Love Where You Live
Beth is collaborating (2023-2026) with Susannah Laramee Kidd to co-lead and design a community participatory evaluation strategy with Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to measure the impacts of Love Where You Live, a greening plan for the Nicetown and Tioga neighborhoods of Philadelphia. This “green vision” plan emerged from an in-depth collaboration between community members and leaders and established neighborhood health and wellness priorities including increasing access to fresh food and restoring the tree canopy.
As part of this visioning process, PHS piloted a new place-based model that focuses on long-term, neighborhood-driven transformation. This model connects community partners with technical assistance, materials, infrastructure, volunteers and other resources necessary to enact sustainable change. Beth and Susannah partnered with the project team to identify and understand the impacts, successes, and challenges of this project as it took shape.
As part of the evaluation process, they synthesized existing research on health and wellness impacts of greening along with outcomes articulated by community members into a theory of change to guide immersive data collection and build a new place-based greening model. In 2026, in tandem with a public planning process intended to articulate next steps for this plan, they are producing a public-facing StoryMap website and an internal model toolkit with recommendations.