urban planning

Stateside for Monday, February 25, 2013

Stateside Staff — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 21:27:08 +0000

Today on Stateside, Cyndi talks "sequestration." The word is on the tip of everyone's tongue in D.C.

We’ll get a break-down of how those across-the-board cuts could directly affect Michigan's economy.

We also look at the challenges around re-inventing abandoned and distressed neighborhoods. Cyndy gets a perspective from two urban planning experts.

Also, it was a very busy weekend for the Michigan Democratic and Republican Parties.

Both held their conventions this weekend, and for one party, it means a brand-new state leader.

So Rick Pluta, the Lansing Bureau Chief for the Michigan Public Radio Network, stopped by to help fill in the details.

Free water park an oasis for Grand Rapids neighborhood

Lindsey Smith — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 04:19:13 +0000

The two acre park is a step towards the city’s goal to have every Grand Rapids resident live within ¼ mile of some kind of greenspace. That goal has been difficult to achieve since nearly all of the city’s land has already been developed. Plus, city government has been cutting down on spending for years.

13-year old Ashley Jones remembers the old vacant lot where the park is now. She refered to it as a ‘hot mess’ before the renovations.

“It looked crazy. It had the prickles when you walked it would stick on your shoes. There was no shade or nothing. And it was kind of boring.”

Trying to improve Detroit's grocery stores

What's Working — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 11:40:17 +0000

All this year, Michigan Radio has been taking a weekly look at things that are working to improve the state. Today: we take a look at food and Detroit. The city has been called a “food desert,” because of its lack of grocery stores. One group has been trying to change that. Sarah Fleming is the program manager of the Green Grocer Project. It was launched a year ago by the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, and we asked her how it's going.

Zoning out: Cities rewrite codes to transform their look

Dan Bobkoff — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:43:06 +0000

Zoning is the DNA of a community: it controls how you live, shop, and work.

After nearly a century of many cities separating those uses, now, they’re going back to the future: trying to recreate an old way of life.

Streetsboro, Ohio is one such place.

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/michigan/local-michigan-960059.mp3

Drive down its main commercial district and it has nearly every chain store you can imagine: A Walmart and a Target, a Lowes and a Home Depot.

Some call it sprawl. Streetsboro calls it economic development.

This six-lane strip of big box shopping centers has served this city well since its explosive growth started in the 1960s. It just doesn’t look like a traditional town.

The town center is an intersection with a grassy knoll on one side. But Jeff Pritchard is in charge of planning there now and he’s aiming for a future Streetsboro that would look very different.

These big box stores could eventually be replaced by attractive housing and shops. The way towns and cities used to be.

“A place where they can walk to a corner store, maybe live above a store, says Anthony Flint of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. “And, those kinds of things, that’s illegal in America today in so many of our communities."

Illegal because of zoning. In many cities and towns, zoning codes don’t allow living and working in the same place. And, when zoning spread across the country in the 1920s and 30s, that was considered a good thing.

“ You didn’t want to have a slaughter house next to a residential apartment,” Flint says.

But those issues aren’t as big a deal anymore.

As the Great Lakes region reinvents itself, there’s a growing feeling among planners and thinkers that much of the public wants to spend less time in their cars.