The Anacostia Park and Community Collaborative is interested in the role that Anacostia Park and other open spaces in Ward 7 and Ward 8 of the District can play in improving our communities. We believe that the Anacostia River and its waterfront parks, as well as our other neighborhood parks, can provide immense benefits to residents if improved in the right way.

We aren’t the only people thinking like this. Four big foundations recently put $40 million into a project called Reimagining the Civic Commons that leverages “the power of the civic commons to produce increased and more equitably shared prosperity” in four U.S. cities. After working in several cities since 2016, this project has published some lessons-learned that apply very much to us here in the District.