shrinking cities

Networking Lunch: American Society of Landscape Architects

Posted on by

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
-> Continue reading Networking Lunch: American Society of Landscape Architects

Zombie Neigborhoods: Searching for a Cure

Posted on by

Many of America’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt communities have experienced rising vacancy and abandoned homes or properties beyond just one or two, sprinkled throughout the urban landscape, but recently in terms of entire neighborhoods. The effects of urban decline on these cities has brought new urgency to practitioners and researchers alike. Although anthropomorphism and dramatic terminology has the
-> Continue reading Zombie Neigborhoods: Searching for a Cure

Distressed Cities Practitioners Guide

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Breaking free of the Growth Planning Paradigm

Posted on by

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
-> Continue reading Breaking free of the Growth Planning Paradigm