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
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
Growth and development in Chicago’s suburbs and exurbs has stalled since the housing downturn. According to Census Bureau, Chicago’s surrounding areas were some of the fastest growing in the country until 2009/2010, and after which they’ve claimed the title of holding Illinois’ top foreclosure rates. Many of Chicago’s far-flung housing developments were the hardest hit by the
-> Continue reading Chicago Exurbs See a Bust After a Long Boom
Community residents throughout the country have seen properties abandoned and subjected to negligence. Hundreds of these deteriorated properties are owned by banks – Bank of America and Wells Fargo, among others. And although, these banks claim they strive to comply with property codes and act upon foreclosure policies “that aim to protect properties and communities,”
-> Continue reading The Public Protests Deterioration of Bank-Owned Vacant Property