#ecoblock

Goal

The goal of our team is to develop a site selection "process" for development partners to prioritize criteria and evaluate certain city blocks for the construction of an EcoBlock.

Work since the last blog post

After looking through the GIS map package provided by Laura Ginn we narrowed down the 13 potential sites we found in GIS to 3 different case studies that we believed would help us evaluate site selection criteria for 3 different types of developers, for-profit, non-profit and hybrid. We then presented our plan to both the class and at TRex. After these presentations we went and visit each of the three sites to better understand the community context.

Site visiting

Site visiting notes are showed as following table:

Challenges

After our presentation at T-Rex we encountered a lot of questions feedback to incorporate the historical and community context of the neighborhood into our site selection criteria. This sort of information was something we could really gather from our GIS research. Visiting sites gave us a much more holistic picture of the blocks, allowing us to see the nearby commercial shops and gave us a context of development happening in the area. Going forward we expect to continue come up against the challenge of balancing taking the macro view of a city and understanding community and historical context of neighborhoods.

Also, in the process of developing our presentation and visiting the sites, we recognized that that the blocks we are studying likely would be developed by very different types of developers. We've hypothesized that the Cherokee St. Block would be best suited for a for-profit developer, the 22nd ward block would be suited for a non-profit developer and the Old North block would be best suited for a hybrid of the two. As we move forward we are hoping to develop a better understanding of why these different types of developers would be interested in an EcoBlock and what sort of customers and sites they would be interested in catering to talk to developers

Next Steps

The goal of our project is to construct a single ownership model for Eco-Block that would outline the structure, community, programming, and services/ utilities for the selected site. In doing this, we have researched different ownership models, such as private ownership, rental, condominium, cooperative, rental equity, co-housing, land trust, and non-profit as potential models. We have evaluated these types based on a comprehensive model of social and financial values. So far, we have individually researched each model according to these criteria and provided write-ups. Additionally, we have met with our team law student to determine the feasibility of these model in a realistic legal and economic scenario.

The next steps that we will take for the project include discussing and deciding upon a single hybrid ownership model that brings together the best of our research. Our goal is to accomplish this model by March 1st so that we can present our first draft to an expert. Additionally, we will discuss with people who have personal experience in these environments in order to gain a more in-depth perspective. We hope that through these different sources—both academic and real-world—we can effectively hypothesize a model achieves our goals. Once we have the model constructed, we will give a mid-semester presentation to experts and organizations, such as T-Rex. The feedback that we receive from these presentations will guide us in formulating a stronger, more cohesive model that suits community benefits we may have overlooked. The final outcome of our project will be a presentation to a panel of community members which incorporates all of our research and discussion. We hope that our work will help Eco-Block in the future when deciding upon the logistical features of the block itself.

Spring 2018 Semester