Civic Participation

This grant will allow residents to use neighborhood streets for walking, bicycling safely, and other crucial activities during COVID-19 by ensuring that Austins Healthy Streets program is fully implemented and integrates the needs of vulnerable residents.

Launched during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for people to spend time together outdoors, Austin's Healthy Streets program implemented street closures in various residential neighborhoods. Doing so enabled neighbors to go for walks, often with dogs, and ride bikes without needing to dodge traffic. (As "soft closures," the streets were still open to emergency and delivery vehicles as well as those of residents.) Street murals like the one at Navasota and Canterbury streets became a popular way to identify and decorate the low-traffic spaces.