Giving Compass' Take:

• J. Brian Charles reports that a housing advocacy group in Portland wants to move to a model of community-led urban design to avoid the harms of gentrification. 

• What are the advantages of this model? How can philanthropy help communities engage in the urban design process? 

• Learn about a community approach to civic engagement. 

Cities all over the country are struggling with gentrification, and how to welcome new residents and new development without displacing longtime members of the community.

One housing advocacy group in Portland, Ore., has an idea for a solution: community-led urban design.

With rent hikes that rival those in New York and California, Oregon’s largest city has watched its African-American population shrink in its historically black Albina neighborhood by more than 10,000 residents since 2000. Today, African-Americans account for only 6 percent of Portland’s population.

Through the city’s “Right to Return” program, displaced black Portlanders are offered down-payment assistance, and the city has earmarked $20 million for affordable housing.

But sociologist Cat Goughnour, a native Oregonian and an advocate for affordable housing, thinks more should be done -- and not just in Portland.

Goughnour founded the Radix Consulting Group, which is lobbying the city to change its process of urban planning to involve community members upfront, rather than asking for their input toward the end of a project's development.

Read the full article about community-led urban design by J. Brian Charles at Governing Magazine.