Leader Profile: Terry Schwarz

A Conversation with Terry Schwarz VPRN recently spoke with advisory board member Terry Schwarz about her work with Cleveland’s Urban Design Collaborative, passion for vacant properties, and plans to explore the space next to Ohio’s largest men’s emergency shelter. Below is an excerpt. For Terry’s thoughts about Cleveland’s “gray” sewer infrastructure and how vacant property
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Mounting Costs of Demolition

Demolition of vacant and abandoned housing is a topic of growing importance, especially for legacy cities in the industrial heartland.  In some cities the controversy is over whether to mount a major demolition program, while in others the question is how to get more resources to accelerate demolition efforts. In Alan Mallach’s new report published
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Distressed Cities Practitioners Guide

Recently, Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Institute sported a blog post about it’s Associate Director, Joseph Schilling and Alan Mallach of the Brookings Institution attendance at APA’s annual conference promoting their Cities in Transition Guide. You can read all about it on the MI’s blog here: “Cities in Transition: A Guide for Practicing Planners“

From Rusting to Bustling – Cleveland, OH

Yesterday NPR reported something that most people just a few years ago would scoff at, Cleveland is cool.  It seems that Cleveland’s economic development strategy of “targeting stronger market neighborhoods” and around “areas with major assets” during the down years of population and economic declince  it experienced, are paying off. Incremental in their approach, Cleveland seems to have wisely used it’s limited resources to leveage people, dollars and
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Breaking free of the Growth Planning Paradigm

APA’s PAS Reports (Cities in Transition, PAS 568) (Sustaining Places, PAS 567) In a recent APA Sustaining Places blog by David Morely (“Is Growth a Prerequisite for Long-Term Community Health and Prosperity?”), the old assumptions of growth and decline of cities and communities in relationship to their health and prosperity are revisited.  David discusses how the growth oriented planning
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