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Bontje, M. (2004). "Facing the challenge of shrinking cities in East Germany: The case of Leipzig." GeoJournal. 61, 13-21. Abstract: "In the early 20th century, the East German city of Leipzig seemed well on its way to become a metropolis of international importance. The city was expected to grow towards over one million inhabitants in 2000. Seventy years later, Leipzig's population has shrunk to less than 500,000 inhabitants instead. The German partition after World War II took away most of its national administrative and economic functions and much of its hinterland. The socialist GDR regime worsened the long-term development perspectives and living circumstances of the city. The German reunification brought new development chances, but like most East German cities, Leipzig's hopes soon became disappointed. The local politicians faced a difficult redevelopment task: apart from the question how to revive the local and regional economy, they also had to deal with a housing vacancy rate of 20%, a huge need for renovation in the older neighbourhoods as well as in the socialist high-rise areas, the negative effects of urban sprawl on the city core, and various environmental pollution problems. After briefly describing the development path of Leipzig until the 1990s, the paper will discuss the current attempts of the city government to give Leipzig a more positive post-industrial future. On the one hand, Leipzig is developing a strategy to 'downsize' the city's built environment and infrastructure to adapt to a probably lastingly smaller population. On the other hand, many growth instruments well known from the international scientific and political debate are tried to put Leipzig back on the (inter)national map. The paper will discuss these development strategies in the light of the international debate on the question 'how to fight the shrinking city', with specific attention for post-socialist cities."

Brophy, Paul and Vey, Jennifer, 2002. "Seizing City Assets: Ten Steps to Urban Land Reform," The Brookings Institution, October 2002. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2002/10metropolitanpolicy_brophy/brophyveyvacantsteps.pdf Introduction: "One of a city's greatest assets is its available land for development. Unfortunately, many cities have land and properties that are vacant, abandoned, or under-used, with few policies and regulations in place to convert these assets into valuable, revenue-generating sites. This brief outlines ten action steps that state and local governments can follow to facilitate the development of urban land and buildings. Compiling an inventory of vacant parcels, planning for the assembly and reuse of land, and working to eliminate the many legal and administrative barriers to acquisition and development are just some of the actions the authors recommend for creating a more transparent, efficient, and effective system for private-market land development. The brief will discuss these and other proposed steps, and will highlight examples of successful practices implemented in states and localities throughout the U.S."

Accordino, John, George Galster, and Peter Tatian. "The Impact of Targeted Public and Nonprofit Development on Neighborhood Development: Research based on Richmond, Virginia's Neighborhoods in Bloom Program," Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, July 2005. This report examines Richmond, Virginia's Neighborhoods in Bloom program to assess the impacts of the targeted investment strategy that was used to revitalize the city.

Walker, Chris, Sarah Rankin, and Francisca Winston. "New Approaches to Comprehensive Neighborhood Change: Replicating and Adapting LISC's Building Sustainable Communities Program." New York, NY: LISC, 2010. In 2006, LISC issued in-house requests for proposals to select 10 cities to participate in the Building Sustainable Communities program, a national expansion of its comprehensive approach to community development, which it had piloted in Chicago through the New Communities Program (NCP). Adopting the core elements of comprehensive community development in a varied set of cities would further test the ability of the approach to offer transferrable lessons for LISC and the field as a whole. This report by LISC's Research and Assessment team is the first installment of a long-term assessment of how the NCP platform has been replicated in the first 10 demonstration cities of the Sustainable Communities program. The authors conclude that a large majority of the 38 neighborhoods involved in Sustainable Communities are replicating the NCP model, based on examining the following elements: * Target neighborhoods and their challenges * Supportive and effective community leadership * Quality-of-life planning and comprehensive programs * Intermediation and systemic support "Some sites are blessed with ample foundation support for neighborhood development; others less so. In some neighborhoods, leadership is highly concentrated in one of two organizations that work well together; in others, leadership is diffuse and fractious. Nevertheless, the approach has proven adaptable enough to work well across different neighborhoods in Chicago. Can it be adapted to different neighborhood and city contexts simultaneously?" The report's findings are based on the LISC research staff's review of program documents, neighborhood-level statistics, and reports from LISC staff members and technical assistance consultants.

Adams, D., De Sousa, C. and S. Tiesdell. 2010. "Brownfield Development: A Comparison of North American and British Approaches." Urban Studies 47(1): 75-104. "Over the past 30-40 years, urban change and deindustrialisation in advanced economies have created a legacy of vacant and derelict land that is increasingly seen as a development opportunity rather than planning problem. This paper investigates how the shared challenge of bringing such brownfield sites back into productive use has been interpreted differently in four countries: the US, Canada, Scotland and England. In each case, the particular policy environment has shaped the brownfield debate in distinctive ways, producing a different set of relations between the public and private sectors in brownfield redevelopment. Through this detailed comparison of the North American and British experience, the paper traces the maturity of policy and seeks to discover whether the main differences in understanding and tackling brownfield land can be attributed primarily to physical, cultural or institutional factors."

Keating, W. Dennis, Norman Krumholz, and Philip Star (eds.). Revitalizing Urban Neighborhoods. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996 This "analysis of urban neighborhoods in the United States from 1960 to 1995 presents fifteen original and thought-provoking essays by many of the leading scholars of urban planning and development. Together they show how urban neighborhoods can and must be preserved as economic, cultural, and political centers. In this unique resource, the authors examine the growth and evolution of urban neighborhoods; illustrate what approaches have and haven't worked in a number of U.S. cities, including Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Boston, and Minneapolis; investigate the expansion and widespread successes of Community Development Corporations in neighborhoods around the country; provide a comprehensive analysis of federal policies; and discuss the prospects of urban neighborhoods from a realistic perspective."

Kromer, John and Christopher Kingsley. "Vacant Property Reclamation through Strategic Investment." Philadelphia: Penn Fels Institute of Government, 2010. "Neighborhood Stabilization and Safety in East North Philadelphia, 1998-2010 provides evidence of improving social outcomes for a section of North Philadelphia that lies east of the Temple University main campus. During the past decade, one of Philadelphia's leading community development corporations, Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha, the Association of Puerto Ricans on the March, or APM, has developed hundreds of well-designed sales and rental housing units and a new supermarket on formerly vacant parcels within the area. A greening program undertaken in coordination with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, PHS, has also brought well-tended grass and trees to once-neglected lots."

Keating, W. Dennis and Thomas Bier (2008). "Greater Cleveland's First Suburbs Consortium: Fighting Sprawl and Suburban Decline." Housing Policy Debate. 19(3), 457-477. Abstract: "This article addresses the problems of older suburbs bordering central cities; these suburbs are now experiencing many of the same symptoms of decline as the central cities themselves. We analyze this issue by recounting the experience of the inner (or first) suburbs of Cleveland and the First Suburbs Consortium (FSC), which was formed in 1997 to counteract sprawl in the metropolitan region. We analyze the impact of FSC both on its suburban members and also on state policies affecting older suburbs. FSC can point to several programs that it has developed to improve housing and commercial development among its 16 members. It also has joined with other similar Ohio suburbs to advocate and to lobby for changes in state policies (so far unsuccessfully) to provide more assistance to older suburbs. Nevertheless, FSC has been recognized as a national role model."

McGovern, Stephen J (2006). "Philadelphia's Neighborhood Transformation Initiative: A Case Study of Mayoral Leadership, Bold Planning and Conflict." Housing Policy Debate. 17(3), 529-570. Abstract: "This article examines the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), Mayor John F. Street's plan to revitalize Philadelphia's distressed neighborhoods by issuing $295 million in bonds to finance the acquisition of property, the demolition of derelict buildings, and the assembling of large tracts of land for housing redevelopment. Despite its resemblance to the discredited urban renewal programs of the past, this plan offered real potential for reducing blight by leveraging substantial private investment at a time when public subsidies for affordable housing and community development have been steadily diminishing. However, NTI did not promote equitable development that might have fostered broader support for an inherently controversial plan. Moreover, Street's initial leadership in proposing this bold initiative was followed by a reluctance to promote NTI aggressively after it was adopted in 2002. The result was a watered‐down effort that achieved some goals but has fallen short of what might have been accomplished."

Fullilove, Mindy Thompson, M.D. "Psychiatric Implications of Displacement: Contributions from the Psychology of Place." The American Journal of Psychiatry, 1996: 1516- 1523. OBJECTIVE: "The purpose of this article is to describe the psychological processes that are affected by geographic displacement. METHOD: The literature from the fields of geography, psychology, anthropology, and psychiatry was reviewed to develop a "psychology of place" and to determine the manner in which place-related psychological processes are affected by upheaval in the environment. RESULTS: The psychology of place is an emerging area of research that explores the connection between individuals and their intimate environments. The psychology of place posits that individuals require a "good enough" environment in which to live. They are linked to that environment through three key psychological processes: attachment, familiarity, and identity. Place attachment, which parallels, but is distinct from, attachment to person, is a mutual caretaking bond between a person and a beloved place. Familiarity refers to the processes by which people develop detailed cognitive knowledge of their environs. Place identity is concerned with the extraction of a sense of self based on the places in which one passes one's life. Each of these psychological processes- attachment, familiarity, and place identity-is threatened by displacement, and the problems of nostalgia, disorientation, and alienation may ensue. CONCLUSIONS: As a result of war, decolonization, epidemics, natural disasters, and other disruptive events, millions of people are currently displaced from their homes. Protecting and restoring their mental health pose urgent problems for the mental health community."

Dewar, Margaret and Kris Wernstedt. "Challenges in Reusing Vacant, Abandoned,and Contaminated Urban Properties." Land Lines. April 2009. 2-7. This article explores the limitations, challenges, and potential for non-profit and community developers to successfully reuse vacant, abandoned, and contaminated land.

Mallach, Alan. "Meeting the Challenge of Distressed Property Investors in America's Neighborhoods." 1- 91. New York, NY: LISC, 2010. Introduction: "The mortgage crisis that has gripped the United States since 2007 has resulted in property owners losing millions of properties through foreclosure, with a loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in individual and community assets. Through the foreclosure process, the majority of these properties have been taken back by the mortgage lender and become 'real-estate-owned' or REO properties. For the first year or so after foreclosures took off in 2007, with lenders unprepared to deal with these properties and few buyers of any sort in the marketplace, REO properties often went begging. By the end of 2008, however, that was no longer the case. Private property investors - from "mom & pop" investors buying one or two properties to Wall Street firms and consortia of foreign investors buying entire portfolios - had moved back into the market in large numbers. Since early 2009, the ranks of investors have steadily grown, while it has become less accurate to refer to them as 'REO investors'. Rather than waiting for properties to come into lenders' REO inventories, distressed property investors - as they are more appropriately known - have been increasingly buying houses through short sales, buying non-performing mortgages, or bidding against foreclosing lenders at foreclosure sales. Today, their presence is a major factor in the marketplace of nearly every metropolitan area experiencing large numbers of foreclosures. Their activities are having a powerful effect on neighborhoods generally and on the neighborhood stabilization efforts of cities and non-profit community development corporations (CDCs) in particular. Their effect, however, is a matter of considerable disagreement and even controversy. The purpose of this report is twofold: first, to offer insight into how distressed property investors operate, and how their activ

Mallach, Alan (2008). "How to Spend $3.92 Billion: Stabilizing Neighborhoods by Addressing Foreclosed and Abandoned Properties. Philadelphia: Federal Reserve Bank." Available at http://www.philadelphiafed.org/community-development/publications/discussion-papers/DiscussionPapers_Mallach_10_08_final.pdf Overview: "The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 created the neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), under which states, cities, and counties will receive a total of $3.92 billion to acquire, rehabilitate, demolish, and redevelop foreclosed and abandoned residential properties. These funds can stabilize hard-hit neighborhoods, putting them on the path to market recovery. This will only happen, however, if they are used in ways that are strategically targeted and sensitive to market conditions. This paper outlines 11 key principles that states, counties, and cities should follow as they plan for and use NSP funds."

Hudnut, William H. 1998. Cities on the rebound: A Vision of urban America. Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute. Summary: "In Cities on the Rebound, Hudnut draws on his past experience as mayor of Indianapolis to describe his vision for dealing with diversity, encouraging sustainable development, finding alternatives to sprawl, managing technological change, regional collaboration, improving government efficiency, and more."