Wondering what you can do to foster positive development within your neighborhood?
Last week, Springfield neighborhood leaders attended an Incremental Development Workshop in Peoria, and ICON’s Monday night meeting featured highlights from that workshop.
Ideas for action you can take today:
- Say thank you to people who are doing small-scale development in your neighborhood! That could be a person who bought the vacant lot next door and keeps it mowed. Someone who keeps their own home in good condition – or helps an elderly neighbor do so. Perhaps it’s the owner of rental property who maintains their properties and is careful to get tenants who are also good neighbors.
- Promote your neighborhood by taking care of your own property and helping others to care for theirs.
- Get informed about the benefits of small-scale development; support small scale development in your neighborhoods.
- It only takes 10% of buildings to make a city AMAZING!
- Small-scale development can generate more property tax revenue PER ACRE than big box stores – and the revenue stays local.
- Small scale development can provide good quality affordable housing.
- Thinking of buying property to fix up to sell or rent? It’s important to do your homework, evaluate your own skills, and to “pencil out” the project. Do you have the skills and resources necessary to successfully complete the project and manage rental property? Will you make money? Can you get financing?
Additional information on Small Scale Development:
- The Incremental Development Alliance – http://www.incrementaldevelopment.org/
- Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating small scale community in a large scale world – http://pocket-neighborhoods.net/buybook.html
- Urban Planning theorist and author Jane Jacobs – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities
- Form-based code vs. traditional zoning – http://harriman.com/inspirations/conventional-zoning-vs-form-based-code/