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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Networking Lunch: American Society of Landscape Architects

VPRN advisory board member Justin Hollander, who is an  Associate Professor at Tufts University, will host a networking lunch on Friday, November 15th for attendees of the American Society of Landscape Architect‘s annual meeting. If you are working with vacant properties or shrinking cities, please join Hollander to share ideas, find collaborators, and devise funding strategies: Flour
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Schilling and Tackling the Challenges of Vacant Properties

Joseph Schilling, Terry Schwarz, along with Alan Mallach, FAICP, will be leading a workshop entitled “Tackling the Challenges of Vacant Properties” as part of the APA’s Planners Training Service Workshop Series,  November 8-9 in Chicago. Description of the training: Vacant properties are everybody’s problem. They blight neighborhoods, reduce property values, foster crime and disease, and
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Turning Blight into Beauty?

According to the Salon.com article, “Abandoned homes are the future: Imaginative ideas turn blight into beauty,” vacant property renaissance is a technique that cities are using to fight back to establish a revitalized urban landscape. Land banks, at the center of this renaissance, are a “city authority that can take control over thousands of abandoned
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Philadelphia Case Study, “Philadelphia’s Vacant Property Journey,” Released

The just-released case study, “Philadelphia’s Vacant Property Journey“,  is one of three conducted by Virginia Tech’s Vacant Property Research Network (VPRN), with support from the Ford Foundation, to document resilient approaches to reclaim vacant properties in three cities: Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Baltimore. These studies identify policy reforms and program innovations to reclaim vacant properties, discuss each
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