Experiment Hazelwood
Why Hazelwood
Incremental Community is framing strategies for under served markets to ride with the market wave, Hazelwood could be a great test ground for the concept and it could possibly become a showcase for other under served communities where are expecting capital intensive developments to adapt the incremental development strategies. The community has one last piece of large-scale urban brownfield with 178 acres of land for redevelopment and it would bring an influx of new capital, development and users. The market efforts have driven many concept designs at the site, like the one from Perkins & Will.
These large-scale community transformations have been witnessed in many places, Olympic Park, gigantic campus drop into the community, which creates disruption of visual connectivity between original community fabric and new interventions; Locally in Pittsburgh's
East End transformation, Bakery Square and Whole Foods corridor, which brings in opportunities and people, but existing residents were displaced in the community due to affordability. These current development pattern of market speculations suggest that current Hazelwood residents would benefit unevenly from the capital intensive large-scale investment.
​
Across Hazelwood Green boundary, the adjacent community has high levels of vacancy and disinvestment, the plan didn't reveal the benefits it brings to these areas. Currently, the speculative investments are already happening in adjacent properties, both occupied and vacant.
​
Therefore, it is anticipated the possible transformation would create disruptions in the existing community fabric around Hazelwood Green site where could create its vibrant community life belongs to current residents.
Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta
East End Transformation, Pittsburgh
To make the concept and incremental strategies fit better with the Hazelwood community development, and enable the community to initiate its incremental development process, so listening to local residents and understand their concerns is essential to create an inclusive incremental process.
​
Experiment Hazelwood hears people’s voice on how they could be directly or indrectly benefit from the development through interviews and public meetings. The feedback helps understand how the incremental development process could be framed and who should be benefited first. Mostly importantly, Incremental Community is a process of getting support and trust each other to create a more inclusive development process in the long run and form autonomy.
Where to Start
To initiate the incremental development, all the collaborators in the Organizational Common have to reach a consensus that "incremental" isn’t just a word of building small, but a way to strategically use the limited resources to make meaningful impacts then create chain developments for the future. Thus, the analysis is essential to make the site selection, then we have a better sense how the incremental development could happen step by step and site by site.
Vacant Lot Ownership
The vacant land ownership map identifies the resources and ownerships at the beginning to help create partnerships and organization network to make the project happen.
​
As the Incremental Development aims to provide affordability and quality housing, the experiment identifies publicly owned vacant lots for strategic early phase development. These publicly owned lands provide a low entry point for the bottom-up revitalization.
​
In Hazelwood, the city and URA owns a significant amount of lots, so forming a public-private development partnership to develop these lots is a possible development foundation for the Incremental Community.
Organizational Common - Experiment Hazelwood
Organizational common in Hazelwood Incremental Community concept facilitates the financial and ownership structure of the Incremental Development process. The concept network of the Organizational Common pools regional talents and resource together to help fill in the gap between limited initial development equity investment and traditional financing. The sweat equity the network offers could lower the initial development cost and enable more input and collaboration for higher quality development.
The incremental development suggests a development partnership between local community development organization and a development service company. In this concept development scenario, the partnership would include Hazelwood Initiative who will be managing the development process and Module Housing who will provide development consulting services. The partnership works with CLT and LEC in the community to utilize the local institutional and professional knowledge resources to allow the happening of the project. After the project is fully developed, whole ownership of the development would be transferred to LEC. Additionally, CLT would keep the ownership of the land. The diagram below shows the organization ecosystem.
The Organization Common could seek different development components to satisfy the community needs, the incremental community just one of many options that have been explored in this research project. Theoretically, incremental components in this research project provide a lower price entry point for early members, including young professionals, families, seniors, etc., and provide more diverse community infrastructure for sharing. However, the LEC could arrange any type of community features that are financially feasible to adapt.
Incremental Development - Starting Phase
With the organizational commons ready, the community could recycle lands through CLT and prepare them for inclusive incremental development through LEC, which provides a collective financial resource to apply for additional development fund and maintain and manage the upgrade development in the future.
LEC selects land, which are mainly vacant, acquired by CLT to perform the community development. The strategy of the incremental development tries to avoid job elimination and create services related jobs on site.
Incremental Development - Growing Phase
Later on, after the process being initiated and the performance of the development is reaching an ideal conditional based on performance matrix such as LEED ND or P4 Performance Measurement. From then on, LEC and members could build on successful traction to attract more residents through issuing more shares for members who want to upgrade their places or new members who want to join LEC, then add more homes to increase density in the community.
Living Common - Possible Scenarios
With the basic site analysis and incremental development hypothesis. Two sites were identified around Hazelwood Green site for possible scenario development to show the flexibility of incremental community development. The sites include Below Track area which directly connecting to Hazelwood green site and 2nd Ave site where could showcase a dynamic main street life. Both sites have high concentration of publicly owned vacant lands, and low rise lower density structure, with existing infrastructure like utility lines. Additionally, other concept plans including site development at Hazelwood Green and Mobility are currently under development, with these pre-development factors,the development partnership could benefit from low cost land acquisition and land preparation for development, which provide possibilities for the incremental community.
Four key development zones were identified at the Incremental Community Research.
Site 1: The site overlooks Hazelwood Green site across the rail road and 2nd Ave, where could create most dramatic transition across the traffic stream.
​
Site 2: The conjunction of traffic corridor and entry way to Hazelwood Green site, where expects high density development.
​
Site 3: Main street extension where could house a lot of dynamic street programs that could improve street life and supplement the employment hub development.
​
Site 4: Below track area visually and physically connects to Hazelwood Green site, where could serve as a home community for Hazelwood Green.
​
Among these two sites, including Below Track and 2nd Ave sites, were prioritized for Incremental Community development exploration in this research project.
1
2
3
4
Below Track Incremental Scenario I
This is one concept development on below track site. Instead of creating unified residential houses that fill in the blanks throughout the community fabric. Incremental Community introduces a hybrid CLT and LEC development structure to provide possibilities to create family-oriented community arrangement by providing shared community resources, such as community garden, open kitchen, park, shared electronic vehicle station, etc. This type of community arrangement encourages more social interaction through resource sharing experience. The map shows an aerial photo of the site. The possible scenario provides over 20 housing units for the potential members from inside the community who are seeking a better quality of living and outside the community who would be working at Hazelwood Green site. The Incremental Community concept provides quality housing options for existing community residents and close living options for commuters who will be work at Hazelwood Green.
After stabilization of the initial development and growing demand of increasing site density, the add-on upgrades would be added to the site. Same to initial development ownership, upgrades are also owned by LEC. During the growing process, additional shares would be created through negotiation and fundraising.
Below Track Incremental Scenario II
As the incremental components represent flexibility regarding individual living and physical community arrangement, the development scenario could be different in many ways based on different needs from the community regarding initial residents' housing option demand, community amenities, etc. This is another scenario to show the possible arrangement at the same Below Track site.
Similar to the other scenario, the existing residents at the site could option to join the coop through fair evaluation of properties' market value in exchange for coop shares. In this manner, all community amenities, such as garden, open kitchen, shared fleet, are accessible for the existing residents who wish to join.
2nd Ave Incremental Scenario
Incremental community’s flexibility is also reflected through adaptability of Incremental Community to any locations in the community, from the residential district in inner part of the neighborhood to the main street is where could show the physical and social identity of the community. In this scenario, the incremental development demonstrate the possibilities to help activate main street and bring street life back to the underused main street.
The Incremental Concept provides extreme flexibility for community revitalization. Due to time limitation, limited scenarios were developed for illustration purpose at the moment. The concept could adapt to various locations including the commercial district in the neighborhoods. The flexibility of the Incremental Community could also host job creation besides residential use, such as work live space, community service amenities, local small businesses, etc. The research will be continuing, in the near future, I hope one commercial district will be selected to demonstrate business and job creation oriented incremental community.
Infrastructure Common - Possible Scenario
The Infrastructure Common in the concept development includes district energy components to provide solar energy for residents to lower the utility bill, and charging shared electronic vehicles.
​
Additionally, community garden and kitchen provide local foods and social experience for community residents. This section needs more information and design integration to show different possibilities, but the overall concept is community amenities are connected and serve each other. The diagram only shows one possible scenario of the infrastructure common.
Final Stage of Incremental Development
In summary, Incremental community is a way of make changes step by step through a collaborative community effort by members of LEC and professionals and develop something that is more considerable for existing residents and prepare the community for future users.
​
Therefore, the community and future users could inclusively benefit from large-scale development and incrementally transition with large interventions.