Posts tagged incremental development
Strong Towns Need Strong Churches: The Case for Incremental Faith-Based Housing

Many of incremental development’s values — localism, quality and civic pride — align well with those of houses of worship. If faith communities embrace this model, we could see a wave of faith-based housing that complements the broader movement toward incremental development.

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Our Self-Imposed Scarcity of Nice Places

Why is it that when a place is [pick one: walkable, bikeable, beautiful, lovable, inviting, human-scale], it so often gets coded as being “gentrified” and therefore elitist? When only the rich can afford nice places, the solution isn't to stop creating such places but to create vastly more of them.

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Beware Tricksy Incrementalism: Gradual Implementation Doesn’t Make a Project Incremental

Sometimes, cities say that they’re taking an incremental approach when they’re really just breaking a master plan down into steps. This method lacks the creative, bottom-up nature that makes incremental development so resilient, tricking people into believing they’re making their city stronger when they’re really not.

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How To Use Pilot Projects To Increase Collaboration and Get Things Done

Working with your local engineers and transportation officials can be challenging. How do you collaborate with people who are often responsible for the bad infrastructure in your place? One successful group focuses on bringing positivity and concrete suggestions to the conversation.

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How To Successfully Navigate the World of Incremental Development

Incremental development is the most resilient and financially responsible way for communities to grow and improve. Town builder Monte Anderson joins us today on Upzoned to talk about his experience as an incremental developer and the important principles of the field.

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Between Budget and Vision: How Redevelopment Makes Streets Stronger

When discussing redevelopment, street design isn’t what most people think of. Since North American streets are often built to completion, this kind of incremental approach seems alien. But it’s exactly what cities need to improve their economic, social and environmental conditions.

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Avoiding the Mall Death Spiral for Fun and Profit

When people first started building malls, they had no way of knowing that dramatic shifts in technology and consumer patterns would destroy their business models. What they should've known, though, was that betting all their funding and economic stability on a single project was a bad idea. Let’s not repeat their mistakes.

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Loosen Up: How Mixed-Use Zoning Laws Make Communities Strong

The era of corner stores and mom-and-pop shops has mostly come to an end, with modern zoning codes strictly segregating commercial and residential areas. But a return to the mixed-use model might be just what we need to empower entrepreneurs and strengthen people's sense of community.

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Incremental Development: How to Avoid the Bust by Avoiding the Boom

Many housing advocates celebrate large supplies of housing and low rents. However, this is only one stage of a larger boom-and-bust cycle and cannot be maintained. To break out of this cycle and sustainably improve housing accessibility, we need to redirect our focus to incremental development.

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The Earliest Roots of the Suburban Experiment

This series of studies of 19th-century development in St. Paul, MN, can help us understand some of the earliest traces of what would later become the suburban development pattern.

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Who Does it Take to (Physically) Build a Neighborhood?

If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a whole community to build a building. The small-scale developers of South Bend, IN, are showing how to do just that—and do it successfully in the long term.

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