non-profit organization with the goal of transforming elementary school yards in Philadelphia, conducted a survey of parents and caregivers over an 8 week period in 2021 focusing on answering the following question: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the mental and physical health of elementary-age children differently who live in a city, in the suburbs, or in a rural area?

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    Financing Creative Placemaking

    Over the course of the last ten years, creative placemaking has grown from a niche activity to the mainstream of arts-based community development. It has influenced every sector of community practice from health and housing to public safety, youth development, and environmental sustainability. It has caught the attention of local government agencies, community organizations, anchor institutions, and philanthropies as an important mechanism for community change.

    Though the field of creative placemaking has been built and supported most prominently by arts funders, practitioners frequently piece together funding from a variety of sources across many sectors to make the work happen. In times like these, when arts funding is under strain, the nature of creative placemaking activities could offer potential for harnessing resources across sectors.

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