The Neighborhood Design Center’s Equitable Engagement Toolkit: Prioritizing Equity in the Community Design Process is a curated library of 51 resources designed to help practitioners put equity at the center of community engagement.
The toolkit organizes resources into a range of formats, including 27 tools and guides that practitioners can use directly in their work, 17 papers and articles that offer critical analysis, 4 books that delve deeper into theory and practice, as well as reference lists and networks that connect users with further learning and communities of practice. This mix ensures that users can both ground their approach in research and apply practical methods in real time.
What’s powerful about the collection is its breadth. Some resources zoom in on practical tools. For example, the Justice Equity Needs Index (from Catalyst California) helps communities visualize and prioritize need across neighborhoods. Others, such as The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership from the Movement Strategy Center, provide frameworks for shifting power, enabling residents to move from being “consulted” to actually shaping decisions.
The themes are clear and consistent: dismantling barriers to participation, designing processes that not only listen but also respond, and providing accountability so that input translates into action. For instance, Strong Towns’ provocative article Most Public Engagement is Worse than Worthless pushes readers to rethink performative meetings, while Shelterforce’s It’s Time to Move On From Community Consensus challenges outdated ideas of “neutral” design.
Collectively, the toolkit offers something for every stage of engagement. Need to understand barriers? There are evidence reviews and scholarly articles. Want to implement? Turn to guides and indexes. Building capacity in your team? Books and networks offer long-term perspectives.
For organizations, planners, and community leaders, this toolkit highlights the limitations of traditional engagement while outlining paths toward more just, inclusive, and transformative processes.
Of course, using these resources isn’t just about downloading tools but about committing to equity as a practice. The variety of sources, from grassroots nonprofits to municipal agencies and academic research, shows that equitable engagement is a collective effort.
As communities face challenges ranging from displacement to climate resilience, the Equitable Engagement Toolkit serves as a timely reminder that how we design is just as important as what we create. Engagement done equitably strengthens trust, builds power, and ensures that the outcomes reflect the diversity and aspirations of those most affected.
You can explore the toolkit here.
