Corridor Development Initiative

Helping cities and suburbs meet housing demands

The Corridor Development Initiative fosters an exciting partnership among neighborhood residents, government agencies, developers, and design consultants. The goal is to help communities develop affordable housing along major traffic corridors that provide access to transportation, shops, parks, and job opportunities.

The program encourages hands-on participation of neighborhood residents in an educational workshop where they develop their own housing proposals and test them to see if they’re financially viable. They are put in the center of the action where they learn how density and affordable housing can be used as revitalization and market-building tools.

The Corridor Development Initiative originated in 2002 as the Corridor Housing Initiative (CHI), a program of the Center for Neighborhoods, a nonprofit organization that served the Twin Cities region as an incubator of innovation at the neighborhood level.  In 2007, the initiative became a part of Twin Cities LISC, expanding LISC’s community engagement work in the suburbs, furthering community development efforts across the region, and building and enabling working relationships with new suburban partners.  In 2009, the CHI name was changed the Corridor Development Initiative, to reflect the reach of the initiative as going beyond housing alone. In addition to work in Minnesota, CDI serves as a resource for the broader network of LISC offices and efforts. Winner of the American Planning Association’s 2007 National Planning Excellence for a Grassroots Initiative, the Corridor Development Initiative is seen as a national model and has been replicated in other parts of the country.