“Investing in Place gets into the weeds and explains things like no one else does.”

We hear this a lot, and it’s the best feedback we could get.

OUR VISION

Our vision is a city with vibrant and accessible neighborhoods, inspired by those who live there.


WHY WE EXIST

People don’t feel like they have a voice in shaping their own communities, because there’s no comprehensive plan for maintaining our essential public spaces in Los Angeles. The City doesn’t even know how many miles of sidewalk it has.

There’s no clear way for people to advocate for what they want. We’re here to change that.


WHAT WE DO

We follow the money and the policy so more people feel empowered to advocate for their own communities with a spirit of confidence and inclusion.

Place: Where you live should be full of life.
Movement: It’s easier to get ahead once you can get around.

HOW WE DO IT

We work to take the mystery out of how public works and transportation money is spent and how decisions are made and then share that information to support inclusive and equitable decision-making.

We analyze  POLICY
We love a good audit and budget sheet! We work to be diligent and thorough in seeking hard data and genuine insight into how the City functions through reports and talking directly with policymakers and agency staff.

 

We ground-truth and RESEARCH
From convenings with community members to ground-truthing field work, we go to the source to see what’s really happening and to hear from people about their own experiences getting around town.

 

We empower partners to INFLUENCE
We share our research and work with others to understand how the budgets and the decision-making processes work, in an effort to provide support for their own campaigns. We lead and collaborate with a network of community-based organizations, advocacy groups, public agencies, policymakers and individual community volunteers.

WHO WE ARE

Investing in Place was founded in 2015 by Jessica Meaney, who has spent two decades advocating for better investment in transportation and public infrastructure in Southern California. She knows we have the money to make our cities work if we prioritize those expenditures with an overarching vision for our public realm.

 

Our Mission for 2022-2023

LA Needs a Plan

It’s nearly impossible to advocate for equitable investment in the most-neglected neighborhoods when there’s no guiding document and no budget process. What Los Angeles has instead is multiple departments planning one year at a time, in a process that’s a mystery.

As a result, the public is often in the dark about projects that would benefit their neighborhoods, and about what is being budgeted by policymakers. Improvements to the public right of way are ad hoc and subject to political whims—ignoring historical and present-day inequity.

In 2018, a FUSE Fellow identified the lack of a Capital Infrastructure Plan as a leading problem in Los Angeles’ management of public space. It’s 2022, and there’s still no plan.

Investing in Place is seeking funding to create the first City of Los Angeles Model Capital Infrastructure Plan. We will address this question:

What infrastructure investments should Los Angeles prioritize over the next decade, to make the biggest improvements for those who need it most?

Team Members

Jessica Meaney

Executive Director

Harley Morgan

Communications Assistant

Kim Perez

Communications Strategist

Tiffany Liu

Project Coordinator

Advisory Board

Richard France

Estolano Advisors

Luis Gutierrez

Southern California Edison

Madeline Brozen

UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies