Caylen payne writing samples 2016

ABSTRACT This is a compendium of 6 pieces of writing that reflect different aspects, lengths, and styles written throughout my professional and academic career.

CaylenPatrickPayne@gmail.com

CAYLEN PAYNE Writing Samples 2016

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Contents EXISTING PLANS FROM OTHER CITIES............................................................................ 2 LITERATURE REVIEW FINAL WRITE-UP.......................................................................... 7 RIGHTSIZING: RE-THINKING THE RUSTBELT ............................................................. 12 CREATING SOCIAL CAPITAL THROUGH EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES AND NEW ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES .......................................................................... 19 AN OVERVIEW OF THE MT. LAUREL SAGA ................................................................... 29 NEIGHBORHOOD PLANNING: A REVIEW AND ANALYSIS ........................................ 39

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Existing Plans from Other Cities (Taken from the Irishtown Greenway: Lake-Link Trail Final Document) April 10, 2014 While any planning approach will invariably introduce a unique set of design interventions tailored for the specific area in question, it is a best practice and basic requirement to review similar past and present plans in order to fully understand and acknowledge the successful, and sometimes unsuccessful plans of others. To this extent we have chosen several similar plans from various cities similar in history, geography, and economies to Cleveland. These plans vary from fully realized development proposals, to specific multi-use trail projects that reflect the type of design intervention that the Lake-Link Trail represents.

We begin with the City of Pittsburgh, which came up with a fully developed master plan titled: The Allegheny Riverfront Plan. This 2010 plan calls for a total assessment and reconfiguration of the urban section of the Allegheny River as it passes through Pittsburgh. The design principles involved included: connectivity, sustainability, economic vitality, waterfront restoration, community uses, as well as various activities programming.

This ambitious plan encompasses around 2,000 acres of Pittsburgh city land involving two prominent neighborhoods: the Strip District and Lawrenceville. The plan is a full-blown civic endeavor utilizing community involvement in the form of charrettes and “community-building� meetings taking place over a 12 month period prior to the final proposal. The Allegheny Riverfront Plan acknowledged and incorporated no less than 5 previous studies dating back to 2002 in order to inform and define the foundation for the new plan. A poor street grid as well as industrial-use barriers similar to those experienced at the later end of the Lake-Link Trail were identified as major issues in the Allegheny Plan. The poor mobility and fractured access to the river became key points in the new plan, as well as the break in the natural green infrastructure and overall fragmented greenspace and lack of natural riparian corridors. The plan calls for a

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spatial assessment created by a Zonal Approach corresponding to the various economic, environmental, and social areas compromising the planning locale. The goal was to direct economic development into various appropriately identified areas with linkages dictated by a reclaimed ecological “green” street network. These economic considerations entailed: identifying regional and emerging market areas, designation of potential development areas, transit oriented development, a tax-credit program, as well as what to “leave alone”, (existing high functioning infrastructure and businesses.) While the Allegheny Plan certainly eclipses the scope of the Lake-Link Trail plan, similarities can be found in its vision of incorporating a holistic planning process involving the community, with a focus on connecting said community to the river through a revamped green-infrastructure including, parks, open-space, trails, and riparian buffer zones.

Another plan with implications for the Lake-Link Trail can be found in Cincinnati’s Central Riverfront Urban Design Master Plan. This plan from April, 2000 was again a fully realized riverfront master plan incorporating numerous development proposals, a new park and urban trail, as well as two new sports facilities and a museum. This ambitious plan incorporates elements we see here in Cleveland with the current development of the EastBank of the Flats, as well as the LakeLink Trail and its final destination at Wendy Park. While this plan is certainly heavily development oriented it was still executed with various best practices in Courtesy Smale Riverfront Park 2014

mind, including a diverse steering

committee as well as the appropriate community involvement and green infrastructure incorporation. The major planning and design principles stressed: access to the Ohio River, the use of traditional architecture appropriate to the existing urban fabric, natural building materials, and mixed-use transit oriented development. As of 2007 the plan had achieved an impressive $91 million dollar investment with an ultimate goal of over $600 million private investment dollars.

Of most interest to the Lake-Link Plan was the development of a $120 million dollar Riverfront Park. This bold vision called for the connecting of three existing parks into a continuous riverfront park that could be incorporated into a new transportation grid, reflecting a multi-modal

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approach. Approximately 50 acres of parking lots and warehouses were remade in a bid to increase the amount of parks and greenspace within the new development area. While the Cincinnati Plan was certainly extremely ambitious and greatly exceeded the scope of the LakeLink Trail, we can take cues from its success at connecting the people to their river, while also incorporating new development and landmark city facilities.

In order to fully understand the extent of our project we also looked at plans that mirrored the Lake-Link Trail in scope and size. To this end Detroit’s Dequindre Cut serves as a primary example. The Cut is part of an overall vision by the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy to completely change the nature and way in which Detroiters interact with their river resource. The Cut is mentioned in several planning documents including the overall Detroit 2020 plan as well as a document from 2012 entitled A Vision of Greenways for the Greater Riverfront East District of Detroit. This plan like so many others quantifies existing plans and seeks to unify Detroit’s riverfront into a continuous 5 ½ mile park amenity. As part of this exciting plan the Dequindre Cut’s 1.35 mile section was included in the planning endeavor as an existing amenity funded through extensive public, non-profit, and private partnerships. The Cut, which officially opened to the public in May of 2009, is a below-

Courtesy Detroit Riverfront Conservancy 2014

street level multi-use pathway that incorporates a former Grand Trunk Railroad line. In this way the experience in Detroit quite closely mirrors many of the major planning concerns experienced with the Lake-Link trail, specifically the narrow below-grade corridors. While the Dequindre Cut had the benefit of a surplus of usable space, the Lake-Link Trail will probably not be able to mirror the 20-foot-wide pathway found in the Cut. Even without this generous amount of space, there are still similar concerns when it comes to access, safety, and more specifically lighting and amenities. While the appropriate design interventions were utilized in the Dequindre Cut: extensive lighting, emergency phones, benches, etc… the interesting aspects of the trail include public art installations and programming during the summer that aims to bring together the community through art, music, and food while benefitting the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy. If there is any one thing we can take away from Detroit’s experience, it is that a successful trail must reach-out to its surrounding

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community by engaging them in ways besides the static creation of a multi-use trail. These community “extras” have gone a long way in creating visibility for the Cut as well as the Riverwalk in general.

Finally, another plan that corresponds specifically to the Lake-Link Trail is the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. This project began in the early 2000’s with multiple site assessments and public workshops aimed at organizing the visions and goals of the community into a usable framework for the final proposal in 2008. The waterfront greenway is actually a 14 mile waterfront section of Brooklyn that includes various types of trails designated into different classes by the plan’s authors. These pathways range from road sharrows, to separated bikeways and walkways, as well as trails that intersect with existing parks and greenways. The plan is ambitious in that it aims to connect this waterfront through multiple on-street and off-street pathways as well as providing for the use of common signage and way-finding devices. The Brooklyn plan offers us a very usable blue-print for the kind of connections that the Lake-Link Trail is attempting to make. We have acknowledged that it is no longer enough to just “put-in” a trail, instead any urban trail must make a significant contribution to the existing street and transportation network. This can be accomplished by accentuating existing positives, such as green infrastructure and natural topography changes, while also incorporating and paying attention to the “messy” areas; where the street-grid and the trail intersect, using these junctions as possible connections between various transportation modes. By acknowledging existing connections and strategically placing trailheads the Lake-Link Trail can bridge the gap between the Tow-Path Trail and Lake Erie, while providing a backbone to build further bicycle and multi-modal infrastructure in the surrounding area.

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References Detroit Plans and Website http://www.detroitriverfront.org/ http://cfsem.org/sites/cfsem.org/files/5d-detroit-greenwaysplan_east_detroit-2012.pdf http://detroit2020.com/2011/11/03/detroit-riverfront-development-plans/ Pittsburgh Plans and Website http://www.pittsburghpa.gov/alleghenyriverfront/ http://www.pittsburghpa.gov/alleghenyriverfront/site/about/index.html http://www.ura.org/pdfs/Vision_Plan_Technical_Report.pdf Brooklyn Plans and Website http://www.brooklyngreenway.org/ http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/cwp/cwp_2.shtml http://www.brooklyngreenway.org/planning-documents/Brooklyn-Greenway-Design-Principles.pdf Cincinnati Plans and Website http://www.cincinnatiparks.com/index.php http://mysmaleriverfrontpark.org/ http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/cityofcincinnati/linkservid/E506D20A-9B46-F3A66D763ECBC854F106/showMeta/0/

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Literature Review Final Write-Up (Taken from the Irishtown Greenway: Lake-Link Trail Final Document) April 10, 2014

The Impact of Greenways and Multi-Use Trails on Property Values There is an existing and ever growing body of literature that indicates the positive relationship between the presence of Greenways and Multi-Use Trails on surrounding property values. While it may be a common perception that trails will always bring some type of economic benefit to the surrounding area, what type of trail and how much it affects property values varies greatly by location, timing, and the available information for academics to study.

There are a multitude of techniques that can be used to measure this increase, the most common begins with a perception based approach. This approach utilizes primary survey and interview work to categorize and quantify stakeholder perceptions on the impact of greenways and trails.

Another method commonly used for analysis involves the travel-cost method. This method seeks to understand the spending habits of consumers as they make their way through or around a certain trail or greenway. One of the most common and perhaps most widely written about method is hedonic price modeling. This method attempts to capture any changes in “proximate properties” and compare them to previous findings (Crompton J. L., 2005). Finally, one of the newest ways to understand the impact of trails and greenways is the spatial auto-correlation approach. This method goes one step further in the hedonic price model by mapping and accounting for “spatial lag” when it comes to spatially auto-correlated properties (Conway, Christina, Wolch, Kahle, & Jerrett, 2008). With all these various models and methods the literature consistently points to a positive impact on property values by the nearby presence of trails and greenways. Even in the cases where no correlation is found, it is very difficult to find any evidence of a negative impact on property values, however as practitioners and public officials have found, getting the hard numbers can make a difference in planning for and paying for Greenways and Multi-use Trails.

The literature on the study of property value impact is dominated by author John L. Crompton, a professor at Texas A&M University. His multiple papers help create an exciting and

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easily accessible review of the current literature surrounding the topic. Beginning in 2001 and with several papers from 2005, Crompton repeats his common refrain that property values are indeed positively impacted by the presence of adjacent, park, trail, and recreation amenities (Crompton J. L., 2001) (Crompton J. L., 2001) (Crompton J. L., 2005) (Nicholls & Crompton, 2005) . Throughout his research and collaborations, Crompton discusses three important ideas; the proximate principle, which seeks to approximate the economic impact of said amenities, as well as the impact of distance, and the exact magnitude of the effect (Crompton J. L., 2001).

Perhaps this idea is summarized best in the collaborative article by Sarah Nichols and Crompton, The Impact of Greenways on Property Values: Evidence from Austin, Texas; “- the proximate principle suggests that the value of a specified amenity is at least partially captured in the price of residential properties proximate to it. Assuming that home locations adjacent or near to an open space such as a greenway are considered desirable, the extra dollars that home buyers are willing to pay to acquire such a residence represent a capitalization of the land into proximate property values. As a result of this rise in value, the owners of such homes typically are required to pay increased property taxes. If the yearly increment of value attributable to the greenway of all additional taxes paid for all proximate properties is calculated, this sum may be sufficient to cover the annual cost of acquiring, developing, and even maintaining the land.” (Nicholls & Crompton, 2005) While there is conflicting views as to the efficacy of using these increased home values as a source of future or current funding for the development of green amenities, it is still an alluring and interesting concept core to the idea of hedonic modeling. This modeling structure seeks to understand and infer the impact of a non-market resource, in this case a park, or greenway, from the prices of items physically traded in the market place, i.e. adjacent residential properties (Crompton J. L., 2005).

While there have been studies involving hedonic price modeling to understand the proximate principle dating back to the mid 1970’s, it wasn’t until the advent and utilization of Geographic Information Systems in the mid 90’s that researchers were able to compare and adequately organize all the spatial information required to develop a robust model of the phenomena (Lindsey, Man, Payton, & Dickson, 2004). Before this researchers had to painstakingly organize and interview multiple actors in varying fields in order to quantify

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greenway impacts. Most often this involved perception based methods as well as tracking home sales and property taxes over a period of time. Of these older studies, Crompton noted in his 2001 article The Impact of Parks on Property Values: A Review of the Empirical Evidence that only 5 of the 30 studies he examined were not supportive of the general proximate principle. In addition these atypical results could be the result of methodological deficiencies; specifically the relation to urban, suburban, and rural settings on the proximate principal being unique to each locale (Crompton J. L., 2001). Even in our modern connected and digitized world, the existing literature is still somewhat sparse in terms of completely quantifying the effects of greenways on property values, while accounting for various other factors. This apparent lack of a robust multiple regression modeling technique has been duly noted by Crompton and will hopefully be addressed by future literature (Nicholls & Crompton, 2005).

Moving forward there are two interesting additions to literature written in 2008 and 2013 respectively, that attempt to utilize spatial autocorrelation to “clean-up” the hedonic model, as well as attempting to understand the impact of specific trail and park amenities on proximate property values. The first A Spatial Autocorrelation Approach for Examining the Effects of Urban Greenspace, attempted to “fill this research gap by using a geographic information system (GIS) to create coverage variables for neighborhood greenspace that serve as explanatory variables in a hedonic pricing model.” (Conway, Christina, Wolch, Kahle, & Jerrett, 2008). This is one example that Crompton pointed to in attempting to quantify the specific aspects of greenspace on an urban setting, and doesn’t necessarily limit itself specifically to rail-trails, greenways, or multi-use trails, but the whole extent of the various forms of greenspace in general. The GIS methodology also attempted to correct for and control the effects of spatial autocorrelation through spatial regression techniques. This method helps to identify possible inefficient coefficient estimates, which can basically obscure the level of the relationship between one variable to the next, (greenspace – property values). This new innovative study concluded that while accounting for the age of housing, the size of the house, income, and proximity to freeways; there was still a positive effect on the sales price of homes by the presence of greenspace amenities (Conway, Christina, Wolch, Kahle, & Jerrett, 2008).

In addition to this 2008 study, a newer study from 2013 attempts to apply the hedonic model in order to understand the unique impact various different park amenities have on the

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proximate property values. In Examining the economic impact of park facilities on neighboring residential property values, Lin and colleagues attempt to separate the various amenities based not only on their use, but also their distance to various properties (Lin, Changshan, & De Sousa, 2013). While it is not surprising that their findings echo Tobler’s first law of geography, that items further away from the source have a smaller effect than items closer to it, some of their specific amenity results are a little more counter-intuitive. Their review of past literature and their own evidence suggests that a threshold of around 600 ft. indicates a positive relationship to property values, while passive recreational uses usually have a higher positive relationship to property values than do active recreational amenities (Lin, Changshan, & De Sousa, 2013).

While their specific findings do breakup the passive and active amenities into various items, water features, gardens, skate parks, general open-space etc‌ it is sufficient to note the difference between passive and active results with general passive greenspace having the most positive impact and skate parks and children’s facilities having the least, and in some cases negative impact. They explain various hypothesis as to why this may be, with the idea of noise and congestion topping the list of negative impacts associated with active space (Lin, Changshan, & De Sousa, 2013).

While there exists an ever-growing body of work on the impact of trails and greenways on proximate properties there is still a need to continually update this literature with new and exciting studies like the 2013 study by Lin and colleagues. In the end planners and public officials would do well to heed the various recommendations and results that these studies indicate, specifically that certain amenities are more suited to different levels of population density, and that stakeholder perception of these attributes will often contradict common sense. It is an encouraging thought however, that most if not all of the literature does still point to a positive, and sometimes strong positive relationship between trails and property values, a fact that we can certainly back up with the existing literature on the subject.

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Works Cited Conway, Delores, Christina Q. Li, Jennifer Wolch, Christopher Kahle, and Michael Jerrett. "A Spatial Autocorrelation Approach for Examining the Effects of Urban Greenspace on Residential Property Values� Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics 41:1 (2008) 150-169. Print.

Crompton, John L. "The Impact of Parks on Property Values: A Review of the Empirical Evidence." Journal of Leisure Research 33.1 (2001): 1-31. Print.

Crompton, John L. "The Impact of Parks on Property Values: Empirical Evidence from the past Two Decades in the United States." Managing Leisure 10.4 (2005): 203-18. Print.

Crompton, John L. "Journal Search Results for Perceptions of How the Presence of Greenway Trails Affects the Value of Proximate Properties:." Journal of Park and Recreation Administration 3 (2001): 114-32. Web. Lin, I-Hui, Changshan Wu, and Christopher De Sousa. "Examining the Economic Impact of Park Facilities on Neighboring Residential Property Values." Applied Geography 45 (2013): 322-31.

Print.

Lindsey, Greg, Joyce Man, Seth Payton, and Kelly Dickson. "Property Values, Recreation Values, and Urban Greenways." Journal of Park and Recreation Administration 22.3 (2004): 69-90. Print.

Nicholls, Sarah, and John L. Crompton. "Impacts of Regional Parks and Property Values in Texas." Journal of Park and Recreation Administration 23.2 (2005): 87-108. Web.

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(From Contemporary Issues in Historic Preservation) 10/12/14

Rightsizing: Re-thinking the Rustbelt While some American cities continue to rebound and indeed grow following the recession of 2007-08, other older cities especially in the “rustbelt”, require more work and patience to see their fortunes turned around. While many people are familiar with the historic underpinnings of the term rustbelt, it’s still important to remember the manufacturing and employment hubs that these cities once were. Of course these industries have not lost complete relevance for these cities, but it has forced them to re-think and reimagine their roles in the world marketplace. With this shift in employment we also saw a huge shift in population patterns spurred on by the urban renewal policies of the mid-century. Nowhere can this shift be so easily seen as in Cleveland; with a population of almost 1 million in the 1950’s it has now perhaps stabilized at around 400,000 (U.S. Census Bureau.) This might not seem as big as a problem until you consider that the size of our infrastructure (Cleveland proper), has not significantly changed since then, leaving huge swaths of land vacant and once thriving neighborhoods neglected and abandoned.

This is where the term rightsizing enters our professional lexicon and gives us a tool as planners and historic preservationists to combat urban population loss and decay. According to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation in their 2012 report, “Historic Preservation and Rightsizing”, the term has come to entail, “-the process of reshaping physical urban fabric to meet the needs of current and anticipated populations.” From this definition we can garner that rightsizing has been seen as a more infrastructure focused term, while it appears however that developments in the literature and in practice have come to embrace a myriad of processes that help combat the problem. While these tools eventually do address the physical issues of aging housing stocks, outmoded industrial structures, and inefficient office spaces, they can also highlight the social and political motives from which many of these physical problems have arisen. White-flight, gentrification, and the middle class suburban dream are all concepts that we are familiar with that have contributed to the need for rightsizing and perhaps allude to a greater underlying issue beyond the forces of the marketplace as they have shaped our urban centers.

Beyond the weightier racial, moral, and political issues that have affected our rustbelt region, we

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find certain cities poised to make a comeback in terms of not only population but also national and world significance as employment centers and innovation leaders. Cleveland is among those cities with a downtown population of around 12,500 people (which is expected to balloon to over 25,000 in the coming decade), that has found itself asking the question; what are the best practices for efficiently providing for this population influx while utilizing and celebrating the resources we still have? This is where historic preservation steps in and plays a huge role in identifying those resources and guiding our decisions about how to best utilize them in terms of our rightsizing dilemma.

Like many other planning tools and ideas, rightsizing can be understood in terms of public and private interventions. In the public realm many people are familiar with the idea of landbanks, which seek to hold or “mothball” land until it can be redeveloped/repurposed based upon the guidelines set forth by the land-bank and its governing bodies. On the private end, we see interventions happening in response to market-driven demands such as the residential housing surge currently being experienced in downtown Cleveland. This is where one might debate whether historic preservation tax-credits fall under public or private, and indeed it’s a little bit of both. While the initial funding is public, it requires that private capital be leveraged along with it. The end result has been a positive one for the program, according to a report by the National Park Service in 2013, since the program’s inception in 1977, the nation has invested almost 70 billion dollars and created around 2.4 million jobs, with the overall economic impact clearly in the green.

For Cleveland, like most cities engaged in rightsizing, no single approach is able to combat the immensity of the problem alone, indeed the ACHP recommends, “… the urgent need for a comprehensive, locally tailored approach to long-range planning, better federal tools to support it, and a more effective strategy to integrate historic preservation into planning decisions.” This comprehensive locally tailored approach is crucial to the success of any rightsizing endeavors and Cleveland has done its fair share to emulate this model.1

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Another method of quantifying this locally tailored approach is seen in the report, “Putting the Right in RightSizing” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. On page 31 and 32 of this publication is a rightsizing checklist that assigns points to certain planning best practices, and can serve as a quick reference guide toward understanding the myriad of tools and options available to planners.

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In combination with the Cuyahoga County Landbank, Cleveland’s landbank has served as a national model in acquiring and repurposing vacant land and abandoned houses into useful amenities. Unfortunately, there are still more homes that need help then can be saved, and this is where strategic demolition comes into play. According to a recent article in the Plain Dealer from Feb 2014, Cuyahoga County is set to receive around 10 million dollars out of the 50 million doled out through the Federal TARP program for our region, unfortunately this is still not enough to solve the problem. 2 Removing blight is perhaps the most obvious and visible result of these efforts, but one most also consider the ramifications of the resulting vacant land. This is where the comprehensive, or holistic approach comes into play. First off, planning officials and historic preservation professionals must consider the impact on the urban fabric these structures represent. Many times over homes that could be renovated are destroyed not only because of a lack of preservation and professional rehabilitation knowledge, but also a lack of understanding of their impact on the neighborhood as a living social entity. Assuming that the correct structures are saved and the ones beyond help demolished, Cleveland must also employ creative approaches to land and neighborhood revitalization. These include: community gardens, adjacent side lots for existing homes, creative and flexible zoning codes that allow for urban agriculture, (including entrepreneurial startups like Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperatives,) as well as retention and land assembly for future redevelopment to name a few. Most cities are now moving to such models as we see in Cleveland whereas landbanks are no longer new innovations, but have proven themselves all over the rustbelt as an essential planning and historic preservation tool.

On the private side of rightsizing, Cleveland is leading the way in downtown reinvestment and reutilization. Ahead of the Republican National Convention in 2016 Cleveland has witnessed a resurgence of investment in hotel refurbishments, new construction, and repurposing. Along with this hotel boom, residential space is at a premium and vacancy sits at a healthy 5-6%. One needs only to look to the recently redeveloped Ameritrust Complex, transformed into “The 9” as an example of a public-private project redeveloped into mixed-use.

In this example we can see that rightsizing is more than just landbanks and demolitions, it must incorporate the existing urban fabric by identifying key components that can serve as anchors for

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This fact highlights Cleveland’s comprehensive involvement and relationship to state and federal agencies that help deal with rightsizing, bucking the rustbelt trend where only 40% of cities are consulting with federal agencies, (Rypkema, 2012)

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future re-development. Along with The 9, Cleveland is rife with examples of repurposed historic buildings, which are more and more being seen as the resources and amenities that they truly are.

Led by an innovative partnership with Sherwin-Williams, Cleveland developers have served as a national example in their creative use of historic tax-credits as a means to gain the traction necessary for these projects, (indeed the Geis Co. was able to leverage around $36 million in state incentives before the program was capped at $5 million!) In this way, historic preservation and the use of the invaluable historic-tax credit program, (both state and federal,) has given planners another tool in their rightsizing arsenal. While rightsizing may be seen as a more physical manifestation, it doesn’t always involve new construction or demolition. Understanding the social shift we are witnessing as a result of the “millennials” entering the housing and job markets is key to this notion. We now see cities like Cleveland poised to capitalize on the trend of young people realizing that they want the experience of a downtown lifestyle without the cost of living usually seen in bigger cities like New York, Chicago, and L.A. Another key component in Cleveland’s rightsizing agenda is the Cleveland Landmarks Commission. While initially more focused on preserving iconic buildings, the Commission also includes provisions for historic landmark districts. This is an important distinction that many of Cleveland’s rustbelt compatriots perhaps tend to underutilize. This tool in conjunction with Cleveland’s design review board allows for whole districts to be designated, which can pave the way for national historic recognition, further allowing for certain buildings within that district to be protected and eventually reutilized. Of course the system is not immune to the political nature of urban planning, especially in Cleveland’s case with its 13 wards and myriad of city councilmen. Projects must be greenlighted by individual councilmen, and often times this is at the whim of their relationships to developers, the mayor’s office, and their understanding of historic preservation. Political musings aside it is still an important tool and one that plays a key role in author and researcher Mandy Metcalf’s latest work. In her co-authored study, “Putting Historic Preservation on the Map: Right-sizing in Cleveland”, Ms. Metcalf takes a hard look at Cleveland’s landbank and historic preservation initiatives and attempts to quantify their role in the rightsizing debate. By overlaying current historic districts and landmarks with possible neighborhood retail clusters, Metcalf successfully raises the bar in our effort to understand spatially where our assets lie, and where we should be looking to invest and even perhaps where we are paying too much attention. Her work reverberates in the discussion of the need to

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approach the issue of rightsizing in a holistic manner; further enabling us to quantify our historic assets on the regional level, paving the way for intra-department dialogue between municipalities, CDC’s and other local planning entities.

It is with this notion of regionalitiy that we remind ourselves of the population loss that Cleveland has experienced in the last 60 or so odd years. While the city has lost population, the region itself has roughly maintained its population dynamics while continuing to eat up land on our region’s outer fringes. If one fault can be found in Cleveland’s newfound resurgence, it is not the lack of a cohesive regional vision, but most importantly, the lack of real municipal support for such a vision. This blemish is corroborated in two recent reports articulated by articles in the Cleveland Plain Dealer from earlier this year. The first report by Smart Growth America ranked Cleveland below almost 70% of cities national in for components that measure sprawl, ultimately meaning that fewer taxpayers are paying for a larger physical footprint. This report is further echoed in the findings of the VibrantNEO 2040 vision project. This federally funded project has called for a comprehensive regional approach to slowing fringe development while focusing on redeveloping existing urban centers and retail destinations. So while Downtown Cleveland may be poised to regain some of its vibrant urban feel, the surrounding neighborhoods like CentralKinsman, Fairfax, Hough, Slavic Village etc… continue to deteriorate at the hands of more than half a century of unmitigated urban sprawl.

While most if not all cities in the rustbelt use a majority of the rightsizing planning tools iterated throughout the literature and national advocacy reports, Cleveland has done a great job at holistically integrating many of these devices into its planning dichotomy through the work of many amazing individuals as well as the cooperation and corroboration of the multitude of local CDC’s. Still, with the transformation of downtown comes the continued deterioration of many of its core neighborhoods, and the immediate need of even more partnerships and database integration as evidenced by Ms. Metcalf’s work. Ultimately a regional vision is truly the path to correctly tackling and understanding the rightsizing dilemma as it exists in Cleveland and the rustbelt as a whole.

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Works Cited Alan Mallach, L. B. (2013). Regenerating America's Legacy Cities. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

American Planning Association. (1994). Planning and Community Equity. Chicago, IL: Planners Press.

Brower, S. (2011). Neighbors & Neighborhoods: Elements of Successful Community Design. Chicago, IL: Planners Press: American Planning Association.

Conway, D., Christina, Q. L., Wolch, J., Kahle, C., & Jerrett, M. (2008). A Spatial Autocorrelation Approach for Examining the Effects of Urban Greenspace on Residential Property Values. J Real Estate Finn Econ, 150-169.

Crompton, J. L. (2001). Perceptions of How the Presence of Greenway Trails Affects the Value of Proximate Properties. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 114-132.

Crompton, J. L. (2001). The Impact of Parks on Property Values: A Review of the Empirical Evidence.

Jornal of Leisure Research, 1-31.

Crompton, J. L. (2005). The Impact of Parks on Property Values: Empirical Evidence from the past Two Decades. Managing Leisure, 203-218.

Cullingworth, B., & Caves, R. W. (2009). Planning in the USA: policies, issues, and processes. New York, NY: Routledge.

Dorn, S. (2014, November 7). Retrieved from Cleveland.com: http://www.cleveland.com/hillcrest/index.ssf/2014/11/weeks_after_releasing_plans_fo.html#i ncart_related_stories Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. (1987). 1987 DSNI Revitalization plan. Boston, MA: DSNI. Eric Allison, L. P. (2011). Historic Preservation and the Livable City. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Green, G. P., & Haines, A. (2002). Asset Building & Community Development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc. Jones, B. (1990). Neighborhood Planning: A Guide for Citizens and Planners. Chicago, IL: Planners Press: American Planning Association.

Larsen, L., Sherman, L. S., Cole, L. B., Karwat, D., Badiane, K., & Coseo, P. (2014). Social Justice and Sustainability in Poor Neighborhoods: Learning and Living in Southwest Detroit. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 34(1), 5-18.

Lin, I.-H., Changshan, W., & De Sousa, C. (2013). Examining the Economic Impact of Park Facilities on Neighboring Residential Property Values. Applied Geography, 322-331.

Lindsey, G., Man, J., Payton, S., & Dickson, K. (2004). Peroperty Values, Recreation Values, and Urban Greenways. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 69-90.

Litt, S. (2014, April 3). Smart Growth America report on sprawl gives poor rankings to Cleveland and other Northeast Ohio cities. The Plain Dealer, pp. ---.

P a y n e | 18 Litt, S. (2014, February 25). Sustainability group approves Vibrant NEO 2040 Vision. The Plain Dealer, pp.

---.

Litt, S. (2015, March 31). The Plain Dealer. Retrieved from Cleveland.com: http://www.cleveland.com/architecture/index.ssf/2015/03/vibrant_neo_2040_regional_plan.ht ml Medoff, P., & Sklar, H. (1994). Streets of Hope: The fall and rise of an Urban Neighborhood. Boston, MA: South End Press.

Moloney, B. (2012). Putting the Right in Right-Sizing. National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Nicholls, S., & Crompton, J. L. (2005). Impacts of Regional Parks and Property Values in Texas. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 87-108.

Peterman, W. (2000). Neighborhood Planning and Community-Based Development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc. Ryan, S., & Hoff, A. (2010). Transforming Blight and the People Who Live There: A Study of Redevelopment Planning and Neighborhood Change. Planning Practice & Research, 24(5), 543561.

Rypkema, C. B. (2012). Historic Preservation and Rightsizing: Current Practices and Resources Survey.

Washington D.C.: Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

Scott, M. (2011, November 8). The Plain Dealer. Retrieved from Cleveland.com: http://www.cleveland.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/11/south_euclid_voters_saying_yes.html Silverman, R. M. (2004). Community Based Organizations: The Intersection of Social Capital and Local Context in Contemporary Urban Society. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.

Sirianni, C. (2007). Neighborhood Planning as Collaborative Democratic Design. Journal of the American Planning Association, 73(4), 373-387.

Slavic Village Development Corporation. (2007). Slavic Village - Broadway Development Action Plan.

Cleveland, OH: SVDC; Neighborhood Progress Inc.; City Architecture.

Slavic Village Development Corporation. (2012). Broadway Slavic Village Action Plan, Update 2012.

Cleveland, OH: SVDC. Steiner, F. R., & Butler, K. (2012). Planning and Urban Design Standards. Hoboken, NJ: American Planning Association; John Wiley & Sons.

The American Assembly. (2011). Reinventing America's Legacy Cities:Strategies for Cities Losing Population. Detroit: The 110th American Assembly.

Tobias, A. (2014, February 28). Cuyahoga County to receive $10.1 million in latest round of federal demolition funding. The Plain Dealer, pp. ---.

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Final Recommendations, Advocacy Section (Taken from A COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS PLAN: EAST CLEVELAND – UNIVERSITY CIRCLE, INC.) 12/6/2012

Creating social capital through emerging technologies and new organizational structures Leveraging the immense opportunities that exist within the framework of UCI and its various member institutions to the surrounding neighborhoods is no easy task. Luckily we live in the 21st century where new technologies and emerging organizing techniques are breaking down the barriers between information and action. One of the key components of advocacy, or equity planning, is giving a voice to those who are often not heard or under-represented. This can be accomplished in a number of traditional ways with the most obvious being the political process in place. Many times though this process fails to capture the true concerns and problems of its constituents. When this happens planners turn to other techniques such as community organizing through neighborhood meetings, neighborhood groups, and other public forums. Of course, even these techniques have inherent problems when a targeted citizenry lacks the appropriate selforganizing structure, motivation, education, and opportunity to mobilize themselves. Perhaps then what is needed before we can talk about specific programming interventions, is to address the issue of social capital and how it relates to civic engagement, as well as relating this to the role of the CDC, or in this case, Community Service Corporation, or CSC as a facilitator and mediator of such new programming and techniques.

The idea of social capital could be attributed to Robert Putnam’s (1993) milestone study, Making Democracy Work. Although Putnam himself may attribute the idea to the progressive reformer of the early twentieth century, L.J. Hanifan (1916) who first wrote about community involvement as a necessary precursor to solving society’s ills. It was Putnam (1995) that stated social capital, “refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (Silverman et al. 2004).

Expanding on this further Jo Anne Schneider (Cnaan and Milofsky 2007) would say social

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capital refers to “relationships based on patterns of reciprocal enforceable trust that enable people and institutions to gain access to resources such as social services, volunteers or funding.”

I believe this definition is a good fit because it expands on the idea of building networks or relationships of trust, and pushes it into the realm of civic engagement and activity. It could be argued then that social capital can act as a catalyst to civic engagement, but only when social capital is linked and bridged to appropriate actors or players within the overall power structure.

While not a totally new concept, indeed Saul Alinsksy, (1946) perceived of the notion that local community organizing could be a political strategy to satisfy particular needs as defined by that citizenry; social capital is a powerful concept when we frame it in terms of political, and financial capital, all of which can be leveraged together to actually get something accomplished (Silverman 2004). Relating back to social capital, Schneider (2007) would posit that three types of social capital exist, closed, or that of “bounded communities” such as insular faith-based organizations and protective neighborhood block organizations, bridging social capital, which occurs when closed capital reaches out horizontally to similar networks, such as when a block club and church group work together, and linking social capital, which seeks vertical integration through the connection between such neighborhood organizations and government officials and academic professionals. It is with this concept and definition that we can turn back to the particulars of East Cleveland. It has become apparent through our research that the city is home to numerous “closed social capital” networks: churches, city council, block clubs, etc… that while all seeking the same things - jobs, security, opportunity have not been effective at integrating vertically and horizontally in a way that serves to agglomerate the many voices crying for help in the city.

In order to better understand this concept we turn to the idea of sociocultural milieu and institutional infrastructure. While sociocultural milieu refers to the idea of community-building opportunities expressed through a strong neighborhood identity, institutional infrastructure examines the level of formal organization that exists within a neighborhood (Sahd, Silverman 2004). What is needed is a marrying of these two concepts to bridge structure with identity. In their work, “Social Capital and Neighborhood Stability: An Empirical Investigation” Temkin and

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Rohe attempt to quantify this identity aspect with various levels of institutional organization. The authors summed it up best by saying: “the neighborhood must be able to leverage a strong sense of place into a collective movement that is able to form alliances with actors outside the community and influence decisions that affect the neighborhood’s character over time” (Temkin and Rohe 1998:70) This is exactly the kind of action previously mentioned when referring to bridging and linking social capital that exists in order to further community and citizen’s goals. The question then becomes how to do this. How do we create the famous informed and engaged citizenry our founding fathers desired, while accommodating the various actors; from citizens, to local groups, to political institutions to private developers, etc…? While a CSC such a UCI can serve as a facilitator for such interaction Sahd would argue that CDCs at such a large scale as UCI “can be seen as a third sector of the political economy of the city, taking a legitimate place alongside the government and private sectors, (sic) however, they are not structured to engage citizens.” While many elements of UCI do seek to engage citizenry through participation in programming and events, it is the citizenry of East Cleveland that must come together through organizing, consensus and knowledge building, and finally informed action to dictate the services, development, and programming they desire and need for themselves and the city. How exactly do we accomplish this then?

The answer really lies right in front of us in the Knowledge

form of the internet and social media. By creating a free wireless network such as was done in the Old Brooklyn neighborhood in Cleveland, and the creation of a new community organizing website, (which I will refer to as

Forum / Message Boards

Portal

Community

Portal) we can at one time attempt to close the digital divide while also creating a forum for citizens to gain access to various kinds of information: neighborhood

News and Events

meetings and events, different organizing and learning opportunities, as well as links to health, wellness, education, and job training programs incorporating and facilitated by the various actors within Cleveland such as UCI, Neighborhood Connections Inc., Neighborhood Progress Inc., and the North-East Ohio Alliance for Hope. The

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vision for Portal goes way beyond what we currently think of as an Online Community or OLC, and seeks to incorporate various aspects of social media, forum and message boards, as well as act as a depository of information and linkages to community tools, social services, and a whole wealth of information for the user.

The first thing to understand about Portal is that its efficacy would rely heavily on the ability of everyone in the community to have access to it. The first step in creating online equity would be the implementation of a free wireless network such as was accomplished in Old Brooklyn by Ward 13 councilman Kevin Kelley in 2011. The project was reputed to cost 1.2 million dollars and was financed through federal and city money to be maintained over a 5 year period. (Plain Dealer 4/30 2011). In the case of East Cleveland such a project could be accomplished by a joint venture between Case Western University on the technical end, managed by UCI which could also help to direct layer-cake financing solutions, as well as help manage the multiple partners such a project would surely necessitate to ensure implementation. Such an initiative could also be tied into existing computer education programming already taking place at the East Cleveland Library. This additional programming initiative would help teach and train people on how to connect to the network as well as how to get the most out of Portal, their new city-wide homepage. Given the advancements already seen in internet technology it is quickly becoming an educational imperative that people understand how to utilize this medium for job, educational, and community organizing purposes.

The goal of Portal would be to marry knowledge building with community organizing through access to multiple organizations that already deliver such services. Portal would act as the virtual meeting place for citizens and organizational professionals, including academic, political and institutional, in order to share and disseminate information. This would be accomplished by integrating various existing social media outlets with a comprehensive calendar of events, ranging from neighborhood block level to city-wide events, incorporating a dedicated forum and message board system moderated by citizen facilitators and professional moderators.

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It has been widely said that the devil is in the details, and Portal is no exception. Besides arguing its efficacy as a social capital building vehicle; how does Portal differ from the myriad of websites already out there? First of all, one thing that would differentiate Portal from traditional OLCs is its commitment to engaging the youth of East Cleveland as well as its focus on community events and organizing. A 2010 study by the Pew Research Center found that 75% of 12-17 year olds now own cell phones, while 25% of all teens use their phone for social media.

While the numbers might vary for the youth of East Cleveland, it would be hard to deny this common knowledge that young people are already accessing the internet through their phones and communicating with each other at a level not seen in older generations. Indeed it is this community without propinquity (Mesch 2007) that is evolving into a shared place for communication and dissemination of information. With so many young people already knowledgeable about the internet why not take advantage of that fact by creating a venue specifically for them within Portal as a way to introduce them to civic engagement and the myriad of educational opportunities, community events and functions, that exist within University Circle and East Cleveland. The youth programming on Portal would be directed toward the existing educational initiatives setup by UCI and its partner organizations, as well as providing a platform for experimenting with new programming and organizing techniques.

The ultimate goal of Portal is of course creating and building upon real-world interactions that will ultimately bridge social capital and allow it to be leveraged against the political and financial capital that already exists within UCI and its anchor institutions. While research is ongoing and hotly debated upon this topic it is important to understand that with Portal we have the ability to redefine what an OLC really is and what it can be. One of the first studies on the Internet and its impact on social interaction was conducted in 2000 by James Katz and Ronald Rice. The Syntopia Project was created in order to provide a more comprehensive account of internet use, thus, the authors used quantitative data as well as case studies to elaborate upon access (the digital divide), use of the internet for social interaction and expression (identity) and involvement with groups and communities through the internet (social capital). Their findings indicate that the majority of people use the internet as an enhancement and extension of their daily routines (Katz and Rice 2002). Their findings have been corroborated by various other researchers (Hampton and Wellman 2003, Matzat 2010) that the internet and OLCs are neither definitively harmful to face-to-face interactions, nor is there evidence that they specifically

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encourage such meetings. Ultimately their success relies heavily upon the ability to be embedded into real-world programming, where constituent users have a say in the type of content and structure of the OLC. This ties into the creation of Portal, which could be accomplished through a research project by the Mandel School at Case in conjunction with UCI to hold neighborhood charrettes and meetings to determine the exact direction, definition, and content contained within Portal. Once the initial framework has been decided upon various anchor institution professionals would take on the role as moderators for various sections of the forum and calendar aspects of the website, while incorporating citizens into the administrating aspect as the project developed further.

Another aspect of Portal that differentiates itself from other such community organizing vehicles is its particular attention to moderation and social interaction. With the internet comes the ability to remain anonymous. This has inherent strengths and weaknesses; while it may allow for a more candid exploration of ideas and knowledge sharing, it can also lead to the lurker problem, whereas people visit and use the site but don’t contribute or interact in the real-world (Mesch 2007). While anonymity can have its benefits, interaction and disclosure of persona could be accomplished through a facilitator-based system similar to that employed by Neighborhood Connections Inc. The basic premise of NCI is to create learning circles on various social issues that serve to start conversations between citizens, with the goal of developing citizen facilitators that can run their own circles, and eventually lead to the formation of new ideas rewarded via a grant based funding system. Portal’s facilitator system would seek to reward those who want to get more involved by connecting their efforts online with real-world interactions through participation in programs such as NCI’s as well as perhaps the creation of new leadership and job-training initiatives. If UCI and its anchor institutions really want to see community organizing happen from within, other incentives such as the creation of a point based reward system could be initiated. This incentive system could provide free tickets to events, special invitations to institutional functions, restaurant and business coupons that serve to incorporate those citizens who show interest in leadership into the surrounding University Circle institutions and businesses. The same could be done but at an appropriate level for the youth who use the system, perhaps being rewarded if they attend events and meetings. While such a system

P a y n e | 25

would be controversial, it would have to have a limited ceiling and could be funded only during the initial starting of Portal, the goal being that people will eventually see the benefits of using such a website, without being incentivized to do so.

In order to better understand the efficacy of its programming, UCI and its fellow institutions as well as East Cleveland organizations could use Portal as an immediate feedback tool via online surveys, comments, and moderated conversations to assess what works and what doesn’t. Surveys could be embedded into the very nature of Portal so that people get used to seeing them as a tool to influence particular changes they would like to see. This could be everything from large important political/social issues, or very basic like trying to understand what kind of programming for Wade Oval Wednesdays would bring out the most people. In addition to this immediate feedback aspect of Portal, the website and indeed the whole wireless project could serve as a case study for CWRU students and faculty wishing to study how new technologies impact social capital and civic engagement, (similar to Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb Hampton and Wellman 2003). Indeed perhaps some or the majority of the funding for the initial infrastructure, web-hosting, and site implementation could come from grants for research in conjunction with federal and local grants in addition to corporate sponsors invested in the area like G.E. and MCco. We all know that East Cleveland is struggling; deteriorating infrastructure, dilapidated housing, failing (but new!) schools, etc‌ however before we can address advocacy issues like health, education, and wellness we must strive to create bonding social capital that serves to educate and inform citizens giving them a voice to influence change together. By promoting and creating a platform for dialogue, advocacy issues could proliferate through the free exchange of ideas and knowledge supported by the various institutions and professionals, politicos and academics that work within and for the citizens of East Cleveland. Not only would Portal act as an information clearinghouse with potentially an unending variety of links to social, health, and educational services, it would also act as a social foci of activity, that would serve to bridge the gap between gender, age, and profession by facilitating a moderated forum whose intent was to not only introduce people and ideas to one another, but get them involved through embedded real-world programming incentivized through leadership and community organizing

P a y n e | 26

opportunities. In conclusion, the emerging trend of social media and internet use as a medium for communication and dissemination of information has become to be seen as a right and necessity for furthering educational, intellectual, and professional aspirations of all global citizens. In this light it can be seen as a key opportunity in fostering community organizing initiatives that seek to build and bridge various types of capital, including social, political and financial. In regards to fostering civic engagement the building of social capital seems to be a unique indicator and one in which the internet will surely play a vital role in (Hayward 2012). By utilizing community involvement and feedback in its creation, a new website could come to life that would enable further study into this important trend as well as provide an essential “portal� into the 21st century for its users, the citizens of East Cleveland.

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Works Cited Hampton, Keith, and Barry Wellman. "Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb." City and Community 2.4 (2003): 277311. Print.

Hayword, Jon. "Election 2012 Is a New Social Media Era of Hashtags, Likes and Tweets."

Human Events 68.41 (2012): 12. Web. Katz, James Everett., and Ronald E. Rice. Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access, Involvement, and Interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2002. Print.

Lenhart, Amanda. "Teens, Cell Phones and Texting." - Pew Research Center. Pew Internet and American Life Project, 20 Apr. 2010. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1572/teens-cell-phones-text-messages>.

Matzat, Uwe. "Reducing Problems of Sociability in Online Communities: Integrating Online Communication With Offline Interaction." American Behavioral Scientist 1170-1193 53.8 (2010): 1170-193. Print.

Moeller, Susan. "NEW STUDY: Mobile Phones Put the 'Social' in Social Media." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 03 Oct. 2012. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-moeller/new-study-mobile-phonesp_b_1927945.html>.

Putnam, Robert D. "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital." Journal of Democracy 6.1 (1995): 65-78. Print.

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Putnam, Robert D., Robert Leonardi, and Raffaella Nanetti. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1993. Print.

Sahd, Brian. Community-based Organizations: The Intersection of Social Capital and Local Context. Ed. Robert Mark. Silverman. Detroit, MI: Wayne State UP, 2004. Print.

Schneider, Jo Anne, and Gustavo S. Mesch. Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organizations. Ed. Ram A. Cnaan and Carl Milofsky. New York: Springer, 2007. Print.

Temkin, Kenneth, and William M. Rohe. "Social Capital and Neighborhood Stability: An Empirical Investigation." Housing Policy Debate 9.1 (1998): 61-88. Print.

Interview of Tom Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien from Neighborhood Connections Inc. and Christin Farmer from University Circle Inc. were also conducted and incorporated by Caylen Payne Fall Semester 2012

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(Final Paper for Planning Law) 5/6/2013

An Overview of the Mt. Laurel Saga

In 1975 a case was brought against the township of Mount Laurel New Jersey that was to have a lasting impact on social welfare, affordable housing, and civil rights that remains hotly contested to this day. Beginning with the civil rights movement of the mid 60’s America had begun to turn its attention to the less fortunate and often discriminated members of its society.

While the movement initially began with an emphasis on racial discrimination, by the end of the decade and the creation of the Fair Housing Act (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968), civil rights had expanded in order to accommodate the myriad of other unjust social institutions of the era, in this case housing. While the FHA was not the first such act, it was still the first time the U.S. Federal government stepped in and provided a framework for housing equality. Of course one huge caveat remained, how to enforce and regulate this often ambiguous mandate.

The first Mt. Laurel case, Mt. Laurel I was brought against the township by the Southern Burlington County NAACP on behalf of all low-income African-American peoples who had been denied the opportunity to build decent housing for themselves due to Mt. Laurel’s large-lot zoning ordinances. While most of us in the planning field are aware of exclusionary zoning practices, such as large-lot zoning, this was still a hotly debated issue at the time, with even Justice Hall stating first that, “There cannot be the slightest doubt that the reason for this course, large-lot zoning, of conduct has been to keep down local taxes on property…).3 He goes on to state that no non-fiscal considerations were taken into place when this code was developed, and was therefore a result of the current tax-structure under New Jersey law. It is even questionable that Justice Hall at no point brings up race in his first opinion in Mt. Laurel I, instead relying on accessibility and economic issues to point out that it may be impossible for the lower paid industrial and municipal employees of the region to actually live where they work. His decision to exclude race on behalf of diversity also brings up the sensitive situation of the region’s demographics. By sidestepping race and focusing on economic class, the region’s majority low-

3

PCLD (459)

P a y n e | 30

income white population stood to be the dominant beneficiary of any new laws created from Mt. Laurel solely on the basis of numbers. While this side-note may not make or break Mt. Laurel it is still interesting to note. Whatever Justice Hall’s intentions were, the court decided in favor of the plaintiffs and ruled that the township’s zoning ordinances made it “economically and physically impossible” to create low and moderate income housing within the township.4 Of course the devil is in the details and Mt. Laurel I was no exception. Among the various shortcomings of the decision were such issues as: How to define low and moderate-income households, less than 50% of area median income was the accepted standard for low-income households at the time, but would this keep up with population growth and increased scrutiny?

Additionally Justice Hall adverted to the then current paradigm that municipalities must “make realistically possible an appropriate variety and choice of housing.”5 This, in addition to the fairshare and region vs. developing municipality question, left everyone wondering exactly what was meant by “realistically possible”, and “fair-share”. While the court’s decision was definitive, it lacked depth and clarity and perhaps any real, applicable remedy to the problem at hand. It would not be until 1983 with a second Mt. Laurel (II) that things became a little more tangible, however as we know even this second supreme court ruling would not stop the litigation, debate, and turmoil that has continued to this very day.

Due to the ambiguity and lack of administrative remedies in Mt. Laurel I, a second case involving six separate appeals was brought before the Supreme Court in 1980 and finally in 1983 the court ruled in what has become known as Mt. Laurel II. While the first ruling relied on localities and municipalities to simply “comply”, ML2, was more about remedies and solutions.

Obviously these were not all-encompassing solutions but still paved the wave for subsequent legislation, litigation, and further controversy. One of the first positive aspects of the ML2 remedies was the distinction between “developing” areas and those designated as growth regions by the State Development Guide Plan. This was a step in the right direction in that it handed control over to long-range planning and development guidelines created by professionals in determining which areas had to comply with the “fair-share” guidelines. With this step forward came a step back in the appointment of a three-judge panel that would handle subsequent litigation produced from the decision. While at first glance this makes sense, seeing as it keeps 4 5

http://njlegallib.rutgers.edu/mtlaurel/aboutmtlaurel PCLD (461)

P a y n e | 31

the lower courts clear of costly court cases, it still does not put power back in the hands of elected officials, or planning professionals. If the first remedy was to satisfy the need for improved coordination and continuity of the decision making process the second one surely took a step backward in laying the groundwork for even more litigation and judicial intervention in what many other states and municipalities have decided is a legislative affair. The “builder’s remedy” of ML2 was intended to provide relief for those developers who had exhausted all attempts to gain site approval for low-moderate housing projects, but did little more than create costly and prolonged court battles, some of which continue to this day.6 Of course Mt. Laurel II was only yet another chapter in the saga that is New Jersey’s affordable housing conundrum; however it did yield concrete results in terms of providing for the framework to move forward. By moving forward I mean yet again back to the courts. Due to the hundreds of developer suits that came to court the New Jersey legislature enacted the New Jersey Fair Housing Act of 1985 which in turn spawned the creation of a state agency, the infamous Council on Affordable Housing, or COAH. The goal of COAH was to establish 10 year obligation goals for local governments as well as the power to certify plans adopted by said municipalities, thus granting them immune to builder’s remedy litigation.7 Before delving into COAH and the myriad of events that bring us up to the current state of affairs, it is necessary to note some of the more interesting aspects of the fair housing debate that ML2 brought up. The first of which is the removal of excessive restrictions and exactions as to remove barriers to affordable housing for New Jersey’s poor. While at first glance this seems like obvious political rigmarole, it might have more far reaching consequences then originally intended. It is assumed that several factors go into housing prices, including the price of the land, the actual cost of development, and the meeting of local regulations and provisions, for which the later can make or break certain projects. Given the chance to build most developers will if there is a profit to be made, and in the case of the West-Coast and North Atlantic states most did, but in turn shuffled off the cost of meeting regulatory requirements to the tenants, those of which like the low-medium income class became excluded.8 It took until 1991 with the publication of a federal advisory report on Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing for this issue to be fully 6

http://njlegallib.rutgers.edu/mtlaurel/aboutmtlaurel Mt. Laurel and Perils of Social Policy 8 PCLD (463) 7

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addressed but yet it still remains an issue given that a 10% reduction in housing prices may benefit the rich more than the poor given the ratio of housing prices to household income.

However intriguing this issue is, there are two others from ML2 that still echo in planning law to this day. The first of which is the affirmative measures remedy which states basically that a municipality must actively seek ways to incentivize their fair share of affordable housing by providing for the timely dispersal of government aid as well administrative and legislative reform in order to create real housing opportunity, whether or not they are “growing”. 9 The other remedy of mandatory set-asides touches upon the idea of inclusionary zoning in that it requires developers and municipalities to “set aside” anywhere between 5 and 25 percent of new housing units to low-moderate income individuals within designated areas. While this seems like the affirmative action described above it still lent itself to intense debate as to the best way to go about this; rent-control, contract-zoning, and maximum footage zoning were all tools used to comply with the new remedy but all still failed to stop the flood of litigation that followed.

Back to 1985 with the NJFHA and the creation of COAH the following year the New Jersey state legislature had taken the bull by the horns and created legislative action that would allow for true implementation of the Mt. Laurel doctrines of fair-share and realistically possible variety and choice of housing, or so it would seem. With COAH came the controversial creation of the Regional Contribution Agreement (RCA) which allowed municipalities within the same zone, (New Jersey law had created six housing regions to be administered by COAH with the 1985 FHA and the adoption of the State Development and Redevelopment plan of 1986), to sell fair-share obligations to other municipalities for an agreed upon dollar amount. In turn the receiving municipality agreed to absorb up to 50% of the sender’s fair-share obligation.10 While it would be easy to deride this approach based upon previous evidence of segregation and exclusion there are interesting economic and social implications of such an arrangement. First off, economically it creates a closed market of buyers and sellers of low-income housing units, with market equilibrium being somewhat determined by externalities like negotiating power, geography, and the racial and social fabric of a municipality instead of a free-market approach as traditional economic theory would dictate. These “buying” municipalities are likely responding to their residents’ perceived desire to maintain property values and certain standards of living 9

PCLD (472) A Market for Exclusion, (211)

10

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while effectively excluding at least half of the low-moderate income strata from attaining a reasonable variety and choice of adequate housing.11 While in some circumstances it may seem advantageous to a municipality with an abundance of dilapidated housing units to receive financial consideration for the re-building and maintenance of such limits, does it not also maintain the status-quo of housing segregation to some extent, not to mention the affect on the housing market? It is this willingness to pay to exclude coupled with a buyer’s market, (due to the fact that many selling municipalities must compete with one another in the same region, in addition to lacking the capital necessary to re-build on their own,) that seems wholly out of line with the Mt. Laurel doctrine. Besides the additional bureaucracy and questionable ethical considerations, perhaps in some ways it is realistic; if cities are going to do all they can to exclude anyway, one might as well tax them for it and setup a system by which at least some benefit from this behavior, although it really doesn’t feel like a step in the right direction, does it?

Aside from the RCA which was upheld by the Supreme Court and the addition of development fees extracted from those developers unwilling to accommodate low-income housing, COAH can be seen as a significant step forward from Mt. Laurel I in that it had legislated authority to oversee long-range planning and development efforts and a schema in place to determine fair-share. By the year 2000, 29,000 units had been completed or were under construction with another 7,000 in the pipeline; in addition over 7,000 affordable housing units had been rehabilitated.12 While this was still far short of the demand for such units, New Jersey was at least building at the national average. It was around this time that COAH was to enact its third round fair-share formulas for determining municipal affordable housing quotas. It was also at this time that the political landscape began to change with the election of a new governor and head of COAH, both of which were former mayors and outspoken critics of COAH. In the end the council did not adopt new rules until 2004 and in doing so removed the fair-share obligations set forth by ML2 and instead devised a “growth share” formula. With this new formula in hand, as well as complacency, statistical manipulation, and irreverence COAH had its hands tied until a suit was brought in 2007 that sought to strike down the third round rules.13 In 2008 the appellate

11

A Market for Exclusion, (213) The Mount Laurel Doctrine, (851) 13 The Mount Laurel Doctrine (853) 12

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courts struck down the provision, but by this time support for COAH had begun to erode, not only in the state legislature but by municipalities that had their hands tied in litigation and administrative ambiguity. Around this time legislation was enacted that essentially abolished the RCA component of the NJFHA, instead opting to force municipalities to use their development fees or lose them in four years. This was based on the reasoning that around 75% or these said fees were just being used as RCA’s instead of actually building A.H. in the region which needed it. This had the detrimental effect of not only alienating municipalities but now developers who relied upon the agreement to keep a steady income of new projects coming their way. In addition, while the RCA might have been ethically questionable, it still provided for a concrete and tangible way for housing to be built, regardless of intention.

At this point we have entered the “Great Recession” and the election of Governor Chris Christie, both of which seemed to be an end to COAH and a return to frivolous law-suits and unending litigation. Indeed, by 2010 COAH’s 2008 revision had been struck down yet again in appellate court, that in addition to its moratorium by the governor in favor of a task-force assigned to come up with alternatives, had effectively silenced the affordable housing council. It was around this time that the state legislature came up with a proposed S-1 legislation that gave municipalities more power in determining their fair-share and opted for a flat 20% rate if they could not come up with one. Affordable housing advocates never allowed the law to come to vote, instead A-3447 was introduced which offered an approach comparable to Massachusetts 40-B plan which called for a 10% set aside as well as other provisions for enforcement and enactment.14 While this new bill seemed to be a reasonable compromise, the governor has vetoed it, putting COAH again in limbo, while currently the Supreme Court is deciding the appeals from the 2010 appellate decision repealing the 2008 modifications! With the threat of yet more judicial wrangling and delay, the original Mt. Laurel doctrine is truly in limbo as neither the courts nor the legislature seem willing to agree on what exactly the best way is to interpret the New Jersey constitution when it comes to acquiring, possessing and protecting property, as well as pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness.

With such a hostile legislative environment and what has become to be seen as a highly politicized supreme court, New Jersey’s housing future has never been more in question.

14

Id.

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The solutions may be as easy as looking next door to Pennsylvania’s adoption of a relaxed affordable housing approach that allows for less intense development in the form of alternative high-density land use, such as mobile homes, townhouses, and apartments. Or perhaps a flat rate of 10% set-asides combined with inclusionary zoning incentives as well development fees will do the trick. Why not rely on the findings of COAH and combine multiple avenues of remediation, including long-range planning documents bolstered by current demographics and economic information. Perhaps using these tools in conjunction with the election of a governor willing to compromise will yield a solution. However, the real question lies in the intersection of politics, economics, and social freedom. How do we reconcile the 5th and 14th amendment with our free-market real-estate system while still providing for economic theory and market equilibrium? How does the free market impact racial segregation, and is it even the invisible hand of the free market, or the more visible hand of prejudice and ignorance that keeps suburbia opposed to integration with the threat of deflated property-values, crime and blight? While we wrestle with these questions COAH remains tied up in the courts, in despite of the fact it has helped over 100,000 people to obtain housing and that the NJ legislature passed a compromise bill in S1(2) in 2011 that seeks to remedy past errors and account for lessons learned in other states.15 We will have to wait and see in the meantime Allan Mallach provides us a theoretical framework for discussion in his Rutgers Law Review article, “The issue that the court grappled with … was the extent to which the constitution demands not only facially-neutral zoning, but affirmative steps- invariably involving allocation of financial resources- to overcome not zoning barriers as such, but the effects of the real-world interaction of zoning, housings costs, and real estate economics, in order to achieve the results sought by the court.”

It is precisely this intersection that remains so intriguing. On one hand we have the suburban American dream, on the other the blighted inner city. While the real-world may not be so stark, the socio-political divide that exists in America is real, and wholly taken on by Mt. Laurel. While no one would argue against the American dream of improving ones lot in life, few are reluctant to accommodate such changes as are necessary for the inclusion of all in this ethos.

While other eastern sea-board states have enacted fair-share paradigms, the lack of initial 15

The Fate of Affordable Housing Legislation

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legislative support for the Mt. Laurel doctrine remains at the core of its political controversy.

One could argue that with the adoption of S1(2) the people have spoken, but with a politicized supreme court and a retaliatory and determined governor, consensus seems far from attainable.

What is probable however is that the Supreme Court is unlikely to go against its previous decisions in regard to Mt. Laurel and will inevitably force all parties to come to some agreement on what is fair-share, variety of choice, etcâ&#x20AC;Ś While we wait for the politicos to drop their egos and come to a consensus families, seniors, and children wait for their fair-share of the American dream, how long they have to wait, is up to anyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s guess.

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Works Cited Addes, Kirah. "THE FATE OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING LEGISLATION IN NEW JERSEY: HOW GOVERNOR CHRISTIE'S PROPOSED S-1 LEGISLATION THREATENS TO UNDO THE NEW JERSEY SUPREME COURT DECISIONS IN MOUNT LAUREL I AND MOUNT LAUREL II." Seton Hall Legislative Journal 36.1 (2011): 82-105. Print.

"Affordable Housing Archive, New Jersey." The Mount Laurel Archive. New Jersey Digital Legal Library, n.d. Web. 3 May 2013. <http://njlegallib.rutgers.edu/mtlaurel/>.

"Affordable Housing Shrinks amid Legal Battle over Millions in Funds." Press of Atlantic City.

N.p., 4 May 2013. Web. 5 May 2013. <http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/education/affordable-housing-shrinks-amid-legalbattle-over-millions-in-funds/article_a837b324-b46e-11e2-b3f3-001a4bcf887a.html>.

Andrews, James, ed. "Low-income Housing Comes to Mount Laurel - at Last." Planning 63.7 (1997): 25. Print.

Hughes, M. "A Market for Exclusion: Trading Low-income Housing Obligations under Mount Laurel III." Journal of Urban Economics 29.2 (1991): 207-17. Print.

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Hughes, Mark A., and Peter M. Vandoren. "Social Policy through Land Reform: New Jersey's Mount Laurel Controversy." Political Science Quarterly 105.1 (1990): 97-111. Print.

Mallach, Alan. "The Mount Laurel Doctorine and the Uncertainties of Social Policy in a Time of Retrenchment." Rutgers Law Review 63.3 (2011): 849-66. Print.

Mandelker, Daniel R. "Equity Issues in Land Use." Planning and Control of Land Development: Cases and Materials. Newark, NJ: LexisNexis, 2005. 457-526. Print.

Payne, John M. "General Welfare and Regional Planning: How the Law of Unintended Consequences and Mount Laurel Doctrine Gave New Jersey a Modern State Plan." St. John's Law Review 73 (1999): 1103-123. Web.

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(Final paper for Neighborhood Planning) 5/3/2015

Neighborhood Planning: A Review and Analysis

Neighborhood Planning has come a long way since the days of the first National Housing Acts of the late 40’s and early 1950’s. Instead of looking at revitalization in terms of blight clearance and highway development, we have embraced a more holistic view as planners; one that seeks to incorporate all stakeholders into the fold. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the rise of Community Development Organizations like we see in Cleveland. Citizen involvement coupled with trained professionals has led a grassroots movement into a national model. Starting in the 1970’s with the Community Development Block Grant and moving on to today’s HUD TIGER grants, community participation and planning best practices have been codified into our democracy. This is a living process, one that is always changing as evidenced in the moving story of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative of the early 1980’s. When there is enough emotion to inspire people to action, with the right resources, outlets, and leadership, neighborhood planning can be a successful and effective method for changing not only the world around us, but our daily lives as well.

In order for a neighborhood plan to be effective there should be some sort of established timeline that dictates when and how the plan will be implemented. However, as we all know in real life things change; politics move left and right, funding sources come and go, and public participation wanes and grows. Take for instance the DSNI case, one of their main goals was affordable, clean, and safe housing. This took them almost ten years to accomplish, from 1984 to the first groundbreaking in 1993! (Medoff & Sklar, 1994) While this may be an extreme example, it isn’t necessarily an outlier. This issue points towards the variety of goals seen in various neighborhood plans. While we are accustomed to looking at neighborhood plan as a sub-area or small area comprehensive plan, they can also be simply functional plans to address very specific needs within the neighborhood boundary. As such, more established neighborhoods may have plans with a lifetime of 1-2 years, or until that specific need and goal are met. (Steiner & Butler, 2012)

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Ultimately, one could argue that it comes down to the goals and vision of the plan, as well as the stakeholders involved; what is the level of commitment from the public, what is the capacity of the local planning organization, and how much funding is needed? In the case of the Slavic Village – Broadway Development Action Plan published in 2007, the neighborhood plan was labeled a Strategic Investment Initiative with 10 distinguishable characteristics, but all arising from the mortgage crisis of that year. In this case, the plan was not officially updated until 2012, ostensibly due to the nature of the plan as a housing recovery and neighborhood planning tool. While those “in the know” were surely aware of how the plan was progressing during that 5 year period, it wasn’t deemed necessary to officially document and update the plan until substantial results had been witnessed. Whether or not those were all accomplished in the time period expected, is debatable. (Slavic Village Development Corporation, 2007) While the time period for different neighborhood plans can vary greatly in relation to the breadth and scope of the plan, what is for certain is that neighborhood planning should be cyclical in nature. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of CDBG funding which is an annual responsibility for most cities. While the program initially focused on larger cities of entitlement, increasingly the program has allowed itself to take on more of a neighborhood planning attitude towards its structure of community involvement. Take the case of Milwaukee, Wisconsin where the city was attempting to establish a more neighborhood-level representation during the development of its master plan. Therefore, the city involved neighborhood residents, training them to develop strategic plans regarding what their specific communities needed and what activities warranted funding. Each neighborhood being awarded a $10,000 grand in CDBG funds to implement its strategy. (Green & Haines, 2002) As we see in this last example the effective neighborhood plan should respond to the needs of the infrastructure of the community, human and environmental. The planning process is multi-faceted and should incorporate appropriate time spans that while flexible, help keep the planner and his/her stakeholders on track and heading in the right direction.

Often times a CDC or CDO may require the use of a professional planning firm or other type of consulting firm in order to carry out its mission of developing a neighborhood plan. Depending on the capacity of the organization and the nature of the plan in question, such consulting could come in the form of urban design, public participation,

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plan implementation and even full plan development. The question then becomes; how open should the process be in choosing such a firm and what the most important qualifying factors are in such a choice?

In order to begin the process of hiring an outside consulting firm, a CDC or neighborhood planning agency must first assess its own capacity versus the nature and goals of the plan in question. This will involve looking at the funds available for outside consultants, staff capacity in terms of expertise and hours available, and the ability of the CDC to train volunteers and lead other possible Non-Government Organizations in the planning process. (Steiner & Butler, 2012) Once these areas have been assessed it may be easier to determine what type of firm is best suited for the position. For instance, if it is found that the CDC has a strong capacity to recruit and mobilize a strong local volunteer effort, yet the plan calls for detailed urban design elements, then it may be appropriate to pick a firm whose architectural prowess, not their detailed knowledge of local attributes, exceeds other competitors for the job. In some instances multiple consultants could be called upon, given the availability of funding and the nature of the planning project. In the end, the process of discerning the varying attributes that will qualify an outside consultant depend on the nature and scope of the project, the level of involvement with the public, past work and proven track record, and finally, funding availability. (Cullingworth & Caves, 2009) It is also important to note that the type of funding a CDC or NGO receives may also dictate the type and qualities of an outside consultant. It could be the case that they have received foundation money that specifies the inclusion of local firms given the constraints set out by said grant. The same can be said for stipulations in federal funding that at times may dictate a higher point total, and therefore award funding to NGOs that demonstrate a commitment to local and sustainable hiring practices. This funding versus hiring question can also be applied toward the process itself of hiring an outside consultant, and how open, or not that process becomes.

To that end, two specific instances come to mind that illustrate the varying “openness” involved in hiring an outside consultant. The first and arguably “completely” open process comes to us from the DSNI hiring process. Being that the whole of DSNI was built on community participation, the hiring of an outside consulting firm emphasized resident control from the beginning and can even be seen in the makeup of the consultant selection committee which consisted of six board members, three residents and three agency representatives along

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with two non-voting experts. (Medoff & Sklar, 1994) They even went as far as to inform the various bidders during the RFP process that no one would receive final payment unless there was consensus in the neighborhood around the plan. This account is in sharp contrast to the hiring and consulting process described in a November, 2014 article from the Plain Dealer describing the private meetings held in Mayfield Heights over the design and development of a 15-acre shopping complex. For five months Mayor Anthony DiCicco, the city council president Teresi, along with other council members and city officials met with the local design firm URS Corp, and developer Coral Co. to discuss redevelopment plans. According to the city Law Director, “it wasn’t a public meeting, because it was not a meeting of council.” However Dennis Hetzel, executive director of the Ohio Newspaper Association brought up the fact that “even without council members present, the strategic planning committee itself could be subject to open meeting laws,” as interpreted by the Ohio Attorney General’s Sunshine Law Manual. In the end, the council held a public meeting when it came time to discuss the working plan, approve a work group and appropriate the budget, but even Teresi conceded that public sessions might have better served the public. (Dorn, 2014) These two examples serve to illustrate the varying openness and characteristics involved in the hiring of an outside consultant. Ultimately DSNI went with an outside-the-area firm that emphasized a commitment to public participation, while Mayfield Heights chose a local firm based on its local knowledge and past working history. In the end the public is best served when they are informed of certain decision making process and should get the chance for their voice to be heard in accordance with local laws and practices that promote good government and public inclusion.

As with any planning process, the success of a neighborhood plan is often dictated by the level of involvement of key stakeholders: business owners, developers, City and NGO officials, and especially by the residents themselves. As we’ve seen in the DSNI example a neighborhood plan can come about as a direct reaction toward horrific living conditions, building momentum until it becomes a functionally organized planning entity.

However, more often than not, a neighborhood plan comes to fruition at the behest of a multitude of actors. In the case of federal and state programs such public participation may be a requisite for funding, while in the Mayfield Heights case, it may be dictated by state and local laws

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covering open and due process. Whatever the impetus, the role of residents including members of a local NGO, are pivotal in setting goals and objectives within the neighborhood planning process.

Looking at the planning process in retrospective we see an early paradigm with the planner as practitioner, speaking on behalf of the community interests without relying on direct involvement in plan making. This began to change in the 1960’s where all facets of public and private life were exposed to intense debate and discussion. As a backlash to the urban renewal processes of the previous decade, community activists began to fight for power and control in the face of what they perceived as an unjust system. This led to what is considered a classic essay on public participation by Sherry Arnstein (1969) in The Journal of the American Institute of Planners. (Peterman, 2000) In the essay Arnstein describes an 8 rung ladder typology of citizen participation with the lowest being little or no citizen control, and the highest rung representing complete citizen control. The first two rungs represent manipulation and therapy, where no real control is given, and any participation or “control” is facial at best. The next three rungs, Informing, Consultation, and Placation, represent what Arnstein terms Tokenism, where citizens are aware of the process around them, and may even participate, but the process is one-way and may even be a charade, hence the term, tokenism. The final three rungs represent “degrees of citizen power,” Partnership, Delegated Power, and Citizen Control. (Peterman, 2000) (Green & Haines, 2002) This typology should set the stage for residents in setting goals and objectives when it comes to neighborhood planning. The later of the rungs allowing for shared power, authorized power, and ultimate empowerment to act as an almost local governing body over the decision making process. (Green & Haines, 2002) While we can all agree the final rung may not be appropriate or attainable in most circumstances, (save for DSNI and their amazing attainment of Eminent Domain,) the idea of shared and authorized power serves as a guideline dictating citizen involvement throughout the process. There are numerous examples in the planning literature where citizen involvement has transformed a neighborhood plan into a living document truly serving the needs of said community; take for instance the Comprehensive Planning process enacted in Seattle during the 1990’s where inclusive visioning was coined and neighborhoods given a $10,000 grant to “involve the broad community and all major stakeholders in defining a neighborhood vision.”

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(Sirianni, 2007) Or in the case of the Leclaire Courts public housing development on the southwest side of Chicago. Here, residents were embattled in a lengthy process to assume resident control of the housing complex similar to Boston residents in Bromely-Heath in the late 1970’s.

(Peterman, 2000) This is the type of citizen action that can be truly transformative during the planning process. This active participation dictates the goals and objectives throughout a neighborhood plan, one in which the local planning professionals have a role in organizing these needs and visions into a cohesive framework. According to Peterman (2000): Empowerment, resulting from citizen participation that leads to citizen control and citizen power, however, has broader applications and can be viewed as the ultimate goal of citizen action in any kind of neighborhood. In most instances, the mechanism by which empowerment and control are achieved has been the community organization. (p. 41)

This is where the NGO or in our case, SVDC comes in to play. While there have been numerous iterations of what the role of the neighborhood organization is throughout the years we can all agree that in the end we must be partners. As a planner you enter into partnership with those you serve seeking to empower them through education, leadership, and the implementation of planning goals and objectives. (Ryan & Hoff, 2010) In addition, one should serve as an advocate for the community through the various levels of government and the private sector seeking equitable solutions to the problems at hand. Over the years different methodologies have come and gone, yet we hope that what remains is what we consider truly “best practice”. In defining the role of residents and professionals who are part of NGOs like SVCD we see them as organizers, helping to steer the visions of the residents through the myriad of planning techniques at our disposal. Finally, planners must come to the table with not only “inside knowledge,” but with tools that will empower their fellow citizens. (Sirianni, 2007) These tools include not only the community organizing and planning process, but the raw data, whether it be financial, demographic or programmatic that helps inform and dictate the decision making process with facts, not prejudices and assumptions.

While there are many different ways to measure a neighborhood plan’s success, none may be more prominent than if the plan actually received funding and whether it had any discernable impact on the quality of life for its constituents. As previously discussed the case of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative serves as an excellent example of a

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successful plan that incorporated approval of participating residents in not only garnering wider support, but financial backing. In the DSNI example financing for the plan itself was heavily contingent upon citizen approval and participation. The Riley Foundation who contributed $100,000 of the $123,000 raised to pay for hiring of an outside consultant, did not want the plan to be merely an “academic exercise.” (Medoff & Sklar, 1994) To this DSNI replied, “This plan will not be shelved upon completion; residents and agencies in the neighborhood will be mobilized to advocate for the plan’s adoption by the City of Boston and the City’s financial community”. (p. 96) So in this example we see not only the need for a vote of approval in order to finance the plan, but also a consensus of the citizenry in order to prove to the powers that be that such a plan could be successful.

While this may be an extreme example where the involved citizens had such a high “rung” of power as to dictate a consensus vote in an RFP, it is not fully unheard of. Take for instance again the CDBG system devised in the mid 70’s transformed into today’s HUD Challenge and TIGER grant system. These federal grants require a high level of public participation and feedback in order to receive funding while stopping short of a majority approval requirement. As William R. Klein has said, “The problem comes when planners and public officials try to serve the interests of the minority in the face of a citizen participation process that may be heavily weighted to protect the interests of the majority” (American Planning Association, 1994, p. 159) This highlights the argument faced when a vote of approval by participating residents is needed in plan approval, or in financial funding. While in the DNSI case you had a planning committee made up of equal parts residents and organization members, which served to limit outside interference while representing the needs of the community, take for instance the situation experienced just a couple of years ago in the case of the Oakwood Country Club redevelopment in the City of South Euclid, OH. The private club had been sold to the city and after a lengthy private process with neighboring city Cleveland Heights over school taxes and various interested developers, a plan was presented to build a Super Wal-Mart along with a 21-acre park. Eventually this entailed a public referendum in order for re-zoning to occur that was of course subjected to various outside advertising at the behest of the developers and was eventually passed in November of 2011. (Scott, 2011)

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What we see in these two contrasting examples is that while a “vote of approval” in the form of positive public feedback through established planning best practices can serve as a backing for further financial and public support for a plan, it can also serve to undermine citizen input when put to a true “vote” through the inclusion of big-money spending in the form of advertisement and public opinion manipulation, (not to get into the whole of the American political process.) Many public officials and planning professionals would not argue with the notion of consensus building when it comes to neighborhood planning; however, the jury is still out, so to speak, when it comes to allowing citizen’s full control, or at least the ability to undermine a delicate and hard fought after planning process through a single voting act.

The notion of the comprehensive versus neighborhood plan is an old debate in planning circles and certainly still a viable and lively discussion. While it is easy to adhere to older notions of a comprehensive plan being solely generalized, what we find in modern planning is that even a comprehensive plan can include more specific elements of what we would label a neighborhood plan, and vice versa. (Cullingworth & Caves, 2009) Like any plan, comprehensive or neighborhood based, the plan itself will oftentimes be dictated by several key issues: the capacity of the planning organization, the availability of funding, and the participation of not only the citizenry but in the case of comprehensive plans, other NGO’s, as well as local and regional planning authorities. This being said, one’s recommendation of any plan should be based on such constraints as those dictated above in addition to the individual goals and objectives as described in the plan. Beginning with a large regional comprehensive plan as seen in last year’s award winning Vibrant NEO 2040 regional plan by the North-East Ohio Area-wide Coordinating Agency, the framework revolves around a set of policy and planning recommendations aimed at “trickle down” effect through more local planning agencies and NGOs. While NOACA and the non-profit Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium lack the authority to implement the plan in a codified and legislated manner, it will still serve as a general blueprint leading the region into a sustainable and healthy 21st century. Even in this massive regional document we see the public participation element addressed at a neighborhood level where “the region’s universities, major foundations and cultural institutions. Some 10,000 residents were consulted in scores of meetings.” were all engaged in the planning process. (Litt, The Plain Dealer, 2015)

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As mentioned before there is also the case of the Seattle comprehensive plan of 1994, Towards a Sustainable Seattle where fierce opposition and public unrest led to the mayor turning to the Department of Neighborhoods (DON) for advice. Under the leadership of Jim Diers, DON was able to develop 12 distinct district councils representing various Seattle neighborhoods whose leadership involved the appointment of individual district representatives responsible to not only elected neighborhood leadership, but the city of Seattle itself. (Sirianni, 2007) In the end neighborhoods were given the choice in developing a local plan or deferring to the comprehensive plan, whereas all 37 neighborhoods chose to participate. This resulted in what Sirianni has termed “Inclusive Visioning”, basically the city provided the resources in the form of “outreach tool kits” which sought to address the specific needs of each neighborhood enclave while also supplying the traditional planning elements of data, process, and programmatic tools.

(Ibid) In the end, all of the individual plans had to be approved by a panel of relevant city departments to make sure that the plans adhered to the comprehensive plan which itself had to adhere to the State of Washington’s 1990 Growth Management Act. (Ibid) This in the end is the kind of plan that any modern planner would hope to recommend given the capacity and financing available to him or her. One that seeks to coordinate regional and state-wide goals with local and neighborhood needs in an inclusive and participatory manner.

One of the goals of any planning process is to assess the level of capital: social, physical, and financial that exists within their planning geography. In order to do this planners have a multitude of tools within their reach that allow them to ascertain these various attributes. One of the most famous and well known of all such tools is the infamous Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, or SWOT analysis. While a SWOT analysis may end up identifying all types of capital it is especially effective at mobilizing and identifying the social capital of a neighborhood or planning area through its most common use as a public participation tool. While the planner must lead and facilitate the process, lending advice and feedback garnered from his or her research, knowledge, and planning practice the SWOT analysis is most effective in the public medium.

The idea of history as it pertains to the SWOT analysis is an interesting and multi-faceted one. On the planning side, history is an important tool that enables the planner to objectively tell the story of a neighborhood in order to educate and inform a citizenry throughout its decision

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making and planning process. In some instances this can serve to galvanize a group through a shared experience that brings them together, i.e. a special sporting event, or how a national disaster affected their community. While in the social arena it may serve a more functional role in “setting the record straight” on a particular issue relevant to the plan or the particular task at hand. According to Jones (1990): The point of recounting the area’s history is to strengthen the neighborhood’s identity by providing an understanding of where the neighborhood came from, what has been its uniqueness, what role has it played within the whole city’s story, what from the past can be built on for the future. (p. 64) An area’s history can often be a delicate and controversial topic depending on which side of history you stand. Take for instance the racial tension experienced in the mid 1960’s in many urban neighborhoods. Depending on which history book you read, you may recall the experience quite differently than those who directly experienced such events. This being said, a planner shouldn’t shy away from attempting to present an area’s history in an objective, informative, and positive light. This can serve as somewhat of a cathartic experience for people. Discussing an area’s history as a prelude to a SWOT analysis allows them to discuss negative events, and perhaps relate personal stories that put such events in a more generalized and less conflicted light. Eventually they may find that an area’s Threats, can also be seen as Opportunities, while certain Weaknesses in one area serve to highlight underlying Strengths in another. In this way history is a vital and necessary component to the efficacy of any SWOT analysis.

In the annals of the planning literature, plans are usually judged posthumously on the grounds of their effectiveness in achieving the particular vision set out in the planning document. Other times, plans may be judged as living documents, periodically reviewed on a funding and policy basis in order to determine their continued legitimacy as a political and social tool. In either case every planner will usually have their favorite and preferred type of plan relating to their uniqueness as a person and their particular area of study and focus as a professional. One could argue in the case of the three plans in question here, the 1987 DSNI Revitalization Plan, the 2007 Slavic Village-Broadway Development Action Plan, and the Detroit Shoreway Strategic Vision 2015-2017 that each plan is successful in responding to the specific problem or impetus from which it was derived. However, there are two ways to look at

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it, one is the academic; which plan represents the culmination of planning best practice in a cohesive and understandable manner, and which plan has been the most effective in achieving its goals in the timeframe set out and the manner of implementation?

To begin with, one most look at the age of all three documents in assessing their efficacy.

Firstly, the DSNI document will be 30 years old in only two years and therefore should be seen through a slightly forgiving lens. While the actual document is at times long-winded and grandiose in its goals and visions, perhaps this is a result of the perceived insurmountable goal the neighborhood and area was facing. Literally perceived as little more than a garbage dump and drug den by the public and many officials within Boston the Dudley Neighborhood took it upon themselves, with the help of many professional volunteers and actors, to systematically address the needs and concerns of its citizens. In this way, DSNI was a first in many things.

Their impetus came from within, not by some planning dictum handed down from the city or federal government and this remarkable document reflects that. They were sure to address and include almost every facet and concern raised by the neighborhood, whether or not they had a process or solution to each problem. At least they were addressing the problems, at least they were finally bringing a fighter to the arena in the form of their 230 page plan! With this in mind it could be argued that the DSNI plan has been the most effective. The creation of a Community Land Trust that survives to this day, the garnering of eminent domain to achieve this goal, and the myriad of other social and technical functions that DSNI serve today is a testament to the tenacity and fervor of this original document. (Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, 1987) In many ways the 2007 SVDC Development Action plan is similar to the DSNI one in that it arises in response to a crisis experienced in the neighborhood, specifically the housing crash of 2007. Through the most predatory of practices by banks and individual investors, the neighborhood, and specifically its elderly and working poor, was systemically dismantled through sub-prime mortgage lending and other devious financial schemes. (Slavic Village Development Corporation, 2007) In response to this, SVDC not only sought a specific solution to the dilemma but also wished to use the opportunity to create a more thorough comprehensive plan that would serve as a blueprint for neighborhood stabilization once the worst of the crisis had been weathered. By outlining clear objectives and reaching out to as many NGO, financial, and governmental bodies as possible, the plan seeks to incorporate not only what we would

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consider a comprehensive neighborhood plan, but also new strategic initiatives aimed at stabilizing the housing market and therefore helping to bring together a community ravished by the foreclosure crisis.16 While Cleveland and the nation are perhaps now coming to a more stabilized housing situation, the situation in Slavic Village is still dire as related in the 2012 update to said plan. More than 1,000 houses still remain vacant, many awaiting demolition.

(Slavic Village Development Corporation, 2012). However in the midst of all this Slavic Village has seen investment and positive change in the Morgana Run Trail and its Extensions, the Cleveland Velodrome, and most recently the conversion of Fleet Ave into Cleveland’s first truly “green” complete street.

Finally we have the DSDC Strategic Vision 2015-2017, the most recent addition to the planning literature in question. The Gordon Square Arts District and the Detroit Shoreway have become one of the hottest commodities in Cleveland garnering significant public and private investment and turning the area not only into a city but regional destination, for the arts, shopping, and neighborhood living. The plan draws on the works of a multitude of actors who have worked tirelessly over the years to transform the neighborhood into what it is today. While there is still a huge disparity between crime, housing stock, and technological access within the neighborhood, this is not out of the ordinary for many neighborhoods, especially in Cleveland.

This will remain one of the key hurdles for DSDC to overcome if their plan is to be truly seen as a success. Given the accomplishments and challenges they face the plan itself is still rather accessible and flows quite well within its “placemaking” paradigm. If anything, one could argue that the plan, lacks the inclusion of definitive facts and figures to backup and substantiate some of their claims, aside from the list of accomplishments early on in the document. In addition, some of the more tricky, or harder areas to deal with, i.e. crime, disinvestment, and lack of educational opportunity, feel slightly glossed over when really one would desire an extended section going into specific programmatic details on how these issues will be dealt with.

In conclusion one’s heart most really go out to those early pioneers that we see in the DSNI plan of 1987. Not only were they bold, but they got results from the type of grassroots involvement that modern day planners only dream about. The ability to galvanize a community 16

For more on the foreclosure crisis in Cleveland see, Lind, Kermit J. 2008. The Perfect storm: An eyewitness report from Ground Zero in Cleveland’s neighborhoods. Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law 17: 237-58

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and follow through with institutional effectiveness and leadership is a testament to the core group of residents, professional volunteers, and civic leaders that believed in their cause. While it may not be the most precise and well-laid out plan, while it may lack the cohesive verbiage to specifically formulate planning solutions, it certainly is one of the most endearing and passionate stories in modern planning practice, and deserves its place in the annals of great neighborhood planning. Any modern neighborhood planner would do well to re-read this story in times of struggle and judge their communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plan against the â&#x20AC;&#x153;FORCEâ&#x20AC;? that was and is the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative.

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Works Cited Alan Mallach, L. B. (2013). Regenerating America's Legacy Cities. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

American Planning Association. (1994). Planning and Community Equity. Chicago, IL: Planners Press.

Brower, S. (2011). Neighbors & Neighborhoods: Elements of Successful Community Design. Chicago, IL: Planners Press: American Planning Association.

Conway, D., Christina, Q. L., Wolch, J., Kahle, C., & Jerrett, M. (2008). A Spatial Autocorrelation Approach for Examining the Effects of Urban Greenspace on Residential Property Values. J Real Estate Finn Econ, 150-169.

Crompton, J. L. (2001). Perceptions of How the Presence of Greenway Trails Affects the Value of Proximate Properties. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 114-132.

Crompton, J. L. (2001). The Impact of Parks on Property Values: A Review of the Empirical Evidence.

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