Partners regularly applies a cultural lens to all aspects of development and quality of life strategies, including the economic, social, human and physical realms. Cultural resources are a good investment, particularly in hard times, because they are able address numerous aspects of development at the same time.

• Economic Development: A strong cultural infrastructure, such as arts centers and libraries, generates income, jobs, civic pride, and spurs economic growth and regional cooporation.
• Social Development: Cultural resources foster community building by creating a sense of shared identity, encouraging multicultural understanding, and providing much-needed gathering places.
• Human Development: Cultural programs teach problem solving, stimulate creative thinking, and instill self-esteem and discipline as well as offer tangible skills such as organizational and business management, construction techniques and computer proficiency.
• Physical Development: Capital improvements that call upon arts resources to improve a landscape or a building facade not only stimulate economic development, but also bring pride and a sense of ownership to residents.

The appeal of connecting cultural resources with community problem solving agendas is heightened by the fact that programs can be generated quickly and with very little capital cost—the basic human and institutional infrastructure is often already in place.