Creating a Comprehensive
Community Revitalization Plan
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1. Creation of a Community Decision Support Infrastructure
It is essential that there be a close partnership with a "learing/design" center. This would become a sort of "new town hall" -- a physical place that can demonstrate the principles of sustainable development, convene the process, and provide institutional memory. The centers would support the sustainable development process by providing a meeting place, a source for information and technical assistance and access to design and decision support tools like geographic information systems and planning simulation and indicators software. Creation of Community Design Center will be enhanced by forming partnership will seek local, regional, and national entities who share our vision and who are interested in collaborating with resources and expertise.

2. Identify Assets of the Community

Often local government led efforts often start with a "needs assessments". Funding priorities are then based on the identified "needs". A better way is to create coherent strategies around a communities assets. Needs based planning leads to increased dependency and not development.

So called "poor" communities often have significant assets. These include the skills of residents, public transportation, land available for assembly, undervalued market potential, home ownership, job access, rail freight, and rights-of-way, a sense of place, knowledge of the community, and location efficiency.

There must be an effort to pull together a comprehensive "inventory" of community assets. A good sustainable development planning effort requires an understanding about "what's here now and how does that work". The Collaborative program's first task is gathering information and data about the present state of a community in four system layers - natural, built, economic and social. Computer mapping tools (GIS) are used to help people better see and understand the data. Inventory efforts can be done, in part, through close partnerships with regional planning agencies and universities but the central data warehouse is always readily available to the Collaboration's management in an easily usable form. This database will have a Geographic Information System (GIS) interface showing the current and potential land uses. GIS mapping of the economic and business layout of the area. GIS permits the spatial mapping of a wide variety of data including Employment statistics, land use patterns, zoning, tax assessments, eligibility for Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Zone incentives, properties and space available for acquisition or rent. Land Use Database: The Collaboration will create a data base of key properties, with as much information about them as can be identified from the public record. The database will include information on:
3. Next, Vision the a Future

Successful collaborative planning efforts must start with a visioning process. Stakeholders must first envision the future that they want and then build that vision project by project.

First, identify the broad values to be achieved. Typically a community will be envisioned as economically and socially viable places to work and live where there is stable, affordable housing, a continuum of care of assistance to homeless families and individuals, safe streets and public spaces, access to intermodal transportation systems, provision of quality education, opportunities for people to find good jobs and employers to find good workers, and the renewal of "civic culture" and public responsibility. The goal is to transform the community from a fragmented set of residential, commercial, and industrial sites with a reputation as being dangerous and undesirable into a cohesive neighborhood conscious of its tangible and intangible assets and directing its future.

The visioning and planning process will determine what the community wants to achieve, supported by an information system that will identify measures of success and reports back to the community periodically on progress to date. Visioning and planning needs to engage large numbers of people in the community in a process that breaks out of "taken-for-granted" mind sets and defines a new and better future. This type of planning assumes that a comprehensive sustainable development strategy will identify efficiencies and synergies that will make large-scale development less expensive and more feasible than small scale, incremental improvements. Information is the feedback loop that tells the community whether it is achieving the goals outlined in the Plan. Feedback of this sort requires that the community first come to consensus on its goals and priorities; then those goals and priorities have to be translated into measurable objectives. Once this has been accomplished, it is then possible periodically to issue a scorecard on the redevelopment process. How are we doing? Are we on track? Do we need to adjust our plans to adapt to changing circumstances?

The goals identified in visioning process and incorporated into the Redevelopment Plan and turned into a scorecard or "instrument panel" that will permit every community resident to track the project's progress. Periodic reporting on these progress indicators will enhance the ability of community residents to participate in the development process.

4. Next, Create the Sustainable Development Plan:
Strategy to Achieve the Vision - Exploit Community Assets - Harness Market Forces. The visioning process will result in a Sustainable Development Plan that will integrate all of the elements - from land use to green infrastructure to jobs - into a coherent plan, with projections of capital and organizational requirements. Components include:

5. Finally, Implement the Plan