Program Areas

As part of the City Leaders Institute, Partners developed a Community Report Card to help civic leaders and citizens think about their community’s strengths and weaknesses in Aging in Place. The report card assesses 11 components and grades the community on how well it is doing in each component of agelessness.

• Community Design and Planning
• Arts, Culture and Lifelong Learning
• Housing
• Workforce Development
• Transportation and Mobility
• Local Leadership
• Health and Wellness
• Civic Engagement and Volunteer Opportunities
• Sustainability
• Public Safety and Services
• Equity of Opportunity

In our 37th year as an organization helping to empower communities with the tools to put them on the map as leaders in livability, Partners for Livable Communities is pleased to present this updated publication on cultural heritage tourism. As the tourism industry has boomed in the decades since Partners for Livable Communities began its cultural heritage tourism initiatives, communities have become increasingly eager to find ways attract tourists and capture the dollars they bring with them. However, when hard times come, it can be a challenge to persuade those among us of the benefits of preserving culture, heritage, and their artifacts from the past.

This guide represents the culmination of our experience and knowledge on an issue that has such a great potential for community development. Our hope is to demonstrate how cultural heritage is not just something to preserve for future generations, but is in fact an asset that can be leveraged to bring real economic benefits to the community.

Robert McNulty, president of Partners, can come to your community to speak about the necessity of developing a cultural heritage tourism strategy as well as share best practices and resources learned from Partners' decades of experience in this arena.

Download Cultural Heritage Tourism

Partners compiled a collection of best practices of traditional community institutions incorporating health and wellness into their agenda and programming to improve community health. The best practices focus on improving the health of at least one of three constituencies: distressed communities, at-risk youth, and the vulnerable elderly.

Examples of institutions include arts and culture organizations, botanical gardens, community development corporations (CDCs), faith-based organizations, libraries, museums, public markets, and zoos.

Click here to download Creating the Healthy Community - Using All Assets: Institutions as Fulcrums of Change

The efforts of the City Leaders Institute team in Memphis, Tennessee were featured in the latest publication of Bridges, a quarterly journal of the St. Louis Federal Reserve.

The Plough Foundation and their program associate, Katie Midgley, have been leading the way to prepare Memphis for the increase in the number and share of older adults in the population. After researching the availability and quality of existing services as well as commissioning a survey of 500 older adults within the county, Plough identified home modifications supportive of the ability to age in place as its top priority within its aging agenda.

Memphis is participating in Partners for Livable Communities and MetLife Foundation’s City Leaders Institute on Aging in Place. The program is in its second year and has worked in fifteen communities across the country.

The Memphis team is working to develop a resource for older adults in Shelby County that will determine an individual’s home modification needs, direct the individual to services that can perform the modifications, and provide funding for those older adults unable to afford the modificiations needed to allow them to remain in their home for as long as possible.

Read more about the efforts in Memphis and the City Leaders Institute: The Graying of America: Preparing for What Comes Next (Bridges Fall 2013).

Learn more about the City Leaders Institute.

Check out the Plough Foundation website.

For residents of Chicago’s northern suburbs, the Chicago Botanic Garden is much more than just a collection of colorful plants and flowers. Since it opened more than 40 years ago, the 385 acre grounds have served as an important center for community activity and education. The Garden is home to 26 separate gardens and four natural areas, as well as a conservation science education center and a library with one of the country’s largest collections of botanical books. The grounds are also host to numerous community events and educational courses throughout the year.