Creating a City Residents Deserve

Imagine having a clear, precise roadmap to turn your city's shelved, big ideas into a concrete plan. One that creates a city that residents truly deserve. City employees and community members often have good intentions and powerful visions, but lack the process to drive them forward while working together. City Thread formed to break those barriers. We help city staff, elected leaders, and community partners work better together, using a proven collaborative model called The Playbook.

We aren’t asking you to start from scratch. Our approach taps into the ideas and momentum cities already have, providing a step-by-step framework for delivering projects residents care about.

What is The Playbook?

The Playbook is a practical, four-step guide that local governments and their partners use to accelerate big ideas. It’s not just a planning tool: it’s about action—moving quickly, maintaining momentum, and building real community trust along the way.

It’s an organized way for cities to transform their community support into achieving their long-term vision. This guidebook for city staff, elected leaders, and community partners requires funding, intentional partner collaboration, and sustained momentum. 

Below is a look at the four phases within The Playbook and why they are crucial to a city’s success.

Step 1: Establishing a Shared Goal provides a central objective that partners can unite around with a vision for what they are working to achieve and a way to measure progress. Solidifying this step is crucial to the rest of The Playbook. It’s the north star in times of uncertainty.

Step 2: Aligning Partners ensures each stakeholder is committed to both the goal and the other partners, eliminating any friction or delays to the project. This can be the most difficult step because it requires sustained commitment from stakeholders around the shared goal, emphasis on sustained. 

Step 3: Resourcing Partners strengthens the relationship overall by providing everyone what they need to carry out the shared goal. That need might be money, capacity, technical assistance, training, or something else, but unless partners are supported, they can’t contribute effectively. 

Step 4: Building Quickly solidifies trust through maintaining the momentum of the community’s support, demonstrating that change is possible and it’s happening now.

The Playbook in Action

In 2019, when City Thread partners Sara and Kyle began working in Providence, the city was just beginning to build out its mobility network. Their goal was to construct 43 miles of new bikeways by 2021 under the Great Streets Initiative. With Sara and Kyle’s guidance, Providence reached 34% network completion by 2021.

Liza Burkin, board president of the Providence Streets Coalition, noted that she sees The Playbook as a momentum-building tool that helped kick-start the network development, saying that without the strategies, they might have continued to struggle with communication and community engagement.

"The messaging guidance was very helpful,” says Burkin. “De-centering the word bike and bicyclists wherever possible, for example, and making it more about universal themes of street safety and access."

When the Providence Streets Coalition began working with the city, a bike lane was installed and then removed three weeks later due to poor communication, according to Burkin. She says this is a challenge they are still trying to overcome.

"It became about finding groups and people, and acknowledging that it's not the center of their mission, and not asking it to be the center of their mission, but asking them to come along and spend any excess time they can to fight for better mobility, because it's gonna benefit their core constituency," says Burkin.

“It's a playbook that works,” says Burkin. “I think those strategies have worked very well in Providence, because the funding piece is really hard. It's always very hard, both for the outreach and the coalition building that is necessary, and then also the capital dollars that are necessary for actually building out the projects.”

This Playbook strategy aims to create broader, more inclusive communication and support for mobility infrastructure, addressing the initial poor communication that led to the removal of the bike lane.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Using the Playbook

DO

• Invest time upfront to define the shared goal. All stakeholders should be able to clearly state this specific, time-bound goal. 

• Include all key partners. Building effective partnerships requires effort. Address disagreements early and build trust. 

• Provide adequate resources to each partner. Don’t expect coalition members to contribute time or effort without support. 

• Act quickly and transparently. Show early wins to build public confidence.

DON’T

• Assume. If your goal isn’t clearly defined and shared, begin by clarifying and aligning on it first.

• Leave partners unsupported. Whether it’s due to a lack of compensation or an excessive burden. It weakens coalitions and slows progress. 

• Drag it out. Maintaining momentum depends as much on pace as on vision.

City Thread is ready to support cities every step of the way. Communities that partner with City Thread participate in an initial assessment that includes an evaluation of what’s working well and where improvements could be made, with an action plan of how to get there. 

Communities can get started with The Playbook in two ways—by participating in City Thread’s Accelerated Mobility Playbook (AMP) Technical Assistance Grant, or by directly hiring our team for tailored support. Whether your city is looking for technical assistance through the grant program or prefers to engage City Thread’s experts at every step, our support is designed to meet your community’s needs and accelerate your goals.

The Playbook’s impact goes beyond the guide. The Accelerated Mobility Playbook (AMP) Leadership Gathering brings grantee cities together to share lessons, troubleshoot challenges, and learn how to apply the Playbook in their respective cities, step by step. This in-person event is where cities begin moving from theory to practice—and create support systems that continue long after the gathering ends.

"The AMP Leadership Gathering is an opportunity for cities to gather in person, both with their partners from their city, but also with their peers and colleagues from other cities to understand what it means to go into phase two of the Playbook, aligning the partnerships,” says Kyle Wagenschutz, partner at City Thread.

During the Leadership Gathering, cities learn how to implement the Playbook in a way that suits their city. And, once you're part of the Playbook’s program, you're in it for life in whatever capacity makes sense.

Cities face real struggles of long bureaucratic processes, economic woes, and public safety concerns. City Thread is here to help. We unite cities with community partners by providing a playbook that guides them through a collaborative process of establishing shared goals, aligning partnerships, and delivering tangible urban improvements.

Your city's potential is waiting, and City Thread is ready to help unlock it, one strategic step at a time. Reach out at hello@citythread.org.