Across the country, local officials are writing art, community-engaged design, and cultural strategy into infrastructure plans, and they are increasingly paying for it with money that never touches an arts budget. Federal transportation dollars. Pandemic recovery funds. Block grants. Hotel taxes.

In this white paper, Senior Fellow Margy Waller of Topos Partnership scans five projects in Oakland, Cleveland, Greater Boston, New Bedford, and Atlanta where artists worked as core planning partners on freeway removal, trail networks, a passenger rail bridge, and neighborhood mobility.

The officials involved report a consistent result: infrastructure shaped with artist involvement delivers benefits to the whole community, and the reception has been strong enough to set new standards for how public planning gets done. Waller names six functions artists perform in community development, from designing planning processes that reach residents who will never attend a meeting at city hall to opening pathways toward systems change. She is candid about what the work demands, including coordination across agencies that rarely sit at the same table. Written for mayors, planners, agency leaders, and the funders working alongside them.