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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Breaking free of the Growth Planning Paradigm

APA’s PAS Reports (Cities in Transition, PAS 568) (Sustaining Places, PAS 567) In a recent APA Sustaining Places blog by David Morely (“Is Growth a Prerequisite for Long-Term Community Health and Prosperity?”), the old assumptions of growth and decline of cities and communities in relationship to their health and prosperity are revisited.  David discusses how the growth oriented planning
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Winnipeg Model to the Rescue?

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
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Detroit Light-Rail Project Progresses

Convenient, sustainable transportation is vital for city revitalization and regeneration.  When residents have better transportation, they can more easily access employment opportunities and support local businesses and local economies.  Transportation not only reinvigorates local economies, but also strengthens community and social connections.  One option for sustainable and convenient transportation is a light-rail system. Detroit has
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