A New Resource for Small Scale Community Development
Yesterday I attended a lecture at UC's Community Design Center given by Kevin Wright and Joe Nickol, who are the co-authors of 'The Neighborhood Playbook', which is a resource guide intended for use by both Developers and Everyone Else that outlines a repeatable series of plays for grassroots neighborhood revitalization from the bottom-up.
The central premise of the playbook is that a market for brick and mortar development can be proven far in advance of actual construction and independent of formal market studies by programming spaces prior to development for amenity activities such as beer gardens, makers' markets, or pop-up movies. This is something that almost any dedicated community group can do for relatively little cost to draw people to a particular place, showing prospective developers and investors that if you build it, people will come.
The neighborhoods where I am invested and looking to invest for future Starter Home 2.0 projects such as Pleasant Ridge, Oakley, Walnut Hills and Madisonville have all done a great job of running the plays with various pop-markets, fun runs and street festivals over the past few years and starting to reap the benefits with an influx of people and development dollars pouring into these areas.
The central premise of the playbook is that a market for brick and mortar development can be proven far in advance of actual construction and independent of formal market studies by programming spaces prior to development for amenity activities such as beer gardens, makers' markets, or pop-up movies. This is something that almost any dedicated community group can do for relatively little cost to draw people to a particular place, showing prospective developers and investors that if you build it, people will come.
