Starting in January 2009, Jeff Beam, a joint-degree student of DUSP and Center for Real Estate will work with real estate development staff and consultants for Lawrence CommunityWorks (LCW) to examine emerging ideas and tools for holistic housing development in small industrial cities. Using LCW’s Union Crossing Development (an innovative mixed-use mill redevelopment project that aims to be a completely “green” building, both in design, building and implementation and as a community involvement center) as a case study, this project seeks to help codify the ideas and best practices that LCW and other innovative developers in small industrial cities have formed, sometimes unconsciously, about holistic development in their cities; to identify the tools they have utilized or created to act upon those ideas, and to share replicable aspects of that work with other practitioners.
Like conventional housing revitalization efforts of recent decades, these ideas behind ‘holistic’ housing development focus on outcomes across an array of metrics, including quality of life, employment, stabilized tax base, more rational land use and enhanced aesthetics. For most projects, conventional revitalization practice translates these ideas into measurable outcomes, such as tangible increases in private capital investment and property values, alterations in physical appearance and shifts in the class of user through gentrification. Practitioners and their partners utilize housing development tools that focus on these ends.
However, innovative developers in small industrial cities understand the limitations of these ideas and tools in their communities, which differ physically, demographically and psychologically from their big city counterparts. They also recognize opportunities inherent in these communities: compact size, a distinct sense of place, and low enough land and overhead costs for entrepreneurs to spark innovation.
In order to make generalizable observations and recommendation, the Holistic Revitalization Project compare LCW’s Union Crossing development to three additional case studies in Owensboro, Kentucky; Flint, Michigan; and Newark, New Jersey, all of which meet the following criteria:
- Primarily focused on the development of new housing;
- Large enough (relative to its city) to have a significant physical, social and economic impact; must represent at least two tenths of a percent (0.2%) of the city’s total housing stock, and must be transformational at the neighborhood scale;
- Located in geographically diverse locations, to control for regional differences; and
- Targeted for communities representing differing racial/ ethnic populations.
