Neighborhood Playbook creators Joe Nickol and Kevin Wright announced Monday they have launched YARD & Company, an urban growth firm that builds off the philosophies and concepts developed in the Neighborhood Playbook.
The Neighborhood Playbook was originally brought to reality through a People’s Liberty mini-grant of $10,000. People’s Liberty is a local philanthropic lab that invests in people and ideas.
With YARD, Nickol and Wright leverage over 25 years of global experience combining urban design and development strategy with hyper-local get-it-done creativity. In the year since the Playbook was published, demand for their work has grown.
“Creating YARD & Company was the natural next step for us. We were getting requests from communities across the country who were excited about the Neighborhood Playbook and working with us to take ownership over what change looks like in their communities,” Nickol and Wright said jointly in a statement. “Now, with YARD, we can devote our time to scaling the impact of that process nationally and beyond.”
YARD’s clients range from small volunteer-based grassroots efforts to multi-national developers and corporations. Projects range in size from targeted popup efforts to billion-dollar redevelopments of entire city districts. They are launching with clients in Memphis, Tennessee; Erie, Pennsylvania; and Cincinnati.
“When Kevin and Joe first pitched us on the idea of the Neighborhood Playbook it was clear that they weren’t interested in the status quo, but instead were drawn to a new approach to neighborhood planning and development,” said Eric Avner, CEO of People’s Liberty. “We’re happy that our investment in them has paved the way for them to help more communities across the country and to continue to disrupt the urban planning, development and design industry,”
YARD focuses on three core service areas: urban design + development strategy, economic + real estate development, and demand discovery. Within each of those core areas, there are six mix-and-matchable building blocks that are customizable to each communities’ needs and priorities.
Learn more at buildwithyard.com.
Yard & Company