Plaza Heralds New Era of Afrocentric Development in Seattle Neighborhood

The Western Hemisphere’s biggest city has developed a model blueprint for progressive housing policy in developing countries, in large part by affirming squatters' rights and demanding a certain percentage of low-income housing in new developments.

Threatened by increasingly rising sea levels caused by climate change, leaders in Miami Beach are spending equally increasing amounts of money on technology and systems to combat flooding.

A severe lack of affordable housing in Saudi Arabia has spurred the government to impose a tax on what has traditionally been a virtually tax-free society. However, they aim to tax only the wealthy owners of undeveloped land.

In Memphis, a creative blight-reduction initiative called 25 Square Blocks broke down the city into blocks. Inspectors were able to quickly identify all the violations and fix them, using the same amount of funding, but less time, as the old call-and-respond model.

As a state with robust populations of wildlife, Montana has had its share of roadkill. Its Department of Transportation developed animal shelving, a type of wildlife crossing, to enable safe passage for small animals who need to cross the road. The measure, combined with other types of crossings, has reduced animal-vehicle collisions by half.

New York City suffered from fires that erupted in overcrowded, run-down apartments. Then the city sleuthed through residential records and found that landlords who foreclosed let their properties fall apart and ignored safety-code violations. Greater Toronto wants to expand upon New York City’s method by using transportation surveys, census data and computer data to build transit lines.

A Dallas urban neighborhood was dilapidated with abandoned storefronts and offered no vitality for pedestrians. A group of artists and community members created Build a Better Block, in which local artisans and small businesses took over a vacant block and transformed it for a limited time to encourage the ingredients for more permanent urban renewal.

The Oak Cliff neighborhood in Dallas suffered from recession-closed businesses and crime. Then community members used placemaking, in which people shaped their own environment to improve the quality of life, and the concept of Build a Better Block, which was a pop-up event showcasing art, food, music, and local faire. The idea gives citizens a fresh look at the possibilities through which to transform the space in which they live, and it has attracted attention across the country and around the world.

Renovating and furnishing a home can be hugely expensive. Homeowners who are renovating on a budget, and want to do so in a way that is evironmentally friendly, can find recycled luxury kitchens and other lightly used fixtures at stores like Green Demolitions.

Alleys in Seattle were once places of illicit, illegal, and unsanitary activity. The International Sustainability Institute in Seattle began organizing music and art events to bring in people, which, in turn, cleaned-up the crime and garbage. As an urban development strategy, adjacent vacant storefronts re-opened for business and beautification could be seen in new gardens.