The story of a neighborhood-led effort to address blight on Detroit’s East Side.
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Here’s what happened when a passionate community advocate in Detroit listened to what residents actually wanted, rather than imposing his will from the outside.
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Most of the actions we take in our cities aren’t “home runs.” They are usually singles, with some doubles thrown in. But they add up. Small ball gets results.
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It’s a shame it took a global pandemic for towns and cities to discover the benefits of low-cost, low-risk experiments.
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What can go wrong when you pin all your economic hopes on a big, shiny new project? Milwaukee, the planned site for this summer’s Democratic Convention, may soon find out.
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Communities are coming together right now in ways most of us have never seen before. And we’re realizing we really need each other. How can local leaders harness this energy to build stronger local communities and economies once the crisis recedes?
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Building stronger towns isn’t just about planning, engineering and development. We need to address questions about cultivating rich and abundant lives in our neighborhoods. How do we live out our values when so much of the built environment seems to be working against us?
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This place is a work horse. It grows small businesses from scratch without recourse to bank loans or government subsidies. It provides products and experiences that are genuinely needed in the community. And it costs almost nothing to create.
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Micro-neighborliness (n.): the small, patient, and practical ways that we pivot toward our localities and the people that we share them with. While we do not always hear these stories, the tangible effect that these small acts can have on our places is reason enough to celebrate them.
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Here are four ways that walking your dog—or a loaner pup from your local rescue group—can give you a unique insight into how your place can get a little more resilient.
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Do we need to fail in order to succeed? When our experiments go awry—in science or otherwise—should we be dismayed, or treat it as just as vital information as if our hypotheses had been confirmed? Check out the latest episode of our new podcast Upzoned to hear Kea Wilson and Chuck Marohn wax philosophical about failure.
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The core neighborhoods of our big cities and our small towns have more in common than we might think.
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The lines between work and home zones are blurring: more employers want to be in walkable, amenitized areas, and conversely, people are choosing to live closer to where they work. This Cincinnati placemaking experiment exemplifies the kind of small bets this trend is making possible.
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A tactical urbanism success in Cincinnati demonstrates the ability to solve problems on our streets—in this case, parking for dockless scooters—by rapidly prototyping solutions in low-cost, low-risk ways.
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In working to create better places, keep the stakes low, so even skeptics are more willing to indulge some risk. Take a little step. Root the conversation in reality. Then adjust and press on to those big plans.
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Something as small as public art can help transform the public’s perception of a troubled neighborhood park. It’s a testament to the power of bottom-up, incremental change.
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What does it take to bring life back to a faded downtown? Contrary to conventional wisdom, big employers may underperform as revitalization engines, and small-bet approaches—improvisational, innovative, and low-risk—can deliver outsize rewards.
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