Business View Civil and Municipal | May/June 2022

21 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 5 Michigan Munici COMMUNITIES HELP OTHERS SURVIVE CO our cities and villages happened as the Michigan Municipal League evolved its long- time placemaking work into the concept of community wealth building. The League is a non-profit organization representing Michigan’s cities, villages, and urban townships. In short, building community wealth is about enhancing the human experience in a community. It’s basically placemaking with an equity lens. And we found in rolling out this work to our members, that most communities are already doing community wealth building and they don’t W hen COVID-19 hit more than a year and a half ago, Michigan communities stepped up to help. Sometimes it was subtle such as waiving the cost to park in the downtown and setting up drive-through COVID-testing sites, and later public vaccination locations. Other times it was extremely creative efforts like the “Downtown Dollars” program in Alpena and the “Match on Main” program in Adrian. This amazing and inspirational work by