Program Areas

Healthy Community Design

As a pioneering organization at the forefront of effective tools and techniques for community engagement, LGC provides direct planning and technical assistance to elected officials, staff, and community leaders to help create more livable communities. Our team maintains extensive relationships with experts in various disciplines to address issues around livability, transportation, sustainability and health. Our community-design work is modeled on and shaped by our Ahwahnee Principles for Resource-Efficient Communities.

Our community-design team incorporates equity in all of our projects. We work in underserved regions, partner with community-based organizations, conduct events in multiple languages, and engage directly with a diverse range of community members.

Climate Change

LGC has played a pivotal role in advancing California’s response to climate change. Our programs help elevate public understanding of both the risks of climate change and meaningful opportunities to increase community resiliency. To do this, we leverage our longstanding relationships with key state agencies, local jurisdictions, community-based organizations and researchers and practitioners in the field to advance climate solutions.

Our work encompasses place-based projects that seek to catalyze early action and results as well as build long-term capacity. Our projects involve statewide climate mitigation and adaptation events, policy engagement, resource development, and coalition-building. We identify opportunities to help support our partners in communities that are more likely to be affected and those where resources are more scarce.

Energy

LGC has worked for decades to identify local solutions to pressing energy needs. Working collaboratively with local leaders, we identify practical ways to build more resilient energy systems in our communities. Through our networks and coalitions, LGC also provides a collective voice for public agencies on priority energy policies and programs statewide.

LGC provides technical assistance to local governments on emerging best practices, hosts statewide energy events, and provides support to improve community engagement. We vigorously advocate for energy solutions and funding, and better access to resources for underrepresented and hard-to-reach communities.

Water

We envision a California in which local water management is characterized by innovative, holistic approaches that ensure the resilience of our natural systems while enhancing the vibrancy of our built communities. LGC’s water work is approached through a water/land use nexus lens and is informed by the Ahwahnee Water Principles.

Our water team strives to increase the level of social justice in partnership with allied organizations, community members, and equity experts. We recognize that each community is unique, as are their water management issues. For each community in which we work, we evaluate the historic barriers to engagement and develop an engagement strategy to best meet the needs of the community.

National Service

LGC runs the CivicSpark Americorps program in partnership with the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. CivicSpark contributes to increasing community resilience by building local governments’ capacity to address entrenched and emerging issues ranging from climate change and water management to affordable housing and broadband access; serving as an accelerator for future leaders in social-purpose careers; and fostering lasting, authentic community engagement.

Equity and social justice are incorporated into CivicSpark’s programs through fellow recruitment, project development, volunteer engagement, regional trainings and service days. CivicSpark helps identify opportunities to support partners in underrepresented communities.