Preserving the New England Mill Town: Encouraging Adaptive Re-Use by Identifying Community Factors that Contribute to Success in Mill Revitalization Districts

Mill Revitalization Districts have the ability to generate new vitality in some of the nation\u27s oldest communities. When efficacious, these districts promote economic development, community beautification, and environmental health. However, when attempts at redevelopment fail they leave ugly scars in the form of decaying buildings and underutilized resources. Monetary investment and intent to improve a community are two factors that by themselves, will not preserve a mill complex or benefit a city. The first Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized districts in the early 2000s showed signs of varying success; there was a missing catalyst besides monetary investment. In fact, it seems that it is not the developer, but something within the community itself that produces a successful revitalization. This project was founded on the idea that the human elements of a community promote the realization of a Mill Revitalization District (MRD)

Blueprint Buffalo Action Plan: Regional Strategies for Reclaiming Vacant Properties in the City and Suburbs of Buffalo

Over a period of about nine months, the NVPC team conducted interviews and gathered insights that have resulted in this report. During the study period, Buffalo–Niagara emerged as a region broadly challenged by decades of disinvestment and population loss, but also as a close network of communities singularly blessed with a wealth of historic, transit-friendly, and affordable neighborhoods and commercial areas. Building on the City of Buffalo’s “asset management” strategy first proposed in 2004 by the Cornell Cooperative Extension Association—and now formally adopted by the Buffalo Common Council as part of its comprehensive 20-year plan for the city—the NVPC team sought to reexamine how the revitalization of Buffalo’s vacant properties could actually serve as a catalyst to address the region’s other most pressing problems: population loss, a weak real estate market in the inner city, signs of incipient economic instability in older suburbs, quality-of-life issues, school quality, and suburban sprawl

Barriers to Participation in the Unleashing Local Capital Project

Unleashing Local Capital (ULC) was initiated and is managed by the Alberta Community and Co-operative Association (ACCA). The project empowers rural Alberta communities to invest locally, direct their own economic development and reduce dependency on government supports by directing outward-bound investments towards local businesses, keeping local capital flowing through local communities. ULC educates communities on how to establish an Opportunity Development Co-operative (ODC) – a co-op that pools and manages capital raised from local investors, which is then invested in local businesses. ULC has also directly supported the development of ODCs in several communities. This report is the result of formative evaluation for ACCA of the early development of ULC.Athabasca University ; Alberta Community and Co-operative Associatio

Remaking Downtown Toronto: Politics, Development, and Public Space on Yonge Street, 1950-1980

This study explores the history of Torontos iconic downtown Yonge Street and the people who contested its future, spanning a period from the 1950s through to 1980 when the street was seldom out of the news. Through detailed analysis of a range of primary sources, it explores how the uses and public meanings of this densely-built commercial strip changed over time, in interaction with the city transforming around it. What emerges is a street that, despite fears for its future, remained at the heart of urban life in Toronto, creating economic value as a retail centre; pushing the boundaries of taste and the law as a mass-entertainment destination; and drawing crowds as a meeting place, pedestrian corridor, and public space. Variously understood as an historic urban landscape and an embarrassing relic, a transportation route and a people place, a bastion of Main Street values and a haven for big-city crime and sleaze, from the 1950s through the 1970s Yonge was at the centre of efforts to improve or reinvent the central city in ways that would keep pace with, or even lead, urban change. This thesis traces the history of three interventionsa pedestrian mall, a clean-up campaign aimed at the sex industry, and a major redevelopment schemetheir successes and failures, and the larger debates they triggered. The result is a narrative that ranges widely in theme: planning, automobility, and youth culture; vice, moral regulation, and citizen activism; capitalism, corporate power, and urban renewal. Engaging with the North American and international historiographies of these topics, it places the politics of downtown in Toronto in larger historical context. It offers an account of urban transformation that emphasizes complexity in the interaction between ideas, structures of power, and the often idiosyncratic decisions of a range of downtown actors. An increasingly interventionist local state, dynamic capital investment in retail and real estate, and diverse citizen mobilizations all contributed to transforming Yonge Street, helping to create the modern, globalized downtown shopping street and public space we know today

Commonwealth Times 1985-09-24

https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/com/1488/thumbnail.jp

The Lumberjack, October 13, 1982

The student newspaper of Humboldt State University.https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/studentnewspaper/3068/thumbnail.jp

October 9, 1997

The Breeze is the student newspaper of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia

Gentrification In Scarborough: A Case Study Of The Markham And Ellesmere (me) Living Revitalization

Aiming to compete on a global level, local governments have become heavily invested in the development process. Encouraging gentrification through political terms such as revitalization, smart growth, and regeneration, numerous neighbourhoods have been gentrified. Observing gentrification in many parts of the world, academics are divided by the significance of the process. Some believe it is a beneficial practice, while others disagree stating that it is environmentally unjust. This paper argues that gentrification promotes environmental injustice and explores the negative impacts faced by the disadvantaged population. To conduct the primary analysis, city staff reports, newspaper articles, promotional advertisements and statistical data related to the ME Living revitalization project were reviewed. Examining different themes of impacts including of economic, lifestyle, neighbourhood and housing, the outcomes of the project were evident. Using an environmental justice framework, it became clear that the new residents would be able to redeem the benefits of the project while the current tenants would face the detriments of the development. With this understanding, the paper concludes with strategies to make the planning process environmentally just

The LumberJack, September 25, 1996

The student newspaper of Humboldt State University.https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/studentnewspaper/1740/thumbnail.jp