Case Studies

CCLR's Jean Hamerman attended the 7th annual Brownfield Coalition of the Northeast conference and shares her notes from the morning plenary session with us.

On March 21, CCLR had the pleasure of attending the grand opening of Mural—the first residential building of the MacArthur Transit Village pioneered by BRIDGE Housing. CCLR's partnership with BRIDGE Housing and ongoing support of the project over the years has precipitated over $37 million in grant funding. And while the project has been over a decade in the making it has finally paid off. The complex has been named a "model" for the creation of dense, transit-rich and inclusive communities. With the development of more units currently underway, it can only get better and we at CCLR are thrilled to have been a part of it!

In January of this year the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) released a draft publication called “Planning Healthy Places: A Guidebook for Addressing Local Sources of Air Pollutants in Community Planning.” This guidebook establishes "best practices" that cities and developers of new residential projects can implement to mitigate and/or minimize new residents’ exposure to existing air pollution and maps the areas -- mostly near freeways and major roads -- where those best practices should be implemented. We are overall very pleased with the direction of the Guidebook and believe that it could be a powerful tool to assist communities in building sustainable infill and transit-oriented developments that are fully health-protective. However, we are strongly concerned that BAAQMD’s support of local and regional efforts to promote “focused growth” (i.e. infill, transit-oriented, and mixed-use development) throughout the region may be severely undercut by the Guidebook’s recommendation that cities use their zoning authority to prohibit all future residential development within the identified areas.

Thanks to the eighth round of the Transportation Investment Generic Economic Recovery (TIGER) competitive grant program, $500 million will be available for transportation projects across the country. TIGER grants focus on capital projects that generate economic development and improve access to affordable, reliable, and safe transportation for communities. In 2013, The City of Truckee, California was awarded $1.5 million for a pedestrian tunnel that will improve connections between residential and commercial areas. The Center for Creative Land Recycling helped Oakland-based Holliday Development leverage that TIGER grant for an additional $8 million from the State’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) Grant Program for the cleanup and redevelopment of the adjacent underutilized Truckee Railyard.

Communities across the country are recognizing that access to high quality, affordable broadband is a critical element to their economic future. Whether it’s improving access to health care through telemedicine, enhancing education, facilitating the reduction of GHG emissions though telecommuting, or expanding small business opportunities, broadband has become a necessity. USDA Rural Utilities Service and the U.S. EPA Office of Sustainable Communities is inviting communities to apply for a new pilot program - "Cool & Connected".

 Application Deadline: February 24, 2016

This New Jersey-specific analysis is the latest in Smart Growth America's Fiscal Implications research. This research model, released earlier this year, compares the relative costs of different development scenarios. Today's new study of road infrastructure needs and population density in New Jersey makes clear the long-term costs and implications of land use decisions. Read the full report to learn more about the findings from this analysis, and to help your community make better-informed financial decisions about development.

Here at CCLR, we’re always interested in learning more about how our work to advance land recycling domestically finds its corollary in the international realm.  We’re pleased to bring you a few articles about blight, vacancy, and redevelopment in a variety of international contexts, all drawn together by the common thread of aging societies and changing demographics.   

Project for Public Spaces has announced that it is now accepting applications for the 2016 Southwest Airlines Heart of the Community grant program. Southwest Airlines connects people to the places that mean the most to them. In 2014, Southwest launched Heart of the Community to encourage more connections on the ground and to help residents feel a sense of ownership in the places they share. This community-driven program has supported the activation of public spaces in cities across the country, from Portland, Maine, to San Antonio, Texas.

CCLR responds to Pacific Standard article "Mental Maps and the Neuroscience behind Neighborhood Blight" -

Whether or not we realize it, city blocks, districts and neighborhoods are not concretely articulated land areas in an urban fabric — people interact with and define the boundaries of places differently, and use varying metrics to identify them. All these facets we associate with places and spaces — how we draw our “mental maps” — have proven to be extremely revealing in understanding why some neighborhoods prosper, and others continue to be magnets for socio-economic decline and blight. CCLR posits, that among the numerous other socio-economic development tactics we use to revitalize and redevelop the neighborhoods, main streets and downtowns of our declining cities, we also need to “hack the mental map” and reverse the “psychological branding” of blighted communities.

The Loma Prieta Earthquake, which shook the city at magnitude 6.9 for just 15 seconds on October 17th, 1989, tragically killed 67 people, 42 of whom were on the Embarcadero Freeway when a portion of it collapsed. The removal of the freeway reshaped San Francisco’s waterfront, and as we listened to Jackie reflect on her newly acquired knowledge about this piece of recent history, we thought that her words (and her thoughts on transportation and sustainability) were worth sharing. Following is an interview between Jackie and CCLR staff.