The LANI Model
The hallmark of LANI's program is our combination of expert project management with deep community outreach that empowers local stakeholders and generates substantive communal decision-making.
LANI helped pioneer an equity-centered, community-building approach to improving infrastructure in Los Angeles, which is today’s best practice. This approach empowers Angelenos to help decide which projects best serve their neighborhoods’ needs. Robust community engagement today, however, does not eradicate deeply rooted and systemic problems affecting notoriously underserved communities. LANI staff engage in one-to-one conversations about infrastructure needs and projects to ensure that people in every Los Angeles neighborhood have the safe, supportive, uplifting built environment that they deserve.
LANI prioritizes engaging segments of the population that have historically been left out of traditional neighborhood planning processes, including:
youth
seniors
people with disabilities
people who are transit-dependent
non-English speakers
Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian people, and other people of color
socioeconomically disadvantaged people.
We focus on educating stakeholders so that together we can efficiently balance varying interests with on-the-ground realities, political considerations, and constraints such as timeline and budget, resulting in completed projects with high levels of community support and satisfaction.
The LANI Model:
facilitates dialogue and participation among neighborhood stakeholders, interested parties, and the general public
builds bridges between factions within a community and between local government and residents
facilitates compromise to deliver meaningful, broadly supported results.
The people involved in LANI projects often continue their work in the community, becoming community activists and leading future LANI projects or initiating projects that build on community improvements begun by LANI.
LANI has earned a strong reputation for expediting projects, and many public agencies and departments choose to work with LANI because of our success in moving projects forward, even when there are bumps in the road. We work closely with a wide range of community organizations, contractors, public and private offices, and funding entities, and we are adept at breaking up logjams in the event a project faces conflicts or controversy.
Process
A typical LANI project follows these time-proven steps:
Secure project funding
Build a community-based steering committee and a technical advisory committee to guide the project from concept through construction, including selection of a qualified designer
Develop and refine project plans
Secure permits and build the project
Open project for public use