Last month (Jan 2012) the Brookings Institution, together with its partners, the Center for Community Progress and Columbia Universities’ American Assembly, unveiled a new book of policy and strategy essays on the plight of older industrial cities that have suffered decades of population loss and decline—what some scholars call shrinking cities. Edited by a friend
-> Continue reading Legacy Cities—the launch of a new school of planning?
Gang and Lindsay’s recent opinion piece in the New York Times, offers a glimpse into what might become more common place in suburbia’s ever growing more diverse and immigrant filled communities. Often single family houses present a mismatch between cost and needed size over lifetime of family as it changes. They suggest instead of insisting this mismatch a
-> Continue reading Vacant Properties: Design solutions & the housing crisis
Could using an immigration policy to attract potential urban residents help reverse population decline in the city of Detroit? Possibly. The following article looks at the steps Winnipeg took torevise its declining population and tax base by enticing new immigrants to settle there. As a potential urban revitalization strategy, the article lays out several policy
-> Continue reading Winnipeg Model to the Rescue?
A slow process of out-migration, loss of jobs, loss of population and the recent housing crisis has left cleveland with a host vacant homes, approximately 13,000. Due to rehabilation costs exceeding potential sales prices and a mis-match in productive (land/economic) uses, nearly 80% of these vacant homes make fiscal sense to demolitish. This has left the city and remaining neighborhoods
-> Continue reading Raze the roof – Cleveland’s tear-it-down approach
From 1801 to 1970, the Philadelphia Navy Yard served as a landfill and incinerator, contaminated by shipbuilding and other industrial activities. Since 1970, the area has been largely abandoned, until recently, when the city decided to redevelop the area with a commitment to sustainability, reflecting Mayor Nutter’s goal of establishing the city as the greenest
-> Continue reading Converting Brownfields into Green Energy Generation Sites