This article was written by FUSE Executive Fellow Dr. Edidiong “Didi” Mendie
Photo and Support Credit: Charonda Hill, Consultant at Medici Road
The Work Behind the Work
When people think about large-scale environmental redevelopment, they picture outcomes such as green parks, new infrastructure, and revitalized public spaces. This is not wrong. However, what is often unseen is what makes those outcomes possible:
- The systems and operational frameworks behind the scenes.
- The decisions about who has power.
- The governance structures that determine who benefits and who does not
The Taylor Yard Equity Strategy (TYES) is a community-driven initiative in Northeast Los Angeles that emerged alongside plans to transform a former contaminated industrial rail yard into green and open space. This transformation was aimed at ensuring benefits for local residents and businesses through housing stability, economic opportunity and workforce development, cultural preservation, and environmental improvements, while preventing displacement and green gentrification. At TYES, we made a deliberate choice early on: Equity would not be an aspiration. It would be operationalized through structure, process, and accountability.
The Challenge Beneath the Vision
When I took up this responsibility consulting as a FUSE Executive Fellow with the City of Los Angeles, the Community Taylor Yard Equity Strategy (TYES) already had strong alignment around its purpose: ensuring that redevelopment would benefit surrounding communities and prevent displacement. But alignment alone was not enough.
There were multiple stakeholders: public agencies, community organizations, leaders, researchers, and elected officials, each with different roles, priorities, and constraints. What became clear through my listening tour report, supported by early research and evidence-based analysis, was that the challenge was not a lack of commitment, but the absence of infrastructure for coordinated decision-making and implementation.
The call for a shared, transparent structure capable of aligning stakeholders, guiding decisions, and advancing implementation emerged directly from this phase. In response, we launched the TYES Oversight Committee in December 2024 during the kickoff innovation lab, with the goal of designing a governance and implementation system to carry the work forward.
From the outset, this was not about facilitation; it was about system design and operationalization. At the kickoff Innovation Lab, partners endorsed a Charter grounded in equity as a decision-making lens, transparency, shared accountability, and community-centered governance. This ensured that decision-making frameworks aligned with both values and outcomes.
Designing the Oversight Committee: A Methodological Approach
Leading the initial facilitation process, we turned participation into distributed leadership and ownership for the Committee. Rather than managing meetings, we built a collaborative process for agenda-setting in which members proposed priorities, shaped discussions, and created space to pursue the full composition of the committee.
We operationalized trust through consistent, repeatable processes, including standardized meeting structures and documentation, clear decision-making pathways, governance structures, and accountability protocols. These elements created a transparent operating system that enabled continuity, clarity, and follow-through.
The committee adopted a co-chair model and shared facilitation responsibilities. By the time leadership formally transitioned, governance and decision-making were already functioning as distributed, cross-functional processes. It was designed for continuity and scale, involving documenting processes and workflows, embedding norms into practice, transitioning facilitation responsibilities early, and supporting staff onboarding to sustain operations. By the time I stepped back, the system was operating self-sufficiently.
From Governance to Implementation
In 2025, the release of the first Community TYES Progress Report marked a pivotal moment not just for the project, but for how the work would move forward. The report captured what years of engagement had made clear: while residents supported environmental restoration and new open space, they also feared displacement. As a result, housing stability and local economic opportunity emerged as top priorities. At its core, the report identified 20 strategic opportunities for action across housing, workforce development, and community stability.
The Progress Report clarified what needed to happen. The next challenge was determining how it would happen and who would be accountable for delivery. That is where governance became essential. As the Oversight Committee was being strengthened, I led a city-level working group to identify strategies across the 20 opportunity areas and beyond. This body of work was then transitioned to the new staff structure to ensure continuity. As the Oversight Committee stabilized and staff were fully onboarded, the nature of the work shifted. The Committee aligned around three core pillars: housing stability and anti-displacement, workforce development and economic opportunity, and community resilience and environmental sustainability. This marked a transition from alignment to delivery.
Testing the System: From Strategy to Execution
While the first Innovation Lab I led focused on establishing the governance committee, aligning stakeholders, and building relationships and shared priorities, the second Lab tested something more critical: could this system deliver coordinated, cross-sector implementation?
Using a rapid prototyping methodology, partners developed:
- 30-60-90 day implementation plans
- Defined ownership across agencies and partners
- Performance metrics, risks, and mitigation strategies
- Early-stage pipelines for housing, workforce, and small business support
This process translated strategy into actionable workstreams with accountability and measurable progress indicators. It also surfaced real-world constraints such as capacity, policy complexity, and political alignment that informed ongoing execution. The core of the work was strategic and operational leadership at the systems level. It required the long-term vision of equitable, place-based sustainability and the operational mechanics required to deliver it.
A Model for Equitable Environmental Sustainability
TYES demonstrates that equitable environmental sustainability is not just about what is built. It is about how systems are structured to deliver outcomes. What makes this model replicable is its integration of community-informed governance, transparent decision-making systems, cross-sector implementation frameworks, and operational accountability and continuity. This is what allows equity, sustainability, and economic opportunity to be advanced simultaneously.
Passing the Torch
As this partnership between the City and FUSE comes to a close, the most important question is not what was accomplished. It is whether the work can continue and scale. Today, the TYES Oversight Committee is:
- Fully operational
- Led by co-chairs and supported by staff
- Driving implementation and long-term strategy
- Positioned to advance a multi-year roadmap
The system holds because it was designed to.
The TYES mission that the team partners adopted did not come with a playbook. We have endeavored to write our own playbook one step at a time, through collaboration, trial & error, and listening. At times, I was guilty of an impatience with the pace, eager to define and deliver solutions to problems, which narrowed my vision. Dr. Mendie’s support helped clarify that building structure and trust among partners was the first-order mission that would unlock the possibility to then realize TYES programs successfully. We first needed to invest in the team building and ideas exchange that knits partners together. Now, we have a solid operating structure and are on the cusp of endorsing our first work plan of nine projects. Dr. Mendie’s and FUSE’s support has made a lasting impact on our work and ourselves.
Michael Affeldt, L.A. River Revitalization Coordinator with the City of Los Angeles, Bureau of Engineering
Final Reflection
At Taylor Yard, the most important outcome is not just what will be built on the land, but what has already been built behind the scenes and how it can be strengthened to inform tangible outcomes that benefit both the community and all stakeholders. It begins with a governance and implementation system where decisions are shared, power is structured, and equity is operationalized. That is what makes equitable development possible and sustainable at scale.
