Greenstein, Rosalind, and Yesim Sungu-Eryilmaz, eds. Recycling the City: The Use and Reuse of Urban Land. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2004.
This book discusses the multitude of opportunities to reuse vacant land and the challenges of redevelopment from a local, state, and national perspective. Additionally the book presents the political, institutional, and policy perspectives on urban reuse.
Lynch, Amy. “A Green Infrastructure Approach to Stormwater Management: Lessons from Seattle, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia.” Paper to be presented at the annual conference for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 13-16, 2011.
LYNCH, Amy [The University of Pennsylvania] amyly@design.upenn.edu
Paper Abstract: Stormwater management is a significant and expensive problem for American cities. Over 750 municipalities have combined sewer systems that overflow during major storm events and funnel untreated sewage directly into waterways (US EPA 2008). While the US EPA regulates stormwater discharge under the Clean Water Act, nutrients and chemicals from surfaces such as lawns, driveways, and roads continue to degrade water quality, limiting the ability of waterways to support wildlife and meet designated uses (US EPA 2011).
Traditional stormwater solutions, such as redesigning and increasing the capacity of existing systems, are often cost prohibitive; the city of Philadelphia, for example, found that it would cost $10 billion to construct a sewage tunnel large enough to meet their EPA mandate. Faced with such costs, and threats to public and environmental health, a number of cities, including Philadelphia, Seattle, and Minneapolis, have turned to green infrastructure solutions.
A green infrastructure approach to stormwater management uses natural processes to slow, absorb, and filter runoff, reducing the volume sent to storm sewers or eliminating the need for them altogether. Also known as low-impact development (LID), the strategy uses rain gardens, green streets, and green roofs in a flexible, affordable, and sustainable alternative to traditional, structural, approaches (ibid). Unlike traditional approaches, green infrastructure provides a variety of positive externalities, and rather than degrading over time, can actually improve as vegetation matures.
Seattle began ‘natural drainage system’ pilot projects in 1998, and Minneapolis in 2005. Monitoring in both cities has shown reduction in the volume and contamination of stormwater runoff. More recently, in 2009, Philadelphia launched an ambitious new stormwater management plan and impervious surface fee that aim to reduce combined sewer overflow events by installing ‘green stormwater infrastructure’ throughout city. All three cities provide monetary incentives, based upon impervious surface or installation of LID elements, and employ a diverse array of strategies, from street trees to green roofs to constructed wetlands.
As the number of cities employing green infrastructure approaches to stormwater management grows, it is increasingly important to understand how such programs are structured and how effective they are in meeting stormwater management goals. This paper describes programs in Seattle, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia, outlines the incentives they provide, and compares and contrasts their structures, orientations, and secondary benefits. It also examines results and progress towards goals in Seattle and Minneapolis and looks toward the future for Philadelphia. The paper concludes with overall lessons from the three programs and recommendations for communities interested in leveraging natural processes for stormwater management.
References
City of Seattle (2004). Seattle’s Natural Drainage Systems: A low-impact development approach to stormwater management. Seattle Public Utilities.
Matteo, Michelle, Timothy Randhir, and David Bloniarz (2006). Watershed-Scale Impacts of Forest Buffers on Water Quality and Runoff in Urbanizing Environment. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management. May/June.
Oberndorfer, Erica, et al. (2007). Green Roofs as Urban Ecosystems: Ecological Structures, Functions, and Services. Bioscience. 57(10).
Philadelphia Water Department (2009). Green City, Clean Waters: The City of Philadelphia’s Program for Combined Sewer Overflow Control.
Schilling, Joseph and Jonathan Logan (2008). Greening the Rust Belt: A Green Infrastructure Model for Right Sizing America's Shrinking cities. Journal of the American Planning Association , 74 (4), 451-466.
Meyer, Peter. “Planning for Urban Regeneration and Energy Investments: Issues of Conflict and Compatibility.” Paper to be presented at the annual conference for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 13-16, 2011.
MEYER, Peter [University of Louisville] pbmeyer@louisville.edu
Paper Abstract: EPA’s RE-Powering America initiative, DOE’s Energy Efficiency/Renewable Energy programs and HUD’s Sustainable Communities efforts all are directed toward altering energy usage and/or generation at the local level. EPA’s shift toward more area-wide approaches towards brownfield regeneration would appear to have the potential to complement those programs. However, in the absence of systematic community-based local energy plans, conflicts can arise and optimal energy policies may be missed.
For example, vacant lands, whether or not contaminated, might be used for local renewable energy generation directly (solar installations or wind farms), might be “greened” by growing biomass feedstocks and providing green open spaces, might serve as sites for geothermal heating/cooling pipe installation for the surrounding area, or might even serve as sites for small gas-fired electricity generating stations using waste heat for district heating. Existing businesses using heat in processing might be supported to cogenerate electricity. Derelict buildings may be found to be rehabilitated and retrofitted for energy efficiency if local initiatives took total energy consumption into consideration in the planning process, since demolition and new construction involve much more energy than retrofits.
All of these initiatives constitute potential contributions to sustainable communities, but they also could be considered Locally Undesirable Land Uses, depending on their neighborhood settings. That is, a wind farm might be appropriate on an abandoned site in an industrial zone, but a LULU in a residential area, while growing biomass feedstocks in a dense residential area with little greenspace is a positive, but may contribute to higher vehicle miles traveled if it extends distances between places of employment and residences. Providing community access to ground-heated and cooled water with a centralized geothermal system on a vacant site may help lower heating and cooling costs for surrounding residences, but may only serve as an overall positive if it did not contribute to displacement and gentrification of an area or pose excessive negative external effects in its installation.
Such efforts need to be planned. Planned NOT as individual projects, or developments for a single site, but considered as part of a broader planning process that integrates communities, residents, businesses and other stakeholders in the process. All too frequently, that community involvement is missing, causing environmental justice failures and leading to resistance to innovative land uses, causing the NIMBY response to what need not necessarily be LULUs.
This paper will examine the efforts of member localities of the National Association of Local Government Environmental Professionals that have pursued some energy plans for vacant lands and/or developed local energy plans. Findings on the integration of land use, energy and development planning in that sample will be derived, using survey results from NALGEP, with follow-up interviews. A further perspective on those findings will be drawn from a detailed case study of Kansas City, MO, a recipient of one of the DOE competitive grants under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program, an element of the ARRA. Kansas City’s program is consciously neighborhood-focused, so it provides an excellent case, and access is facilitated by the author’s role as financial management advisor to their planning and implementation efforts.
Conclusions will be derived about the extent to which needed community involvement and comprehensive planning efforts are being committed as part of local efforts to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy use.
References
Popper, F.J. 1983. LULUs: locally unwanted land uses. Resources. LXXIII: 2-4
Greenberg, M.R., F.J. Popper, and B.M. West. 1990. The TOADS: A New American Urban Epidemic. Urban Affairs Review XXV(3): 435-454
Schilling, J., and J. Logan. 2008. Greening the Rust Belt: A green infrastructure model for right sizing America’s shrinking cities. Journal of the American Planning Association. LIV(4):451-466
Accordino, J., & Johnson, G. T. (2000). Addressing the vacant and abandoned property problem. Journal of Urban Affairs, 22 (3), 301–315.
U.S. EPA Office of Sustainable Communities. 2010. Partnership for Sustainable Communities: A year of progress for America’s communities. Washington DC.: Authors
Park, In Kwon, and Patricia Ciorci. “To be Abandoned, or to be Greened.” Paper to be presented at the annual conference for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 13-16, 2011.
PARK, In Kwon [Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey] pig21c@gmail.com, presenting author, primary author
CIORICI, Patricia [Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey] pciorici@camden.rutgers.edu
Paper Abstract: Many cities around the country combat increases in abandoned properties, as these properties often become an eyesore in urban landscape. In particular, old industrial cities where a large number of abandoned lots are left behind try to convert the lots into productive or beneficial uses. Community gardens are gaining popularity as an alternative use for abandoned vacant lots, as they can contribute to revitalizing the communities by eliminating blight and nuisance from abandonment and by increasing food security.
While some abandoned lots are successfully converted into community gardens if not redeveloped to other uses, some lots remain vacant even after cleaned up. What makes such a difference in the use of abandoned lots? This study tries to answer this question by identifying the factors that determine the conversion of abandoned lots into community gardens. Generally, one can expect that abandoned vacant lots in disadvantaged neighborhoods, where income is low, unemployment rate is high, and groceries are absent, are more likely to be converted into community gardens than elsewhere. It is because in those neighborhoods, demand for food and labor supply for gardening is high while demand for other productive uses on vacant lots is relatively low. The characteristics of an individual lot will play a role in determining the conversion, including ownership, lot size, market price of land, and accessibility. Policy environments such as tax incentives and public-private partnerships will also influence the development of community gardens.
In order to identify these determinants of conversion to community gardens, we look at community gardens and vacant lots in the City of Philadelphia. The city has about 40,000 vacant lots, but only fraction of them has turned into community gardens. Using a discrete choice model, we model different uses of abandoned lots at the individual parcel level. Specifically, we identify the abandoned vacant lots that have been converted into community gardens, and examine the determinants of the conversion in terms of individual lot and neighborhood characteristics, and policy environments.
A wide range of data is used for characteristics of lots and neighborhoods. For lot characteristics such as land use, size, ownership, taxes, and market price, we use the Philadelphia Neighborhood Information System (NIS) and a city-wide survey conducted by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in October, 2004. For neighborhood characteristics, we use published data such as the Philadelphia NIS, Census of Population and Housing, and Census Transportation Planning Package.
The results can be applied to deal with abandoned property problems and to choose suitable location for community gardens in practice. While identifying the abandoned vacant lots that are likely to be greened, the study in effect uncovers the determinants of demand or need for community gardens, and finds the cost factors for greening abandoned lots. This information will be useful in analyzing feasibility of converting an abandoned lot into a community garden.
References
De Sousa, Christopher A. 2003. "Turning Brownfields into Green Space in the City of Toronto," Landscape and Urban Planning, 62, 181-198.
De Sousa, Christopher A. 2006. "Unearthing the Benefits of Brownfield to Green Space Projects: An Examination of Project Use and Quality of Life Impacts," Local Environment, 11, 577-600.
Hillier, Amy E., Dennis P. Culhane, Tony E. Smith, and C. Dana Tomlin. 2003. "Predicting Housing Abandonment with the Philadelphia Neighborhood Information System," Journal of Urban Affairs, 25, 91-105.
Schilling, Joseph and Jonathan Logan. 2008. "Greening the Rust Belt: A Green Infrastructure Model for Right Sizing America's Shrinking Cities," Journal of the American Planning Association, 74, 451-466.
Voicu, Ioan and Vicki Been. 2008. "The Effect of Community Gardens on Neighboring Property Values," Real Estate Economics, 36, 241-283.
Langegger, Sig. “Community Gardens as New Forms of Public Space.” Paper to be presented at the annual conference for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 13-16, 2011.
LANGEGGER, Sig [University of Colorado, Denver] slangegger@gmail.com
Paper Abstract: Vacant lots present city managers and neighborhood residents with myriad problems. They are often trash strewn, tangible signs of neighborhood decay, and thus negatively affect the assessed values of adjacent properties Additionally, they often serve as locations for dangerous or illicit activities. As part of neighborhood revitalization strategies, cities in financial straits often allow, even encourage, neighborhood-driven gardening efforts to morph vacant lots into verdant community gardens. By producing healthy foods and engaging residents, these community-driven, community-funded efforts impact neighborhood well-being and health. But they often do more. Community gardens raise the property values of surrounding parcels (Voicu & Been, 2008). Interestingly, certain community gardens serve their neighborhoods as de facto pocket parks, replete with landscaping, benches and even BBQ grills.
Since many scholars deride the erosion of the publicness of existing parks and plazas through behavior-regulating rules, increased surveillance and a more general privatization and commodification of space (Nemeth, 2010), the emergence of neighborhood-driven public spaces proves an interesting phenomenon. Nonetheless, despite their ostensible public benefits, community gardens are always considered temporary land uses and thus always face eventual destruction by the exchange-value logics of urban development. Communities struggle to save gardens threatened by development. Yet efforts rarely center on benefits to publics wider than a community of gardeners.
In this paper, I ask two related questions. First, can the legitimation of certain types of gardens as public spaces help save them from destruction? And second, how can planners and city managers learn to consider the publicness of community gardens in land-use decisions and comprehensive planning? Answering these questions necessitates empirical examination of the physical, legal and social factors that contribute to the publiness of community gardens. In this effort, I examine the property regimes governing three park-like community gardens in Denver, Colorado. Related to regime theory, property regime inquiry involves first considering public space as a specific form of property and then examining the various claims to property rights made by various actors along with the power asymmetries that obligate certain parties to recognize some rights while trumping others (Staeheli & Mitchell, 2008). Using Setha Low’s (1981) Rapid Ethnographic Assessment Procedure to explore their publicness, I examine the neighborhood context of each garden; I conduct interpretive policy analysis on documents regulating gardens; I construct time-space behavior maps of activities in gardens at different times of day, week and season; I employ visual analysis of garden growth and behavioral-trace patterns; and I interview gardeners and neighborhood residents to gain insight into their perceptions of garden publicness. This paper will present the results of these analyses: I expect to find that garden publicness is affected most by: the non-gardening meanings of the garden to both residents and gardeners, the diversity of claims to occupy them, balanced power relations between those who claim rights and those who are obligated to recognize them, neighborhood gentrification and the garden’s regulatory and legal framework.
This work serves as a central component of my dissertation at the University of Colorado Denver, which is supervised by Dr. Jeremy Németh.
References
Low, S. M. (1981). Social Science Methods in Landscape Architecture Design. Landscape Planning, 8, 137-148.
Nemeth, J. (2010). Security in public space: an empirical assessment of three US cities. Environment and Planning A, 42(10), 2487-2507.
Staeheli, L., & Mitchell, D. (2008). The People's Property?: Power, Politics, and the Public. New York: Routledge.
Voicu, I., & Been, V. (2008). The Effect of Community Gardens on Neighboring Property Values. Real Estate Economics, 36(2), 241-283.
Hasse, Dagmar (2008). Urban Ecology of Shrinking Cities: An Unrecognized Opportunity? Nature and Culture, 3(1), 1-8.
Abstract: "Whereas environmental and social impacts of urban sprawl are widely discussed among scholars from both the natural and social sciences, the spatial consequences of urban decline are nearly neglected when discussing the impacts of land transition. Within the last decade, "shrinkage" and "perforation" have arisen as new terms to explain the land use development of urban regions faced with demographic change, particularly decreasing fertility, aging, and out-migration. Although shrinkage is far from being a "desired" scenario for urban policy makers, this paper argues that a perforation of the built-up structure in dense cities might bring up many positive implications."
Knox, P. L. (2005). "Creating Ordinary Places: Slow Cities in a Fast World." Journal of Urban Design. 10 (1), 1-11.
Abstract:
"This paper explores the interdependence between urban design and the social construction of place. Following the recent contribution to the discussion of sense of place, authenticity and character by Jivén & Larkham (Journal of Urban Design, vol. 8, 2003, pp. 67–81), it is suggested that architects, planners and urban designers should be attentive to the theoretical underpinnings that are relevant to place-making. The emphasis here is on the relationships between the pace of life and the capacity of urban settings to facilitate the routine encounters and shared experiences that underpin the intersubjectivity that, in turn, leads to the social construction of place. These issues are placed in the context of the ‘fast world’ of globalization and of grass-roots reaction to its consequences, as illustrated by the Slow City movement."
Been , Vicki and Voicu, Ioan, "The Effect of Community Gardens on Neighboring Property Values" (2006). New York University Law
and Economics Working Papers. Paper 46.
http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu_lewp/46
DRAFT PAPER - PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION
Abstract:
"Cities across the United States increasingly are debating the best way to use vacant "infill" lots. The community garden movement is one of the major contenders for the space, as are advocates for small public "pocket" parks and other green spaces. To allocate the land most efficiently and fairly, local governments need sound research about the value of such gardens and parks to their host communities.
At the same time, cities are looking for new ways of financing the development and maintenance of public garden and park space. Some have turned to tax increment financing to generate resources, other are introducing impact fees or special assessments to cover the costs of urban parks. In order to employ such financing mechanisms, both policy concerns and legal constraints require local governments to base their charges on sound data about the impacts green spaces have on the value of the neighboring properties that would be forced to bear the incidence of the tax or fee.
Despite the clear public policy need for such data, our knowledge about the impacts community gardens and other such spaces have on surrounding neighborhoods is quite limited. No studies have focused specifically on community gardens, and those that have examined the property value impacts of parks and other open space are cross-sectional studies inattentive to when the park opened, so that it is impossible to determine the direction of the causality of any property value differences found. The existing literature also has paid insufficient attention to qualitative differences among the parks studied and to differences in characteristics of the surrounding neighborhoods that might affect the parks' impacts.
Applying hedonic methods to a unique data set of all property sales in New York City over several decades, we compared the prices of properties within a given distance of community gardens to prices of comparable properties outside the designated ring, but still located in the same neighborhood. By examining whether and how this difference changed once a community garden was established, we account for any systematic differences between the sites used for community gardens and other land in the neighborhood, thus resolving questions about the direction of causality and helping to disentangle the specific effects of community gardens from other contemporaneous changes occurring across neighborhoods and properties in the city.
We find that the opening of a community garden has a statistically significant positive impact on residential properties within 1000 feet of the garden, and that the impact increases over time. We also find that higher quality gardens have the greatest positive impact. Finally, we find that gardens have the greatest impact in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods."
Mayer, H. & Knox, P. L. (2006). "Slow Cities: Sustainable Places in a Fast World." Journal of Urban Affairs. 28 (4), 321-334.
ABSTRACT:
"This article examines the Slow Food and Slow City movement as an alternative approach to urban development that focuses on local resources, economic and cultural strengths, and the unique historical context of a town. Following recent discussions about the politics of alternative economic development, the study examines the Slow City movement as a strategy to address the interdependencies between goals for economic, environmental, and equitable urban development. In particular, we draw on the examples of two Slow Cities in Germany—Waldkirch and Hersbruck, and show how these towns are retooling their urban policies. The study is placed in the context of alternative urban development agendas as opposed to corporate-centered development.We conclude the article by offering some remarks about the institutional and political attributes of successful Slow Cities and the transferability of the concept."
Mendes, Wendy, Kevin Balmer Terra Kaethler, & Amanda Rhoads. (2008). "Using Land Inventories to Plan for Urban Agriculture." Journal of the American Planning Association. 74 (4), 435-450.
Abstract:
"Problem: Urban agriculture has potential to make cities more socially and ecologically sustainable, but planners have not had effective policy levers to encourage this.
Purpose: We aim to learn how to use land inventories to identify city land with the potential for urban agriculture in order to plan for more sustainable communities by answering two questions: Do land inventories enable integration of urban agriculture into planning and policymaking? Do land inventories advance both ecological and social dimensions of local sustainability agendas?
Methods: We use case studies of two Pacific Northwest cities (Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, British Columbia), comparing the municipal land inventories they undertook to identify public lands with potential for urban agriculture. We study how they were initiated and carried out, as well as their respective scopes, scales, and outcomes.
Results and conclusions: We find that the Portland inventory both enabled integration of urban agriculture into planning and policymaking and advanced social and ecological sustainability. In Vancouver similar integration was achieved, but the smaller scope of the effort meant it did little for public involvement and social sustainability.
Takeaway for practice: Other local governments considering the use of a land inventory should contemplate: (a) using the inventory process itself as a way to increase institutional awareness and political support for urban agriculture; (b) aligning urban agriculture with related sustainability goals; (c) ensuring public involvement by creating participatory mechanisms in the design and implementation of the inventory; (d) drawing on the expertise of institutional partners including universities.
Research support: The Centre for Urban Health Initiatives at the University of Toronto provided financial support for writing up this research."
Pickard, J., and W. Chilton. 2007. "Five Cities, Five Strategies for Regeneration". Urban Land. 66 (7): 50-58.
Lunday, E. 2007. "Reviving Neighborhoods through Art". Urban Land. 66 (8): 70-75.
Nassauer, Joan Iverson and Rebekah VanWieren. 2008. "Vacant Property Now & Tomorrow: Building Enduring Values with Natural Assets." Genesee Institute, Flint MI.
This is a special report for Genessee County Land Bank on how to strategically green vacant properties. It provides a strategic framework for short-, medium-, and long-term use following principles of ecological land use design. The report also provides seven reuse typologies spanning open space and habitat to urban parks and neighborhood gateways.
Funders play an essential role in repurposing vacant properties for productive reuse. The Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities recently released a report that provides a comprehensive definition of urban agriculture and outlines several ways in which funders can support this innovative reuse strategy.
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Articles that focus on specific initiatives and strategies that promote the reuse and development of vacant and abandoned properties, such as temporary cultural/community uses (e.g., pop-up city), community gardens, urban greening, urban agriculture, renewable energy, sustainability planning, gree...
Updated on Mar 09, 12
Created on Aug 02, 11
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