Metropolitan Institute's List: Neighborhood Change, Housing, + Community Development

Goetze, Rolf. Understanding Neighborhood Change: The Role of Expectations in Urban Revitalization. Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1979.

The author describes the dynamics of neighborhood change in the United States, including its determinants and the consequences of outside, particularly federal, intervention.

Hoffman, Alexander von. House by House, Block by Block: The Rebirth of America's Urban Neighborhoods. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

The book describes the history and role of local community organizations in revitalizing distressed neighborhoods in major cities around the United States.

Gale, Dennis E. Neighborhood Revitalization and the Postindustrial City: A Multinational Perspective. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1984.

Kromer, John. Neighborhood Recovery: Investment Policy for the New Hometown. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

"Neighborhood Recovery presents a policy approach that cities can use to improve the physical condition of their neighborhoods and help urban residents compete for good jobs in the metropolitan economy.  Kromer's experience in Philadelphia reveals challenges and opportunities that can decisively influence the future of neighborhoods in many other American cities."

Yin, Li and Robert Silverman. “Do Vacant Properties Kill Neighborhoods? An Agent-Based Simulation of Property Abandonment.” Paper to be presented at the annual conference for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 13-16, 2011.

YIN, li [State University of New York at Buffalo] liyin@buffalo.edu, presenting author, primary author

SILVERMAN, Robert [State University of New York at Buffalo] rms35@buffalo.edu

Paper Abstract: “Buffalo is among the cities with the highest vacancy rates in the US. Between 2000 and 2009, the number of tax foreclosure properties at the City’s tax auction (in rem) increased. By 2009, the City owned more than 7000 vacant properties. In response to its vacancy epidemic, the City of Buffalo adopted an aggressive demolition plan with the goal of removing 5000 structures in five years. This effort, however, seemed futile since increased demolition efforts during the past few years have not resulted in a reduction in the total number of vacancies. High vacancy poses difficulties for neighborhood revitalization, management, public safety, and the delivery of vital services. The vacancy crisis is aggravated by continued job and population loses brought on by deindustrialization.

Vacant houses, buildings and land influence neighborhoods dynamically. For example, Yin (2009) concluded that homeowners decide whether to invest in or abandon their properties based on neighborhood conditions and other considerations (Yin, 2009). Silverman, Yin, and Patterson (under review) argued that the vacant properties in cities like Buffalo represent a permanent fixture of the urban mileu. Once established, they quickly spread in distressed neighborhoods impacted by job and population loss. The presence of these properties, which the authors label zombie properties, accelerates the downward trajectory of neighborhoods. In response to the growing problem of vacancy properties in declining cities scholars have forwarded a variety of policy recommendations. Bernt (2009) emphasizes the importance of new governance structures and public-private partnerships. Reese (2006) adds that substantial investment from state and federal government is necessary to mediate the impacts of property abandonment in cities. Shilling and Logan (2008) recommend that declining cities adopt green infrastructure in order to right size.

This study uses the agent-based approach to simulate how different types of owners (homeowners, speculative investors, and the city) decide on to the disposition of their property in response to neighborhood conditions and other property owners’ decisions. After the model is validated, scenarios will be developed and simulated to demonstrate different policy effects (e.g. stepped up demolish, land banking, green infrastructure, rehabilitation, etc…).

The analysis will focus on a subset of neighborhoods in Buffalo. About two-third of the in rem properties are located on the city’s East Side. This study will focus on the Fillmore District, which is located in this part of the city. This area has the largest concentration of in rem properties in Buffalo. Data used in the analysis include: parcel data and sales data from 2000 to 2009; in rem data for 2006 and 2010; crime data for 1996, 2006, and 2009 ; and HUD aggregate USPS address vacancy data. The model will reveal the dynamics of neighborhood decline and assists cities and policymakers in designing planning tools to address property vacancies. “

References

Bernt, M (2009) Partnerships for Demolition: The Governance of Urban Renewal in East

Germany’s Shrinking Cities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33(3): 754-769.

Reese, LA (2006) Economic Versus Natural Disasters: If Detroit had a Hurricane. Economic

Development Quarterly 20(3): 219-231.

Shilling, J and Logan, J (2008) Greening the Rustbelt: A Green Infrastructure Model for Rightsizing America’s Shrinking Cities. Journal of the American Planning Association 74(4): 451-466.

Silverman, R.M., Yin, L., and Patterson, K. (under review) Dawn of the Dead City: An Exploratory Analysis of Vacant Addresses in Buffalo, NY 2008-2010.

Yin, L. 2009. “The Dynamics of Residential Segregation in Buffalo: An Agent-Based Simulation” Urban Studies 46(13), pp2749-2770.

Mitchell Brown, Joanna.  “Combating Suburban Decline: The Role of Social Capital and CDCs.”  Paper to be presented at the annual conference for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 13-16, 2011.

MITCHELL BROWN, Joanna [University of Cincinnati] mitchjh@mail.uc.edu

Paper Abstract: This paper analyzes the role of social capital and Community Development Corporations (CDCs) in Cincinnati’s inner-suburbs as tools to combat suburban decline. Building off of previous research on social capital and community development, this research examines the social capital – community development link within three first-ring suburbs in Greater Cincinnati and presents the research methodology and preliminary findings. In doing so, it outlines the challenges of the first-suburbs, in light of suburban decline.

This analysis also addresses the role and function of social capital as a community development tool, including opportunities for urban non-profit housing CDCs in promoting neighborhood revitalization within the inner-ring suburbs. Over the last several decades’ first-suburbs have experienced characteristics of suburban decline (i.e., shrinking business districts, declining residential neighborhoods, population loss, and the emergence of crime and deterioration) (Lucy and Phillips, 2006). The problems facing first-suburbs have been exacerbated with the current foreclosure crisis and economic recession. With elected officials and administrators of first-suburban communities facing budget constraints and increased threats to neighborhood stability, it is important to revisit the concept of social capital as a tool for community development.

The use of social capital as a mechanism of community development has been explored for over the last two decades (Gittell and Vidal, 1998; Temkin and Rohe, 1998; Putnam, 2000; Woolcock, 2001). However, much of the research on this topic focused on its role and function in the revitalization of low-income inner-city communities across the United States; and to a lesser extent on low to middle-income first-suburban communities within the US.

Research evidence from the literature indicates that some form of social capital is necessary for neighborhood revitalization to occur within the inner-ring suburbs. Yet, the extent to which social capital is able to address all the challenges of first-ring suburbs depends on the specific context in which it first-suburban communities mobilize their social capital to implement community development initiatives.

This research employs a case study analysis approach using semi-structured interviews and social network analysis of community based social capital networks (e.g., bonding, bridging, and linking) as well as photo-documentation of neighborhood conditions within the first-suburbs.

References

Gittell, Ross and Avis, Vidal. 1998. Community Organizing: Building Social Capital as a Developmental Strategy. Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA.

Lucy, William H., and David L. Phillips. 2006. Tomorrow’s Cities, Tomorrow’s Suburbs. Washington, D.C.: American Planning Association.

Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon and Schuster: New York, NY.

Temkin, Kenneth, and William Rohe. 1998. “Social capital and neighborhood stability: An empirical investigation.” Housing Policy Debate. 9, no. 1: 61–88.

Woolcock, Michael. 2001. “The place of social capital in Understanding Social and Economic Outcomes.” ISUMA Canadian Journal of Policy Research. 2, no. 1: 11-17.

Zhang, Yang.  “Will Natural Disasters Accelerate Neighborhood Decline?”  Paper to be presented at the annual conference for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 13-16, 2011.

ZHANG, Yang [Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University] yz@vt.edu

Paper Abstract: Vacant and abandoned properties are not only an urban ill troubling shrinking industrial cities in the United States, they are also a problem facing many growing urban areas as new development sprawls outward at the urban fringes and leaves central neighborhoods increasingly plagued with vacant or underused lots. The emergence of declining neighborhoods in urban areas has been credited to several distinct, but not mutually exclusive causes, including suburbanization, deindustrialization, housing market discrimination, and racial segregation.

These explanations all focus on social or economic factors that have gradually weakened central cities over a period of several decades. Much less attention has been given to the impact that an abrupt natural disaster may have on land vacancy and abandonment. Nevertheless, understanding this relationship holds important relevance to the neighborhood transition theory. It also bears timely policy significance as natural disasters have become an increasing threat facing American metropolises.

This research aims to fill this gap in the literature. It examines the impact of an abrupt catastrophic natural disaster on residential property vacancy and abandonment. Using the discrete time hazard model with parcel level land use data in Miami-Dade county, Florida, from two years prior to and eight years after Hurricane Andrew (1991-2000), the analysis shows that Hurricane Andrew triggered wide spread property vacancy and abandonment in its impact area, especially in neighborhoods already in decline. Occurrence of vacancy and abandonment is determined by damage intensity, and the pre-event neighborhood socio-demographic characteristics. The analysis also shows that vacant and abandoned properties exert a negative spillover effect that can induce a succession of vacancy and abandonment over space and time. This research concludes with a discussion about its theoretical relevance and planning implications regarding neighborhood transition and disaster recovery.

References

Accordino, J., & Johnson, G. T. (2000). Addressing the vacant and abandoned property problem. Journal of Urban Affairs, 22(3), 301-315.

Olshansky, R. B., Johnson, L. A., & Topping, K. C. (2006). Rebuilding communities following disaster: Lessons from Kobe and Los Angeles. Built Environment, 32(4), 354-374.

Schilling, J., & Logan, J. (2008). Greening the rust belt: A green infrastructure model for right sizing America's shrinking cities. Journal of American Planning Association, 74(4), 451-466.

Comerio, M. C. (1998). Disaster Hits Home: New Policy for Urban Housing Recovery. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Hollander, Justin. “Urban Shrinkage and City Responses: How New Bedford, Massachusetts Physically Changed From 1930- 2010.” Paper to be presented at the annual conference for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 13-16, 2011.

HOLLANDER, Justin [Tufts University] justin.hollander@tufts.edu

Paper Abstract: Economic decline associated with the current economic recession has hit many places hard, but few have seen a whole shift in its physical form as New Bedford. Once the whaling capital of the world, New Bedford today is but a shell of its former self. Neighborhoods littered with foreclosed and abandoned homes, empty factories, and little hope for the future, New Bedford would seem an unlikely place for the application of one of the most innovative and creative strategies around. Albeit informal, New Bedford’s local government has adopted a strategy to shrink the physical plant of the city to better match its declining population. New Bedfordians are embracing the language and policies of an emerging group of practitioners and scholars working under the umbrella of “shrinking cities.” They reject the growth-based paradigm that feeds much of urban planning and local government intervention in North America (Oswalt 2006; Pallagst 2007; Hollander et al. 2009). Rather than trying to grow every declining city, the shrinking cities approach argues that not all cities must grow back to their former glory. Instead of chasing industry with hefty incentives and the other standard economic development tools, for some cities it might be prudent to just focus on improving the quality of life for those left behind. For New Bedford, like most American cities the idea would appear heretical, but its message today is salient and holds the potential to transform disaster into hope and promise.

Looking closely at New Bedford is important because this port city is not alone in facing depopulation. Over the last three years, growing public attention has centered on the fall-out from the sub-prime lending debacle that has resulted in massive foreclosures, widespread housing vacancy, and depopulation in the throughout the U.S. (Packer 2009; Florida 2009; Goodman 2007; Leland 2007). With economic conditions uncertain, employment levels unstable, and the high likelihood for greater population loss, what can local government do to help? This paper begins to offer an answer through a detailed analysis of the history, politics, environment, and planning strategies of one such shrinking city, New Bedford.

This paper is based on background and historical study of the city – charting its past population booms and busts, and describing current political and planning affairs. The empirical portion of this project has three components, the first is the basis of this paper. It involves a spatial analysis of the historical and present land use conditions in New Bedford, with particularly close attention paid to three case study neighborhoods. The research begins with a collection of historic Sanborn maps, Geographic Information System (GIS) data, and photographic evidence to examine how building location, density, and form have changed over the last half-century. That data was then cross-validated against the results from an extensive historical analysis of local government policy and planning reports during the same period.

References

Beauregard, Robert A. 2003. Voices of decline: The Postwar fate of U.S. cities. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.

Hollander, Justin B., Karina Pallagst, Terry Schwarz, and Frank Popper. 2009 – in press. Planning shrinking cities. Progress in Planning 72, 1 (special issue: Emerging Research Areas).

Lucy, William H. and David L. Phillips. 2000. Confronting suburban decline: Strategic planning for metropolitan renewal. Washington, DC: Island Press

Pallagst, Karina. 2007. Patterns of shrinking cities in the USA. In The future of shrinking cities: Problems, patterns, & strategies of urban transformation in a global context. Berkeley, CA.

Ganning, Joanna and Sarah Coffin. “A Planner, A Biologist, and an Engineer Walk into a Bar…” Paper to be presented at the annual conference for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 13-16, 2011.

Sustainable development takes on many forms and definitions across the US and the world, the most recognized being the Brundtland Commission’s “…to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987). More specific definitions and indicators vary according to discipline and context. Thus this broad statement leads one to ask an important policy question; what does sustainability look like? The responses are equally diverse and far reaching, forcing an even more problematic response; if sustainability is everything, is it nothing? (Newton 2004) Our paper examines the academy’s role in an on-going sustainability project in St. Louis, Missouri, that is funded by HUD. Recently the Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded grants to 45 regions in 27 states to work toward plans for regional sustainable community development. This grant is intended to support collaborative planning efforts among regional agencies, universities, and partners within regions, focusing on economy, transportation, climate change, environmental planning, affordable housing and the interactions between those areas. In Saint Louis, we have started to establish goals and work plans with regional agencies and provide the scholarly support typical of universities. The unique aspect of our work centers on the scholarly debate and research framing exercises that have evolved out of our work. We have established an informal faculty working group representing Biology, Planning, Public Health, Economics, and Environmental Sciences. Enthusiastic and universally motivated by additional RFP mandates for interdisciplinary work, we grossly underestimated not only the extent to which our basic language and terminology varies between disciplines, but also the significant differences in what constitutes legitimate sustainability research. Vacant land provides one cogent example. The biologist proposed studying related changes in species diversity and open space within the city, where public policy might aggregate the vacant parcels. Planners were more interested in investigating potential market responses in a weak market economy that more fully responded to the crisis than the ill-conceived notion that community gardens solve all ills. Our engineer suggested looking at landscape modeling and demands for storm water runoff infrastructure. The biologist’s vague understanding of the role of planners felt alienating, while the planners and engineers wondered if “landscape modeling” meant the same thing on each side of the table. Approaching the concrete deadlines of forming work plans for the HUD Regional Plan for Sustainable Communities grant forced us think critically about how we might overcome our communication barriers and produce the synthesis we all suspected was missing from the majority of sustainability planning (Gunder 2006). Pragmatically, we have learned that setting benchmarks for planning policy has traditionally relied more on “socially acceptable” goals, or targets that are easily understood, rather than basing policies on scientific criteria. This scholarly dialogue pushes us to approach the HUD grant work with fresh eyes—to ask more critically how we should measure our success, how to frame our objectives, and who to ask for input, especially in this formative stage. Secondarily, what direction can planning scholarship take around these themes? If planning is truly the “big tent” the academy describes, if we are sincere in our effort to be interdisciplinary scholars, research around sustainable development will necessarily become uncomfortable as we learn to communicate with biologists, public health faculty, economists (which we do already to an extent) and engineers. We must be willing, not to compromise our ideals, but to accept that they have been made with incomplete information.

References

Gunder, Michael. 2006. Sustainability. Journal of Planning Education and Research 26(2): 208-221.

IEDC. 2009. Sustainability Roundtable Summary Paper. White paper published following 2009 annual conference.

Newton, Julianne L. and Eric T. Freyfogle. 2004. Sustainability: A Dissent. Conservation Biology (19)1: 23-32.

World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). 1987. Our Common Future Brundtland Commission on Sustainable Development http://www.un-documents.net/wced-ocf.htm