Neighborhood Progress and partners release Re-Imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland
A new perspective on how to improve the environment and the quality of life in urban areas as a result of the availability of vacant land
Since its establishment in 1988, Neighborhood Progress, Inc. (NPI), a nonprofit community development organization, has been committed to revitalizing Cleveland’s struggling neighborhoods. With support from the Mandel Foundation, which regards urban renewal as a major priority, NPI led a broad-based effort that has stimulated millions of private investment dollars into neighborhood rehabilitation.
In the past year, NPI, along with its partners, has addressed several key challenges that are endemic to modern city life – demographic change, migration and suburbanization – processes that affect the population dispersion within a city. In Cleveland, these processes, have posed some critical questions for NPI and its partners concerning the use and reuse of vacant lands within the city.
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While many people may relate to vacant or abandoned properties as negative, this phenomenon can be viewed as a strategic opportunity, as delineated in a special report adopted by the Cleveland City Planning Commission, entitled Re-Imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland: Citywide Strategies for Reuse of Vacant Land. |
Vacant properties as a strategic opportunity
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This report offers urban planners, policy makers and community leadership a perspective on how to improve the environment and the quality of life in urban areas as a result of the availability of vacant land - regardless of a city's location.
Vacant lands as a strategic opportunity
Over the past year, NPI, the City of Cleveland, and other partners, in collaboration with the Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative and with funding from the Surdna Foundation, researched and explored the opportunities proffered by the productive and strategic re-use of vacant land. The findings of this research as well recommendations for future development were included in Re-Imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland. The report offers new visions and summarizes the goals, principles and strategies for transforming vacant properties into productive land on a city-wide scale, thereby creating a more sustainable city.
Re-Imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland cites the unprecedented opportunities created by the abundance of vacant land and the lack of strong market demand to improve the city’s green space network and natural systems. Some of the alternative land use strategies described are designed to put vacant properties to productive use in ways that complement the city’s long-term development objectives.
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Putting vacant properties to productive use
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Such modes of operation include deriving quantifiable community benefits from the city’s growing inventory of vacant property, enhancing ecosystem function (storm water management, soil restoration, air quality, etc.), and removing the risk to human health from environmental pollutants by remediating contaminated properties. |
Capitalizing on this opportunity to allocate properties for recreation, agriculture, green infrastructure, and other non-traditional land uses will benefit current residents while helping to attract new residents and generate new development. By balancing existing and future demands for development with the conservation of key sites within its boundaries, Cleveland – as well as any metropolis - can reinvent itself as a more productive, sustainable and ecologically sound city.
To read the complete Re-Imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland report click here
For more information about Neighborhood Progress, Inc. click here.
