|
|
 |
Pennsylvania
National Vacant Properties Campaign Holds First Annual Conference
''Vacant properties are really a big problem in older cities and we look upon them, often, as a major resource for revitalization,'' commented Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation President Arthur P. Ziegler Jr. about the first annual conference by Washington-based National Vacant Properties Campaign (NVPC) in his city, he and other redevelopment advocates confident Pittsburgh can successfully follow the best reclamation practices nationwide, with Smart Growth America (SGA) Executive Director Don Chen hailing Mayor Luke Ravensthal's buyback of more than 11,000 tax liens as a great initial step.
Actually, the choice of Pittsburgh to host the conference was partly based on its top livability rank among 379 metro areas surveyed for the 2007 edition of the authoritative Places Rated Almanac, published by former Times, Inc subsidiary official David Savageau since 1981, noted NVPC Director Jennifer Leonard.
''It's a good showplace for cities similar to it,'' she said. ''It's a city with problems. But it's also a city looking for solutions.''
The name tags of 620 government leaders and development officials at the conference, reports Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writer Justin Vellucci, ''read like a who's who of America's post-industrial Rust Belt,'' its cities -- Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and smaller like Youngstown, Ohio -- dealing with blighted housing, population loss and neighborhood disinvestment.
Among the cities from which Pittsburgh should learn, SGA Director Chen, Virginia Tech Professor Joseph Schilling and others mentioned Philadelphia; Youngstown, Ohio; and Richmond, Virginia.
Philadelphia, the writer notes, helped communities and preserved local infrastructure thanks to its Neighborhood Transformation Initiative.
Youngstown redeveloped or turned many abandoned properties into public green space through its innovative Youngstown 2010 plan.
And Richmond spurred revival of six targeted communities with its Neighborhoods In Bloom program. -- Places Rated Almanac, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 9/25/2007
Click here or here to view the source article or
here or here to view the source publication.
|
|
E-mail
to a Friend
View
Printer-friendly page 
