American Planning Association

Sustaining Places

In March 2010, APA President Bruce Knight, FAICP, introduced APA’s Sustaining Places Initiative at the United Nations Fifth World Forum.

In his remarks, he explained, "Sustaining Places will examine both how places can be sustained and how places themselves sustain life and civilizations. Planning's comprehensive focus is not limited to a building or a site but encompasses all scales and all forms of organization of human settlements, from rural areas and small town to cities and metropolitan regions. Planners are uniquely qualified to be global leaders in integrating these two concepts of sustainability and places. Ours is the place-making profession and the places that we make must have lasting value for all."

Knight's Tuesdays at APA presentation took a closer look at the Sustaining Places Initiative and its focus on positioning the comprehensive plan as the primary local sustainability policy tool.

Gary and Region Investment Project

Gary and other urban areas in Northwest Indiana have weathered decades of disinvestment. Yet they possess significant — if underused — assets, including national parks, miles of Lake Michigan shoreline, transit hubs, historic landmarks, and a strong workforce. While it would make a natural poster child for what is often called "right-sizing," this region is often overshadowed by cities like Detroit, Flint, and Youngstown in this emerging national dialogue.

Nevertheless, the Gary and Region Investment Project (GRIP) is an important sign of how Northwest Indiana is crafting a regional approach to forward key transformative projects with the aim of stabilizing and reinvesting in the urban core.

Joanna Trotter from the Metropolitan Planning Council and Hubert Morgan from the Northwest Indiana Regional Planning commission gave an overview of GRIP and provided an update on progress to date.

Community Reinvestment and the Foreclosure Crisis

According to the Woodstock Institute, lenders repossessed more than 25,000 homes in the Chicago area during the first three quarters of 2010. According to the same analysis, these lender-owned foreclosures will take an average of 16 months to be absorbed by the housing market. Vacant properties cause blight, which destabilizes neighborhoods and local real estate markets, and also weakens the ability of municipalities to maintain a comfortable quality of life by shrinking tax rolls and increasing maintenance costs.

Geoff Smith from the Woodstock Institute took an in-depth look at recent trends in foreclosure activity in the Chicago region with a focus on the shifting patterns of regional foreclosures, the concentration of vacant properties tied to foreclosures, and implications for community development.

A Template for Redeveloping Chicago's Neighborhoods

According to Bruce Frankel, a Professor of Urban Planning at Ball State, neighborhood reinvestment depends on distinct strategies based on neighborhood conditions, both assets and liabilities. In essence, a redeveloper must select the neighborhood for the strategy, and vice-versa.

Frankel and his students explained this strategy/conditions matrix and explored how these strategic plans become financially underwritten and structured to be financially sustainable. To illustrate the model in action, Frankel and his students presented a strategy for the Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago.

Professor Sharon Sutton has had a long career in developing youth engagement programs with a special interest in involving minority and disenfranchised youth.

Professor Sutton is interviewed in this podcast by Ramona Mullahey, editor of ResoucesZine APA's electronic publication on youth engagement. They discuss Sutton's new book, The Paradox of Urban Space: Inequity and Transformation in Marginalized Communities.

Cultural Resource Protection

In 1993 the Town of Ithaca, New York, Planning Department and Cornell University collaborated to launch the Inlet Valley Archaeological Survey (IVAS), a pre-emptive cultural resources survey to identify areas of archaeological importance in an area south of Ithaca slated for major development. The IVAS permitted Ithaca's planning department to work with developers to design around and ultimately protect identified historic and cultural resources. George Frantz, AICP, a visiting lecturer at Cornell, will discuss IVAS and explain how it became the genesis of two public parks and a revival of interest in the area's Native American heritage.