Join CDFW and AIA for another Design Talk, featuring Braver Together!

Braver Together: Designing Health Equity Across 76104 Neighborhoods

This panel discussion explores how community leadership, urban design, and public partnership are coming together to address long-standing health inequities in Fort Worth’s Historic Southside, Hillside, and Morningside neighborhoods.

BRAVER Together is leading a multi-year, community-driven effort to improve health outcomes across these three neighborhoods, where residents experience some of the most significant health disparities in the city—and where the 76104 ZIP code has the lowest life expectancy in Texas. Working alongside residents, planners and designers, healthcare providers, and public partners, including the City of Fort Worth and Near Southside Inc., BRAVER Together is advancing a coordinated approach to health equity that spans planning, infrastructure, and care delivery.

The conversation will highlight how this work unfolds across multiple scales. A district-level, aspirational framework explores how housing, business infrastructure, mobility, food access, public space, and environmental conditions shape long-term health outcomes across the three neighborhoods. This vision helps align near-term projects around shared goals for a healthier district. At the corridor scale, the Evans Avenue Urban Design and Streetscape Plan demonstrates how community priorities can be translated into immediate, implementable improvements—using streets, sidewalks, shade, transit access, and public space to support safety, accessibility, quality of life, and everyday well-being. At the neighborhood scale, the proposed restoration of the historic Brooks Clinic illustrates how place-based healthcare can serve as a trusted anchor, directly addressing health equity through a wellness-centered model of care.

Together, these efforts show how health equity emerges through sustained collaboration—linking community leadership, public investment, and design across scales. This panel is intended for residents, civic leaders, and design and planning professionals interested in how cities can work collectively to create healthier, more equitable neighborhoods.

Panelists:

Dr. Shawn Lassiter, Founder and Executive Director, BRAVER TOGETHER

Michael Brennan, AICP, President, Near Southside Inc.

Julia Lindgren, Undergraduate Architecture Director, UTA

Dennis Chiessa, AIA, Graduate Architecture Director, UTA