TownhouseCenter.org has received more than 75,000 views since the summer of 2010! Thank you very much, readers. And don't miss the free Lean Urbanism webinar registration at the bottom of this post. From Miami Herald writer Andres Viglucci: "Miami planner Andres Duany learned how to subvert the rules when he mapped out Seaside. Now, armed with a $600,000 Knight Foundation grant, he's taking aim at the rising tide of bureaucracy and red tape that he says prevent young builders and entrepreneurs from starting small-bore development enterprises to energize neighborhoods. He's calling this Lean Urbanism.
"'To get a building built is fantastically complicated. The codes are rigamarole. There is no way you can figure them out yourself. So everything is left to big corporations and big developers,' Duany said. The idea behind the three-year grant is to develop and disseminate strategies and tools to work around overly restrictive rules, and lower the entry bar for Millenials and immigrants in particular, he said.
"The Miami-based Knight Foundation sees Lean Urbanism as a key piece in its strategy for fostering an entrepreneurial 'ecosystem' in its hometown and elsewhere. The first year of the grant program, which will be run by Duany’s nonprofit, the Little Havana-based Center for Applied Transect Studies, will be dedicated to research and development of strategies, said Carol Coletta, the foundation’s vice president for community and national initiatives. The second year will see the launch of pilot projects. The third year will be focused on rolling out the toolbox and publicizing the projects nationally.
"Miami is ripe for the strategy, Duany said. Overly restrictive regulations have stymied small-scale efforts to revitalize poor neighborhoods like West Coconut Grove and Little Havana even as big developers have dominated the city’s downtown revival." Full article here.
Coletta added in a separate Knight Blog post: "Getting more people into city-building is fundamental to making communities that work for the 21st century. It is all about making small possible in our communities. Duany especially worries that bloated regulation on building and development is burdening a younger generation of urbanists and immigrants with so much expense that it makes small, incremental growth impossible." Full post here.
Coletta and Duany will host a live webinar, “Lean Urbanism: Building Successful Cities,” on Tuesday, March 4, from noon to 1 p.m. ET. Register here.