Neighborhood Life In Rhode Island

Neighborhoods shape so much more than our commute—they influence our safety, our stress, and our ability to access the everyday places that keep us healthy. In this episode of Rhode Island Voices, we dig into Neighborhood Life and what Rhode Islanders are telling us about the built environment, transportation, and public amenities and where the biggest gaps show up across the state. 

Host Melissa Clark, Scientific Lead for the RI Life Index, is joined by Scott Wolf, Executive Director of Grow Smart Rhode Island, to connect the data to lived experience and spotlight practical, solutions-focused ideas. Together, they unpack key findings, how concerns differ sharply between core cities and non-core areas, and steps we can take to work towards healthier, more accessible communities. 

Whether you’re a resident, municipal leader, employer, or advocate, this conversation offers ways to support safer streets, more walkable communities, and better access to essentials so every Rhode Island neighborhood can be a healthier place to live.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Rhode Island Voices. I'm Carolyn Belisle, Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island. In this podcast series, we give voice to the findings of the Rhode Island Life Index, our partnership with the Brown University School of Public Health, to better understand what shapes health and well-being in our communities. In each episode, we spotlight a single issue and explore steps that might be taken or explored by individuals, by organizations, or by policy and decision makers. Today we're talking about neighborhood life, how where we live affects our safety, our ability to get around, and our access to the places and services that matter most. Our host, Dr. Melissa Clark, scientific lead for the Rhode Island Life Index, is joined by Scott Wolf, Executive Director of Grow Smart Rhode Island. Together, they will explore what Rhode Islanders told us in the data and what it means for the future of our communities.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Hi everyone, I'm Melissa Clark, your host for Rhode Island Voices. This series is about connecting data with lived experience so we can better understand the challenges Rhode Islanders are facing and talk about real actions we can take together. If you had to define healthy neighborhood, what are the ingredients you would include? Do you think about places that are safe to move, have easy access to the basics, or spaces that support daily life? In a recent Rhode Island Voices survey, only 34% of Rhode Islanders rated their neighborhood as the best possible place to live, and there were significantly lower ratings among those living in core cities compared to those living in non-core areas, a difference of 21% versus 39%. Safety and places to walk were rated positively overall. Yet protected bike lanes and road conditions emerged as major concerns. Grocery stores and parks or fitness spaces were the most important amenities people wanted within walking distance. To help us make sense of what these data mean and what smart growth can look like in Rhode Island, I'm excited to welcome our guest, Scott Wolf. Scott leads Grow Smart Rhode Island, an organization leading and engaging Rhode Islanders in advancing neighborhood revitalization, environmental stewardship, and economic opportunity for all. Scott, welcome and thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

It's a pleasure. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

So we shared the findings with you from the Rhode Island voices about neighborhood life. What stands out to you about how Rhode Islanders experience their neighborhoods today? And how does that align with what Grossmart Rhode Island sees in the work you're doing?

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Well, I think Rhode Islanders from your survey results are it's a mixed bag, I would say. It seems as though they're pretty pleased overall with basic municipal services. But when it comes to mobility issues, transportation, the findings here suggest that there is a constituency for improvements in neighborhood life when it comes to transportation, when it comes to access to certain services such as grocery stores. I'm kind of heartened by the results in some ways because there's been this notion that Rhode Islanders are just totally embedded in an autocentric lifestyle. And I think these findings largely undermine that conventional wisdom, which I'm pleased to see.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Well, that exactly brings up the next question I wanted to ask you, which is that in the summer of 2025, uh nearly half of the respondents in the Rhode Island Voices Survey reported walking or biking instead of driving at least one day per week. And this was even- these rates were even higher amongst those living in the core cities. So as we think about what we can do as individuals to support more of what you're talking about in terms of our neighborhoods, what are practical things that we as residents in Rhode Island could do ourselves to advocate for that?

SPEAKER_02 4:23

Average, non-powerful, so to speak, Rhode Islanders can make a positive difference in the healthiness and the user-friendliness and the walkability and bikeability of their neighborhoods. There are local ordinances that can be adopted. They're usually called complete streets ordinances that require municipalities when they pave or repave a road to design the road, sometimes redesign the road in a way that makes it safe and navigable for all kinds of users, not just people driving cars. I think another thing is for people to go out to their planning board hearings and zoning board hearings and town or city council meetings, and support projects that are going to increase connectivity. So those are some of the things I think that people can do.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

We heard a lot in the survey about the importance of this having a grocery store. And if a town can't add a grocery store immediately tomorrow, um what are some immediate steps that could still be done to improve this problem of food access in Rhode Island?

SPEAKER_02 5:37

One way to do this is to have so-called farmers markets where vendors set out their wares and a lot of it is fresh. It's kind of farm to table. I think also there needs to be some examination of zoning rules. And is it are are is it land use regulations that in some cases are preventing grocery stores from being situated in convenient neighborhood kinds of locations?

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Yeah. I've heard you speak quite a bit about this notion of built environment. Can you describe what that means and how that fits into this notion of neighborhood life?

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Sure. Well when we talk about built environment, we are really talking about the the buildings, the homes, the uh the uh businesses, the physical structures that uh exist in in a particular location. And over the last 70 or 80 years in Rhode Island, and largely this is a national phenomenon, we have required that different aspects of the built environment be separated from one another, sometimes sometimes by a lot of distance. So we've had zones for residential living, we've had separate zones for office buildings, we've had uh separate zones for even light, clean manufacturing. And this has created a a way of life that discourages walking and biking and that requires in many cases people to use a car for virtually every aspect of daily life. So we're trying to promote some redesign, rethinking, reimagining of the built environment to make it a healthier ecosystem for people. And also to make it a more affordable ecosystem. If you are a two-car family and you can live in a neighborhood where you don't need to drive a lot, and you can actually justify downsizing to a one-car family, you're saving twelve thousand dollars a year. And so, yes, we want to increase Rhode Islanders' incomes, but it also would be good from an economic opportunity standpoint to reduce their daily cost of living. And a great way to do that is to make them less dependent on cars.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

So I think some of us probably think that changes to the built environment would cost a lot of money. Are there examples of small changes that can be made to the built environment that would help us in in impacting people's ability to move around their neighborhoods and to connect with each other that wouldn't break the bank?

SPEAKER_02 8:46

Oh, I think there's there's a lot of ways to do it without breaking the bank. Some you you may need to go to the bank a little bit for some prudent investments, but I think there are a lot of ways to uh to ha to find low-cost, effective uh solutions. There's the whole notion of tactical urbanism that uh enables communities to experiment with more walkability, to like temporarily close off a street for a period of time and allow people to congregate, to sit in chairs, to have lunch outside or something like that, and to decide if maybe that should be a permanent uh land use change, for example. There are other kinds of land use reforms that don't necessarily cost money, like allowing a developer to have fewer parking spaces than are currently required, which frees up more land for green space or for housing. Yeah, so there's a lot of a lot of ways uh if if if there's the will, then there's the will but not the wallet, or the wallet but not the will, but you don't necessarily have to have both of them together.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

So I asked you how we as individuals and individual residents um can can advocate for change. How about what are the roles that municipalities, employers, and other you know, so-called anchor institutions in the state of Rhode Island, how can they help in shaping neighborhood design and transportation access?

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Yeah, in many, in many ways. And a lot of uh land use uh regulations, regulations about how we can use our land, our buildings, are dictated by local government. So municipalities play a big role in this, in the way they uh zone zone their different neighborhoods, whether they allow so-called mixed use or or not allow a mix of different kinds of uses in one compact location. And so Grow Smart Rhode Island is a big proponent for promoting more mixed use zoning, promoting more conversion of uh facilitating, allowing uh more conversion of excess old historic space for maybe it was once for manufacturing, mill space, and also office space, which is now becoming surplus, into residential uses. And those kinds of facilities are often in central locations. So if we can get more people living in these central locations with a certain amount of amenities and services nearby, then we're gonna create a healthier environment for people, a more user-friendly environment, a less stressful environment. So that's that's a role for municipalities. Municipalities also are required by the State to develop periodically a long-range plan for how they want to develop and evolve physically, how they want their built environment to evolve. And so how they the kind of visions they adopt, the kind of plans they adopt can can be another way to influence these kinds of development patterns. Employers can provide bus passes, for example, to people uh to again reduce people's need to rely on cars. That's a very practical thing, and a number of employers do that. I believe Blue Cross & Blue Shield does that.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

And Brown. I I use my bus pass every day.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

So that's a very practical, concrete way uh for employers to do that. Anchor institutions, there's this whole issue about student housing. We have major college populations and and and also the parking. How do they handle their parking? Can they reduce the amount of space they're devoting to parking? These are things for anchor institutions, I think, to to confront and wrestle with, and they are to some extent. So yeah, it does take a village, so to speak, to address some of these public health built environment issues.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

So can you give us an example of where in Rhode Island there was a zoning reform or a mixed-use development or transit-oriented planning that we could use as an example to show what the possibility is?

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Sure. There's there's several. One that one that's one that we off often emphasize, highlight is in Woonsocket. Downtown Woonsocket has struggled for many years. It's starting to come back, and one of the reasons it's coming back is the city, the municipal government of Woonsocket about a decade ago changed some of their land use regulations to allow more density, to allow more units of housing to be built in areas in and near downtown. And that has created hundreds of units of new housing in and near downtown, which has created more of a market for the local businesses in downtown and has enabled more people to have a healthier lifestyle. And one of the ways Grow Smart is involved in that, one of several ways, is we recently launched a program to help groups that are trying to revitalize their main streets and downtowns to do it as effectively and with best practices in mind as possible. So we have a state Main Street Rhode Island coordinating program that works with groups in many different Main Street districts. And I think that's going to contribute to a lot of good grassroots change.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

And is that information on your website also? All right. So we'll make sure that's available.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

About what we call Main Street Rhode Island on our website. Great.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

All right. So the another I want to ask you about is this issues around safety when walking. So in the Rhode Island Voices survey, residents living in our core cities were far more likely to worry about safety when they were walking outside compared to the noncore residents. This was a big difference. Almost 50 percent in the core cities were worried about walking outside compared to only 17 percent in the noncore areas. So from a policy perspective, I wanted to go up one now one more step, up to the policy perspectives. What changes would most improve safety and mobility, um, folks being able to walk more around their neighbor their neighborhoods? 

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Well I think at the state level from a standpoint of what state government can do on this, one of the things they can do is increase the amount of money that the state spends on upgrading bike and pedestrian infrastructure. We in Rhode Island spend less on that, we believe, per capita than many other Northeastern States. And uh we are trying, through the long-range transportation planning system of the State, to increase the number of projects that are put on the long-range construction plan for the State, projects that are focused on what we call active transportation, uh. safely use bikes and their own legs more frequently and easily. So we need to improve the infrastructure for biking and walking in there. And that is that does require both some will and some wallet. Um we're working on that, on trying to change the way the state approaches its transportation project planning and incorporate into that planning an actual metric of what kind of greenhouse gas emissions are each of these projects likely to produce, and to favor those that are low greenhouse gas emission producing projects over those that are high greenhouse gas emission projects, which would mean we'd move away from automatically supporting high- uh widening highways and move towards supporting extension of protected bike lanes and uh complete streets approaches for walking and biking.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

As we come up to another legislative session season, what are some of the state or local conversations uh that we as Rhode Islanders should be paying attention to this season with regard to land use bills or transportation bills or anything that's happening with Smart Growth? What should we be focusing on?

SPEAKER_02 17:44

Well, and we think transportation, housing, and public health enhancing built environment reform are all key elements of smart growth. And so those are some of the things legislatively we're focusing on. To be more specific, there is a proposal in the legislature to have a$100 million bond on the November ballot to increase funds that are available to implement the state's long-range transit master plan, which is a plan to double the frequency of RIPTA to service over a 20-year or so period, and to have a major either commuter rail line or or dedicated bus line between Central Falls and Warwick, about a 20-mile stretch, which contains about half of the state's population. So advocating for that is something we're focused on. Advocating for a$25 million bond to help implement the state's bike mobility plan is something else we're focusing on. And then there's a number of measures we're supporting to provide new funding sources for RIPTA. RIPTA is severely underfunded. It's, I think, an excellent agency, but it it it's sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of the transportation sector in Rhode Island. It doesn't get much respect. It gets, I think, a lot of undue criticism, and they need more money. They need more money to have more frequency, and otherwise they're going to be in a death spiral. They had to cut routes within the last year, and we certainly are strongly supporting enough funding for them to restore those routes, but to go beyond that and increase frequency, not just not just correct for decreases in frequency, but actually increase frequency. Because if you don't have a transit system that can get people where they want to go in a convenient, predictable, and relatively fast way, we're going to continue to have an auto-centric pattern of use and of development. And that's not healthy, and that's not really sustainable. So those are some. The State Historic Tax Credit, which is something we've championed for a long time, is right now operating on financial fumes, and we're advocating for more uh for a new round of funding for that. We're also advocating for some reforms in that program. That's a major vehicle, pardon the expression, for for getting a lot of our underutilized and abandoned historic buildings repurposed, reused, and in doing that there are multiple benefits. It means reducing thel ikelihood of arson, which is often what happens when you have derelict abandoned buildings.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Well, Scott, thank you for sharing your insights with us on ways that we as Rhode Islanders can impact our neighborhoods. I always like to end on something positive. So when you think about the future of Rhode Island's neighborhoods, what gives you hope?

SPEAKER_02 21:09

Oh, there's a lot of things that give give give me hope. We are seeing a lot of revitalization of our of our neighborhoods. We're seeing population increases in our core cities, several of them at least, after decades of decline in population. So that's that's hopeful. We're seeing uh more arts activity, more cultural activity in a lot of our neighborhoods that creates a better quality of life for both our residents and also a better ability for us to market these neighborhoods to tourists. We’re seeing some changes in zoning to permit more multifamily housing development in more location efficient places than used to be. the case. And I give Speaker Shikarchi and others in the Legislature, Representative Speakman, a lot of credit for those things happening. We're seeing, I think, a lot of enlightened municipal leadership that understands that growth is not bad, especially in places that are location efficient, and I think that's critical. So yeah, I I think there's a lot of green shoots that are that are popping up in our neighborhoods. But there's a lot of work to be done.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Well thank you again, and I want to make sure that you have the last word. Is there anything else about Smar Growth in Rhode Island or neighborhood life that I didn't ask you about that you want us to end with?

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Well I think I may have touched just real briefly on the issue of parking reform, but I think that is an important issue that's emerging that will- and parking reform as we define it is basically allowing projects to have fewer parking spaces than are currently required, which frees up more land for housing and or for green space and uh and encourages more utilization of public transportation. So I think that's that's an important issue to keep an eye on and that we're going to try to keep moving forward. And we've been working with AARP and and some other groups on on that neighbors welcome on on that. We're concerned about the whole issue of stagnant population and the State Planning Office has a 20 or so year projection that Rhode Island isn't going to grow at all in terms of population. I don't think we're not advocating huge growth but we think in in particular in our urban areas, in our location efficient places that growth would be good from a health standpoint, it would be good from an economic opportunity standpoint. And so and in order to really address that effectively there's going to need to be some sophisticated review of of our whole taxation system which is too complicated to go into in detail now. But right now a lot of municipalities fear growth because they feel it it creates more financial burdens than gains for them. Whereas the state government benefits more obviously and directly from growth because their main taxing sources are are sources that generally benefit from growth, sales and income tax. Whereas the property tax is the basis for funding at the municipal level is at least perceived sometimes to be hindered as a revenue source when there's more kids in the schools, for example. Although we got a long way to go to get more kids in the schools, the pattern is for for school enrollment to be dropping. But that's another myth to be busted is that having more housing in communities means you're automatically going to have more kids in the schools and more costs. So a lot to tackle I won't I won't filibuster here thank you.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Well thank you for helping us to bust some of those myths. And thank you again Scott for joining us today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

That's it for this episode of Rhode Island Voices. Thank you to Dr. Melissa Clark and our guest Scott Wolf of Grow Smart Rhode Island for helping us explore how neighborhood design and planning shape our daily lives. To learn more please visit Rhode Island Life Index at rilifeindex.org and Grow Smart Rhode Island at growsmartri.org. If you have ideas for future podcast topics, we'd love to hear from you. Visit rilifeindex.org/voicespodcast to share your thoughts. Thank you for listening to Rhode Island Voices where Rhode Islanders' voices guide the path to healthier communities.