2012 Virginia APA Conference

Looking to catch a few AICP credits, escape the heat, take in the beautiful Virginia countryside, and most importantly, learn how the Cities in Transition typology and strategies apply right here to Virginia cities? The afternoon economic development session will cover manyresearch insights from the Cities in Transition: A guide for practicing planners PAS report. Well it’s not to late
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2012 Reclaiming Vacant Properities Conference

This past June (2012), the Center for Community Progress held the Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference in New Orleans. Along with 600 practitioners, stakeholders and academics the conference shared experiences and struggles in communities across the U.S. and beyond, working to transform vacant and abandoned property into reclaimed and productive uses. Think you missed out on
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Science meet Vacant Lots – Urban Health Watch

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
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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“

Sunflowers and Reforestation with Detroit Works

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
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