The Just Communities Blog
News and Updates from Our Team
The Empty House Next Door: Understanding and Reducing Vacancy and Hypervacancy in the United States
This report lays the groundwork for exploring the issue of vacancy by defining what is meant by a “vacant” property, what constitutes a “healthy” vacancy rate, how vacant properties are measured, and why properties become vacant and abandoned. It discusses the impact of vacant properties on the communities in which they are situated. The report gives a definition of vacant properties in the context of the overall housing market, explains the negative effects of vacant properties on the overall community wellbeing, and concludes with recommendations on how to curb the vacancy problem.
Facilitator's Guide for Continuous Improvement Conversations with a Racial Equity Lens
This guide has been designed to support facilitators and leaders to advance cross-sector conversations and efforts aimed at population-level impact. The tools in this guide can support you in having productive conversations and allow you and your diverse partners to achieve dramatically better results in your community.
A Placemaking Vision for Downtown Detroit
This report focuses on how the public spaces, and particularly the three major downtown parks, can be transformed, both in the long and short term so that they support this exciting commercial and residential rebirth in the downtown Detroit, and also become destinations in their own right.
Equity Foundations: A USDN Capacity Building Program
In September 2015, USDN developed a holistic curriculum of webinars, videos, and worksheets to help local government staff to apply an equity lens to a sustainability project, including choosing a good project, communicating about the project and racial equity, building a team, applying proven equity tools, and designing the project to embed an equity lens in local government practice.
Community Energy: Planning, Development, and Delivery
District Energy is the local production and distribution of thermal energy used for residential, commercial, and industrial buildings. This guide is an important read for municipal officials, planners, and neighborhood champions interested in building a district energy system in their community.
Neighborhood Climate Action Planning Handbook
Developed by Portland State University, this handbook details climate action strategies to help neighborhoods reduce carbon footprint and fossil fuel dependency. While primarily focused on planning for Southeast Portland, this tool is certainly applicable to any neighborhood planner or advocate that is looking to bring the community together to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change.
Racial Equity Toolkit
The Racial Equity Toolkit is designed to help practitioners integrate explicit consideration of racial equity in decisions, including policies, practices, programs and budgets and develop strategies and actions that reduce racial inequities and improve success for all groups.
Arup City Resilience Index
Developed by Arup with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the City Resilience Index enables cities to measure and monitor the multiple factors that contribute to their resilience.
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