Building sustainable community infrastructure takes more than launching a program and measuring short-term results. It requires systems that reflect the people who use them, the communities that shape them, and the institutions responsible for sustaining them.
IncludUs is a national nonprofit focused on helping cities develop inclusive civic, economic, wellbeing, and climate infrastructure through Community Engineering™, fiscal sponsorship, and place-based partnerships with local governments and community organizations.
Here are five core principles that define the Community Engineering™ model and its approach to sustainable community infrastructure.
1. Community Knowledge Should Shape the Solution
Community Engineering™ begins with a straightforward principle: the people closest to a problem are best positioned to help design its solution. Instead of separating planning from lived experience, the model brings community knowledge, culture, and participation into the development process.
This approach recognizes that communities already possess valuable knowledge about the systems affecting their daily lives. Local experiences can reveal barriers, opportunities, and priorities that may not be visible through institutional planning alone.
The goal is not simply to gather community feedback after a solution has already been designed. Community Engineering™ is structured around co-design, allowing community knowledge to become part of how civic, economic, wellbeing, and climate systems are developed.
That principle also supports a larger goal: helping communities design, own, and sustain the infrastructure created through the process.
2. Culture Is Part of Community Infrastructure
Community infrastructure is not limited to physical assets, government systems, or formal programs. Community Engineering™ treats culture as an important layer of infrastructure because culture can create trust, belonging, participation, and shared identity.
IncludUs describes culture as a first layer of civic infrastructure, incorporating artists, concerts, music, marketplaces, stories, and other cultural platforms into community engagement. These elements can provide places where people already gather and connect, creating a foundation for broader civic participation.
This principle is visible in initiatives such as Grita Canta Vota, a music-powered civic engagement initiative that activated 52,000 voters across 40 states. The initiative demonstrates how cultural engagement can function alongside civic infrastructure rather than being treated as a separate activity.
3. Sustainable Infrastructure Requires Shared Governance
Community Engineering™ also looks at how decisions are made, who participates in them, how ownership is shared, and how accountability is structured. These elements form the governance design layer of the framework.
This is important because sustainable infrastructure depends on more than creating a new system. The people and institutions involved need clear ways to participate in decisions and maintain the work over time.
IncludUs works alongside local government as an institutional anchor and trusted community organizations as a delivery layer. This creates a structure that connects institutional reach with community trust.
The model therefore positions governance as part of the infrastructure itself. Stronger systems are built by creating relationships and structures that allow communities and institutions to work together over the long term.
4. Community Infrastructure Must Connect Multiple Systems
A community's needs rarely fit neatly into one category. Civic participation can intersect with economic opportunity, health, education, environmental conditions, and climate resilience.
Community Engineering™ addresses this complexity through four interconnected layers:
- People + Culture: Who belongs, participates, and feels represented.
- Governance Design: How decisions are made, ownership is shared, and accountability is structured.
- Infrastructure Systems: Technology, physical assets, service delivery, access, and barriers.
- Outcome Learning: Feedback loops, continuous improvement, and measurement.
These layers connect the human and institutional sides of community development. They also align with the four areas where IncludUs works: civic infrastructure, economic power, community wellbeing, and climate resilience.
This systems-based structure helps keep community infrastructure from becoming another isolated initiative. Instead, different areas of development can be considered as connected parts of a larger local ecosystem.
5. Measurement and Learning Should Continue Beyond Implementation
Sustainable infrastructure needs a way to understand what is working, where gaps remain, and what should change. Outcome learning is therefore one of the four core layers of Community Engineering™. It incorporates feedback loops, continuous improvement, and measurement into the framework.
IncludUs applies this principle through tools such as its Community Wealth Report, which is designed to document economic output, gaps between what communities produce and what they own, and measurable return on investment.
The organization is also developing the U.S. Inclusion Index to provide a national baseline for tracking belonging, equity, and inclusion across institutions and sectors.
Measurement also appears throughout IncludUs' broader work. Its current impact includes more than 19 million people reached across 40 states, more than 900 community leaders trained, and more than 25 fiscally sponsored community-led projects across four focus areas.
The emphasis is therefore not simply on completing a project. Learning from outcomes can help strengthen the systems that remain in place after an individual engagement ends.
How Community Engineering™ Is Applied in Cities
These principles come together through a structured approach to city and institutional partnerships. IncludUs Labs provides technical assistance through city diagnostics and assessments, place-based implementation, and institutional technical assistance.
These engagements use the Community Engineering™ framework to identify gaps, co-design solutions, and build civic, economic, wellbeing, and climate infrastructure.
The place-based model is structured around a 12-month process, beginning with three months of diagnostic work followed by nine months of implementation. The work is carried out in partnership with local governments and community organizations.
The broader IncludUs ecosystem supports this work through three connected functions. IncludUs Fund provides fiscal infrastructure, operational support, and funding partnerships. IncludUs Labs provides technical assistance and develops solutions.
IncludUs Institute builds leadership capacity through Community Engineering™ training, workshops, fellowships, and other learning opportunities.
Building Sustainable Community Infrastructure From Within
The Community Engineering™ model brings together five connected ideas: community knowledge, cultural infrastructure, shared governance, systems thinking, and continuous learning. Each principle supports the larger goal of developing infrastructure that communities can help design, own, and sustain.
For cities, foundations, civic organizations, and other partners looking to strengthen community infrastructure, this approach offers a structured way to connect local knowledge with institutional capacity. IncludUs brings these elements together through Community Engineering™, its Fund, Labs, and Institute, with a broader goal of developing 40 city developments in 10 years.
To explore how Community Engineering™ could support sustainable community infrastructure in your city or organization, connect with IncludUs to discuss a potential partnership.
