Kate Vickery CRP 388K | Fall 2012
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SHRINKING A CITY: VACANT LAND RE-USE IN CLEVELAND, OHIO Kate Vickery CRP 388K | Fall 2012 shrinking a city | kate vickery | CRP 388K | Fall 2012 | 2 Executive summary Cleveland, Ohio – along with many other post-industrial rust-belt cities – has a unique problem: how to cope with a shrinking population. The city has experienced a 56% reduction in overall population since 1950, leaving the city with nearly 20,000 neglected vacant lots and a declining need for municipal services. For this study, I look at one of Cleveland’s most unique coping strategies: municipal landbanking. One of the city’s recent strategic planning initiatives, Re-imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland, is focused on engaging communities and private residents to “re-imagine” creative and productive uses for vacant lots. City staff evaluate citizen applications for re-use of land held in its Land Bank based on a variety of physical and environmental determinations. Projects include small-scale economic development, residential construction, community gardens, public park, and environmental remediation. The impact of these projects could be significant in terms of improving neighborhood quality of life for residents. However, questions remain about in what ways this resource-intensive strategy of neighborhood revitalization is reaching Cleveland’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. Using the Kirwan Institute for Race and Ethnicity’s opportunity index, I investigated the degree to which different types of re-use projects are well-matched to the underlying social-demographic needs of individual communities. Social “opportunity” indicators considered include education and child welfare; economic opportunity and mobility; housing and neighborhood development; public health; and public safety and criminal justice. Through this analysis, I determined that Cleveland’s methods of dispersing vacant land is better at meeting housing and community development needs than any other social factor, and that approximately 41% of the re-use projects fall within areas that have the lowest social opportunity indicators overall. shrinking a city | kate vickery | CRP 388K | Fall 2012 | 3 Introduction: Cleveland’s Vacant Land Problem In her 2011 inaugural address, Baltimore’s new mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, told supporters, “A shrinking city is a place unable to meet even the most basic needs of its people — basic rights that everyone should expect. A shrinking city simply cannot stand” (Scola, 2012). Rawlings-Blake’s thesis – that a shrinking city is broken and must be repaired through growth – has been the dominant way of understanding the challenge of shrinking cities. I believe that the more pressing issue for shrinking cities should be ensuring that the needs of the existing community are met. In addition, “With an abundance of vacant properties, these shrinking cities provide fertile ground for neighborhood-scale and citywide greening strategies that can revitalize urban environments, empower community residents, and stabilize dysfunctional markets” (Schilling and Logan, 2008, p. 451). While the City of Cleveland was once an industrial powerhouse – the 10thlargest city in the United State at the turn of the century – the decline of the manufacturing industries upon which its economy was built hit the city hard. By the mid-1970’s, Cleveland was already experiencing double-digit population decline and land vacancy rates (Krumholz, 1990). Today, Cleveland is home to just under 400,000 people, less than half of its peak population in the 1950s (see Figure 1). Like many large urban areas, Cleveland’s population loss has corresponded with the population gain of its suburban areas, as seen in Map 1. Population decline, environmental disasters, and social unrest has, in many ways, defined the city for the last 60 years. When we think of Cleveland, we might imagine iconic images of the burning Cuyahoga River, race riots in the 1960s, and what many are now calling the “ruin porn” images of the burned-out buildings and vacant land of a prototypical shrinking city (Piiparinen and Trubek, 2012). Most planning literature, popular perception, and even the Mayor of Baltimore consider cities with declining population to be “failures,” even though these cities can be found all over the world and the very preconditions of a global, capitalist marketplace makes this trend inevitable (Schatz, 2010). Cleveland City Populaon 1820 - 2010 Source: U.S. Census 1,000,000 800,000 600,000 400,000 200,000 0 shrinking a city | kate vickery | CRP 388K | Fall 2012 | 4 Scholars today are just beginning to theorize about the “best” strategies for planning a shrinking city (Schatz, 2010; Schilling 2008, Center for Community Progress). I believe there are several key factors that cities like Cleveland should be taking into consideration. First, leaders of shrinking cities need to accept that their cities are in fact shrinking and adopt policies that benefit the existing population first and foremost. Second, policy makers and planners must rearticulate the problems of being a shrinking city – such as vacant land – as assets. Third, planners must come to terms with the inherent tension between aspiration – the goals for a city – and accountability – meeting the needs of people in the here and now. The City’s Proposed Solution: Re-imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland Cleveland began a new initiative in 2008 – the Re-imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland Plan – that is realistic about future growth patterns and focuses in a meaningful way on improving quality of life in the context of a smaller population. The plan focuses on the creative re-use of its abundant stock of vacant land – nearly 3,300 acres in 20,000 lots, 7,500 of which are under City control in Cleveland’s Land Bank. The causes of these vacancy rates are complex and interrelated, including job loss, population loss, housing stock deterioration, tax delinquency, subprime and predatory lending, and mortgage foreclosure (Community Research Partners, 2008, p. iv). There are two key points to make about Cleveland’s population loss and its current stock of vacant land. Neither population loss nor vacancy rates should be seen as monolithic. Each factor is spatially distributed in meaningful ways around the city, reflecting some important trends in Cleveland’s social-demographic environment. While the City of Cleveland as a whole lost 22% of its population from 1990 to 2010 (Map 1), when we look more deeply at these trends, as in Map 2, we see that the greatest population loss rates are found in the eastern portion of the city, as are the highest concentrations of vacancy rates, as seen in Map 3. The neightborhoods of St. Claire Superior, Hough, Fairfax, Kinsman, Broadway Slavic Village, Buckeye Woodhall, Glenville, and Union-Miles stand out in particular as places with significant challenges in terms of population loss and land vacancy. Vacancy is a complex problem, of course, because it includes for-sale and for-rent housing units as well as “other vacancies,” which are those most likely to be abandoned completely. Scholars like Schilling and Logan are particularly concerned with areas that have a high “other vacancy” rates as these will require the most concerted efforts by the city to remedy and often contribute to crime and a loss in vitality of residential and commercial areas (Schilling and Logan, 2008, p. 452). Vacancies of this nature also pose a fiscal challenge due to the loss in tax revenue, which can make it difficult to provide city services to these areas (ibid.). A 2008 study found that just three of Cleveland’s “most vacant” neighborhoods cost the city over $35 million in annual demolition and boarding costs; grass and trash services; and tax revenue losses (Community Research Partners, 2008, p. v). shrinking a city | kate vickery | CRP 388K | Fall 2012 | 5 The Re-imagining Plan is predicated on the fact that population loss is not a trend likely to change in the near future and that the existing vacant land and neighborhoods in which it is located are assets. This in itself is revolutionary, as a key feature of most of Cleveland’s past planning efforts either gloss over population loss completely, are strategizing ways to attract new residents, or are using the language of “blight and slums” as rational to do wholesale clearing of neighborhoods. The tone of the Re- imagining Plan is different than many of these earlier initiatives. “This scenario creates a unique opportunity for Cleveland to re-imagine itself; to build a vibrant, more healthful and more prosperous community that provides a better quality of life for its residents and encourages new residents to call Cleveland home” (“Eight Ideas,” n.d., p. 1). The Plan is basically this: community groups and individuals can apply for funding or put up their own funding to take ownership of vacant properties which are currently held in the city’s Land Bank, established in 2008 as a part of this initiative. The City of Cleveland Planning Commission staff evaluates the property and the intended use – citizens are encouraged to use the “Ideas to Action Resource Book” for inspiration – and approve or deny the project. The Resource Book offers 10 strategies for residents to consider: vineyards, orchards, market gardens, community gardens, sideyard expansions, street edge improvement, neighborhood pathways, pocket parks, native plantings, and rain gardens (Resource Book, 2011). Many of the decision factors the city staff is considering include physical and environmental benefits such as proximity to existing greenspaces, stormwater management benefits, renewable energy production, land-assembly, and contamination remediation (“Eight Ideas,” n.d.). Unsurprisingly, the project ideas that seem to get the most media attention are those that have public benefit, like community gardens and parks (Re-imagining Cleveland website). shrinking a city | kate vickery | CRP 388K | Fall 2012 | 6 Problem Statement The city has evaluated approximately 1,100 individual applications since 2008 from individuals and businesses wanting to re-use a vacant lot, most of which are currently held in the Cleveland City Land Bank.