Imagine a future where all people in the United States live and thrive in equitable, sustainable, prosperous, and inclusive built environments.

Well-planned and -built infrastructure is the foundation for an equitable and thriving society. Our daily lives are shaped by how accessible, affordable and reliable our transportation, water, electrical and other infrastructural systems are. How infrastructure is built and maintained conditions our everyday experience, and also has the power to contribute enormous socioeconomic benefits.

The experience of living in an equitable, sustainable, prosperous, and inclusive built environment has not been realized for all. In particular, many Black, Indigenous and communities of color have not historically had opportunities to imagine, co-create and ultimately define how the infrastructure in their own communities is shaped. Decisions around infrastructure investments have caused significant harm, whether by limiting access to socioeconomic opportunities, facilitating segregation, displacement, extraction, or resulting in chronic disinvestment. The consequences of these decisions endure and oftentimes grow, as many of these same communities disproportionately carry the burden of the devastating effects of environmental injustice, climate change and unjust outcomes stemming from post disaster response and recovery processes that tend to leave the most vulnerable behind.  

At PolicyLink, we know it is within our collective power to reckon with the harm of the past, design reparative solutions, and transform our infrastructure systems to create thriving communities for all. 

We transform how infrastructure, climate and post disaster policies and programs are designed to ensure that federal, state and local investments are deployed to serve the 100 million people in the United States living at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. We work to strengthen the capacity  of partners to advance infrastructure justice and develop standards that foster equitable, sustainable, prosperous and inclusive built environments. 

• We advance mobility justice, which means living in a community where everyone feels safe, whole and undaunted, regardless of their race, ethnicity or socio-economic status. We aim to create the conditions where everyone is empowered, able to move freely, and thrive.
• We catalyze climate justice in frontline communities by transforming existing disaster response and recovery frameworks. We leverage our experiences and lessons from place-based work to gather lessons, and identify innovative and promising examples of approaches, processes and investments that help address the challenges that disproportionately affect the most vulnerable populations and advance just recoveries.We design bold visions for what infrastructure policies and funding programs can look like if we are serious about providing infrastructure for all that is high quality, culturally relevant, informed by community voices, climate resilient, and fosters equitable economic development.
• We partner with  communities and organizations to build power and advance this vision for infrastructure justice. We ensure that community members and organization leaders play a role in shaping the future of their built environments, by working on supporting collaborative governance models that promote deep civic involvement in the design and provision of equitable infrastructure development and investments. We support organizations to operate from a space of shared power and knowledge by facilitating spaces for organizations to align on values, agendas, and action.