Land Recycling News

17 de marzo de 2020
Por David Southgate, M.P.A.

A raíz de las tormentas y de otros desastres naturales, las islas de todo el mundo están trabajando para integrar medidas para aumentar la resiliencia y combatir la dependencia en las importaciones de alimentos, energía y otros suministros básicos de supervivencia. Los desafíos del cambio climático están perturbando la actividad económica, dañando la infraestructura crítica y deteniendo los servicios esenciales, especialmente en las islas.

Report on Second Climate Strong Islands Dialogue

In the wake of destructive climate storms and natural disasters, islands across the world are working towards integrating measures to build resilience and combat a dependency on imports of food, energy, and other basic life-sustaining supplies. The challenges of climate change are disrupting economic activity, damaging critical infrastructure and halting critical services, especially on islands.

17 de marzo de 2020
Por Yelena Tolstopyatova, Gerente de Programas y Operaciones, CCLR 

Entre el COVID-19 y los terremotos, el 2020 tuvo un comienzo inusual por no decir otra cosa. El año pasado, el equipo de asesores ejecutivos de CCLR en Puerto Rico, David Southgate y Sonia Cosme, estuvieron promoviendo oportunidades de revitalización de la tierra con el Programa de Evaluaciones de Brownfields (TBA, por sus siglas en inglés) de la EPA. Bajo el TBA, la EPA contrata, paga y dirige a expertos ambientales que completan las Fases I y II de las evaluaciones ambientales de posibles brownfields. En 2019, ayudamos a Rescate Playa Borinquen, The Americas for Conservation + Arts y otras organizaciones a lo largo de Puerto Rico a eliminar el estigma de los obstáculos ambientales para sus proyectos de desarrollo comunitario en sitios de la misma comunidad.  

CCLR’s Puerto Rico team makes a difference

Between the Coronavirus and the earthquakes, 2020 is off to an unusual start to say the least! Last year, CCLR’s Puerto Rico team of Senior Advisors, David Southgate and Sonia Cosme, continued to evangelize opportunities for land revitalization with EPA’s Targeted Brownfields Assessments program (TBA). Under TBA, EPA hires, pays for and manages environmental experts who complete Phase I and Phase II Environmental Site Assessments for suspected brownfields.  In 2019, we helped Rescate Playa Borrinquen, The Americas for Conservation + Arts and other organizations across Puerto Rico to remove the stigma of environmental obstacles for their site-based community development projects.

Written by Claire Weston, Program Associate

Posted March 20, 2020 

How do we work together to build a better, stronger Virgin Islands? Dr. Clanicia Pelle from the VI Department of Planning and Natural Resources (DPNR) and Schenine Mitchell from the U.S. EPA grapple with this question on a daily basis. Ahead of the *It Takes a Village: Working Together for Revitalization Summit, organized by the U.S. EPA, Center for Creative Land Recycling, and VI DPNR, I took some time to speak with these experienced practitioners to learn more about the VI’s unique redevelopment challenges, the strides they’ve made thus far, and what’s next in land reuse and community development.

*Due to the developing health crisis, this event has been postponed. A replacement date is being considered.

Written by Sarah Sieloff, Executive Director

Posted on January 22, 2020

At the National Brownfields Training Conference in December, CCLR honored three outstanding brownfield redevelopment practitioners with National Brownfields Leadership Awards. For many years, these awards have recognized land reuse luminaries who have made significant contributions to our field. Given only every two years at the National Brownfields Conference, the National Brownfields Leadership Awards honor practitioners who have distinguished themselves as problem solvers and innovators, and whose work is helping make the built environment more livable, sustainable and equitable.  

Published on September 20, 2019

By Sarah Sieloff, Executive Director, with thanks to Brahm Ahmadi and David Greensfelder for background information and their reflections

Retail is a notoriously complex component of real estate.  Boost your knowledge and demystify retail by joining CCLR for a free webinar on September 25 featuring David Greensfelder, retail expert, developer, and CCLR Board member.  Every redevelopment practitioner needs to know what questions to ask about retail, so don’t miss out – this is a unique opportunity to hear directly from an expert who regularly wrangles retail in tough redevelopment projects, including one of the toughest out there, a grocery store in a historically marginalized neighborhood.  Read on, and register here.

By Ignacio Dayrit, Director of Programs

Posted September 13, 2019

The US Environmental Protection Agency plans to release “Requests for APPLICATIONS” (RFA)  for brownfield assessment, cleanup and revolving loan fund grants in a few weeks. The intent is to have the grant application season completed before the National Brownfields Conference in Los Angeles beginning December 10.

The San Francisco Chronicle recently announced a generous grant from the Pritzker Family Fund to help open the India Basin Shoreline Park in southeast San Francisco as part of the Blue Greenway The park is slated to be completed by 2025, 15 years after CCLR assisted the non-profit SF Parks Alliance with its successful application for a planning and community outreach grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) brownfields program.

Racial segregation in housing…was a nationwide project of the federal government in the twentieth century, designed and implemented by its most liberal leaders. Our system of official segregation was not the result of a single law that consigned African Americans to designated neighborhoods. Rather, scores of racially explicit laws, regulations, and government practices combined to create a nationwide system of urban ghettos, surrounded by white suburbs.  

After Hurricane Harvey, Paul Krugman asked, “Why can’t we get cities right?”  Perhaps it’s because when we imagine a sustainable city, we are imagining something none of us has ever experienced, as Azby Brown notes in his 2009 book Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan.  While imagining a new future can be exhilarating, it can also be overwhelming.  As Puerto Rico rebuilds its electrical grid, Houston continues to recover from floods, Mexico City clears away rubble following the recent earthquake and the Florida Keys begin the long process of determining how and where to rebuild, we may do well to turn to Japan for inspiration, circa 1603.