.The City established the Neighborhood Action Strategy (NAS) process in 1999 as a programmatic approach to revitalizing and investing in neighborhoods affected by blight or potential blight. Those investments range from capital improvement projects to focusing City staff resources on a specific neighborhood issue or concern. NAS plans have been adopted for eight City neighborhoods: Park East, Gillespie Park, Rosemary District, Bayou Oaks, Central Cocoanut, Arlington Park, Alta Vista and Poinsettia Park. Staff actively manages the implementation of action items from these NAS's and tracks their progress while providing results to service users and providers. There are a total of 646 individual action items for the eight NAS neighborhoods.

In FY 07-08, the City Commission approved the transformation of the Neighborhood Action Strategy program to the Neighborhood Asset Strategy program. A planning program open to all neighborhoods within the City, the revised NAS process centers around an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) philosophy focusing on strengths of a neighborhood, rather than deficiencies. The objective is to work with residents to identify and evaluate strengths and capacities within a neighborhood area and match the resident-identified assets to a community need. The “inside-out” approach ABCD employs invites residents to become increasingly engaged and mobilizes them to take ownership of their neighborhood and its future—Citizens become the producers of neighborhood well being. A planning process similar to the former neighborhood action strategy process may be completed for each participating neighborhood.