It should come to no surprise that Richard Florida’s “creative class” is found associated with the idea of tranforming and re-branding Rust Belt Cities into vibrant places to work. live and visit. Karl’s reflection article, The ‘Creative Class’ and Comeback Cities: Beyond the Hype was written after attending the a cities in transition (CiT) panel at University of Colorado
-> Continue reading Comeback Cities: Gimmick or No?
In the past decade, the fields of Urban Planning and Epidemiology have gloriously been crossing paths both in academia and amongst practitioners. Innovations such as health impact statements (HIS) in land use and rezoning requests is one benefit of this cross-discipline pollination. After a decade-long comparison of vacant lots and improved lots, a University of Pennsylvania study
-> Continue reading Science meet Vacant Lots – Urban Health Watch
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“
Detroit seems to be a place where sunflowers sprout through cracked pavement and forests reclaim long deserted city blocks, or at least that’s what Mayor Bing’s Detroit Works has planned for its neighborhoods. Vocabulary like “green residential” and strategies of using reforestation and experimental green fields to detoxify contaminated industrial land are being tossed around
-> Continue reading Sunflowers and Reforestation with Detroit Works
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
-> Continue reading From Rusting to Bustling – Cleveland, OH