About Us
Community leaders launched RenewLV in 2005, in response to a landmark Brookings Institution study, Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania and the disturbing trends it revealed.
This study highlighted two challenges facing the Lehigh Valley and regions across the Commonwealth: (1) the “hollowing out” of core communities, resulting in disinvestment in cities and boroughs and the loss of precious farmland and open space; and (2) a highly fragmented system of municipal governance, which severely impedes planning for growth in a proactive, coordinated way.
RenewLV addresses these challenges — a declining urban core, disappearing open space, fragmented local governance — by bringing together a broad range of perspectives and expertise. RenewLV’s Board of Directors, representing a variety of sectors, provides strategic guidance for the organization. This collaborative leadership structure has enabled RenewLV to develop an ambitious agenda focused on revitalizing cities and boroughs and promoting regional approaches to addressing the most pressing issues facing the Lehigh Valley.
RenewLV’s mission is to promote smart growth and efficient governance in the Lehigh Valley in order to revitalize its core communities, preserve open space, and create an economically and environmentally sustainable foundation for the region’s future growth.
RenewLV’s regional initiatives include:
- Food Sustainability;
- Farmland Preservation;
- Smart Transportation;
- Smart Growth Education and Outreach;
In all of our initiatives, we support regional collaboration and cooperation, shared services and multi-municipal land use planning and permitting. We engage in state policy discussions to advocate for state-level policy changes that enable effective regional governance.
We advance these initiatives through a set of strategies that engage a broad cross-section of the Lehigh Valley community.
If you would like to find out how you can be plugged into efforts to improve the region.
To learn more about our initiatives, visit our Action and Multimedia pages. If you are interested in becoming a part of a network of advocates working toward regional collaboration and urban revitalization, sign up for our e-mail list at our Join Us page.
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