COLUMBUS – Indiana Governor Mike Braun today announced a new initiative, the Indiana Quality of Place Learning Partnership, to advance and shape the future of quality of place strategies statewide. The program, led by the Landmark Columbus Foundation in partnership with the state, is a two-year effort designed to understand and measure what makes public investment in quality of place endure.
“Indiana is making historic investments in regional strategies, community development and quality of place,” said Governor Mike Braun. “These developments are already taking shape across the state as we celebrate groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings that are bringing to life new affordable housing, parks and trails, community programs and more. As we look toward the future, we’re focused on leveraging data to measure the economic impact of these investments and create a framework for what comes next.”
The Indiana Quality of Place Learning Partnership will kick off next month at “Prove It: A National Summit on Design Excellence as Civic Practice,” Oct. 8-10, 2026, in Columbus. The event will convene civic leaders, designers, researchers, funders and policymakers as well as representatives of all 15 Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI) regions, to work on shared questions: what quality of place investments have worked and what’s next? The summit, as well as the broader partnership, is focused on defining, measuring, and implementing design excellence as a civic discipline.
“Under the Governor’s leadership, Indiana is building the culture and vibrancy of its communities like never before,” said Indiana Secretary of Commerce Chuck Goodrich. “The next step is understanding what’s working well and how those lessons carry into the next investments. This partnership connects strategy and investment with learning and gives communities a way to build on one another’s experience.”
Four Indiana communities will join Columbus as the Partnership’s founding cohort. Each will send a five-person, cross-sector delegation to Columbus with a live design challenge from its own downtown, neighborhoods, or public spaces. On Oct. 9, the delegations will work on those challenges with one another, with Columbus, and with national faculty in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and economic development. Representatives from Indiana’s READI regions will also join so that what the cohort learns reaches every part of the state and every region can help shape what comes next.
The other four partner communities will be announced soon. Findings from the Summit will be published and shared with Indiana communities, including a summary memo shortly after the event, followed by a draft framework and starter set of indicators for measuring quality of place later this fall. From there, the Indiana Quality of Place Learning Partnership work will continue, with each of the four partner communities hosting the cohort through 2028, allowing the group to advance its projects with peers and technical experts while documenting evidence and lessons that other Indiana communities can use.
“Indiana has done the hard part, which is deciding to invest in place. The harder part is knowing, a decade from now, which of those investments created lasting cultural and economic value and why. None of us has that answer yet,” said Richard McCoy, Executive Director of Landmark Columbus Foundation. “Columbus has been asking the question of itself for more than eighty years and is still learning. Prove It brings four communities, every READI region, and national design leaders here to work on it together.”
Indiana’s READI program is a $1.25 billion investment in regional-led strategies designed to strengthen communities, retain and attract top talent, and increase opportunities for Hoosiers for years to come.
The Indiana Quality of Place Learning Partnership is led by Landmark Columbus Foundation’s Civic Design Institute, in partnership with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and the Indiana Arts Commission. The Civic Design Institute is Landmark Columbus Foundation’s platform for advancing design excellence as civic practice, developing shared knowledge about how communities make and sustain better decisions about the built environment through research, convenings, partnerships and publications.
Learn more at IndianaREADI.com.
