Mahyar Arefi
School of Planning
University of Cincinnati

This article describes the experience of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative (LANI), a single revitalization program that has aimed to jump-start languishing downtown Los Angeles neighborhoods since 1994. This experience will be discussed against the backdrop of two putative public policy tensions: people versus place prosperity and needs versus assets. The lessons learned from the revitalization outcomes of the original eight LANI areas suggest a continuum leading from consensus building through image building to capacity building and caution against “helping the wrong neighborhood” and “helping a neighborhood in the wrong way.”

Neighborhood Jump-Starting: Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative