Look Beyond
Incremental Community shows a concept of possible bottom-up community development process. Although the development requires high level of self organizing
ability in the community development process, the process could be facilitated through the development partnership and other professionals. In Experiment Hazelwood, it proposes a development partnership between Hazelwood Initiative and Module Housing to make the whole incremental development possible through the creation of CLT and LEC. This site will be updated to track the development or future improvement of the Incremental Community Concept. Furthermore, it could be used as a professional network and information list for people to track the region's talents.
Lu Zhu
Author of the Project
Master of Urban Design, CMU
Master of Urban Planning. UW-Milwaukee
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"Quality community developments are not limited to capital intensive developments, an inclusive revitalization process might be able to create a more influential and stable transformation for the community. Incremental Community Development sets a stage for multi-level collaboration and facilitates a possible process for incremental and organics changes in the community through the creation of Organizational, Living and Infrastructure Commons. I hope this project could serve as a development concept exploration for under served income communities to initiate a bottom-up revitalization process and help these communities grow with the large-scale development."
Concept Development Partnership
Brian Gaudio
CEO and Founder, Module Housing
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"Module is reshaping urban life style by introducing flexible expandable houses for the community. We are socially oriented tech company provide housing services and options to accommodate a wide range of demand. Instead of over buying and over paying, home buyers can pay for the right amount space at a fair price at the right time. The Module concept creates alternative urban revitalization components and accompany them with more social approach for home buyers with limited resources."
David Brewton
Director of Real Estate, Hazelwood Initiative
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"Hazelwood has experienced long history of decline, which left many properties vacant or demolished. These create inconsistent physical environment in the community... 2nd Ave supposes to have continuous and beautiful houses and small mixed use buildings where could show a vibrant community life. If the possible development partnership could help facilitate the ownership, bill, design and marketing, the possible pay as you go housing model might work to serve the potential home buyers from the community."
Academic Advisors
Jonathan Kline
Professor, SoA, CMU
Founder, Studio for Spatial Practice
"Incremental Community concept should show the flexibility of the growing scenarios besides different possibilities of initial physical component arrangement, so these living commons could show the organic growth... Besides designs of the Living Common, the Organizational Common should form the key component CLT to support the Living Common, and figure out how the Organizational Common could facilitate the ownership and stewardship in the development process. It is an important structure to grant development control back to the community ."
Stefan Gruber
Professor, SoA, CMU
Track Chair, Master of Urban Design
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"Urban acupuncture could create more influential urban revitalization and stabilize the social foundation for the communities that traditional large-scale developments can't offer. Either bottom-up or top-down, the eventual goal of the development is facilitate a inclusive process that everyone could benefit from the changes and create commons in the transformational process."
Valentina Vavasis
Professor, SoA, CMU
Owner, Valentina Vavasis Consulting
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"To create quality developments in the urban communities, understanding the financial and professional dynamics behind the projects are the key factors to accomplish the project. A comprehensive analysis of the market would help build the foundation of the community revitalization and identify key actors to make the project work. These actors could range from professionals to strategic development locations... For Incremental Development in communities like Hazelwood, a quality and low cost development structure is important whether the concept is scalable to other similar communities."
Stephen Quick
FAIA, LEED AP
Adjunct Faculty, SoA, CMU
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"In neighborhood like Hazelwood where is expecting large scale development, many areas in the community where close to the large-scale development would expect high density developments. Therefore, the site selection for incremental strategies should have careful considerations. It should be somewhere not limiting the high density development, and it should be programmed to serve and grow with the high density development then have a good transition into the large-scale development."
Kristen Kurland
Teaching Professor, SoA & Heinz College, CMU
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"Tools for communication is important to make the project work, so public and stakeholders could understand the concept and possible physical experience for the spatial design. Many visualization tools are currently available for design communication purposes in the market. Choosing the right tool is for effectively delivering the development concept would take many exploration process, such as Revit, 3D Studio Max, Lumion."
Professional Contributors
Corey O'Connor
Councilman, District 5, City of Pittsburgh
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"Community development in undeserved community requires multi-level collaboration, especially the city should take the lead to improve the quality of life for residents who are proud to be part of the community. Policies and information could accelerate the development process and encourage residents to take the ownership for the community."
Eve Picker
Serial Entrepreneur
Founder, Small Change
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"The crowd sourcing strategies have changed the security law in order to provide more access to accredit investors who has social goals on their investments. Therefore, they could provide their financial support to the projects that they think would create great benefit for the communities.
Platforms like Small Change is a bridge for these investors, who not just want to diverse their investment portfolio, but also engage with the community transform. The platform let these social investors learn to evaluate the projects based on their social goals and economic impacts in the community. Small Change opens the conversion for people who are eager to make impacts in the society we are living in."
Andrea Boykowycz
Program Analyst and Operations Manager, OPDC
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"OPDC purchases and renovates houses for sale and affordable rental, and tries to increase home ownership in the Oakland community. The Oakland Community Land Trust offers home ownership opportunities under land-lease agreements, so the community keeps control of the land use. OPDC has received support from foundations and institutional partners to cover sunk costs, helping to ensure affordability.
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At the beginning, it was difficult to get mortgage loans from traditional lending institutions. People’s perceptions of CLTs are evolving. CLT properties offer opportunities for home buyers and maintain market affordability, and I expect banks and institutions will be seeing the social and financial impact this tool can have."
Ed Nusser
Real Estate and Planning Manager, Lawrenceville Corporation
"To start the development process, the Lawrenceville Corporation acquires properties from cities which are tax foreclosed houses at a fair price. However, to develop these houses are heavily depend on the public and philanthropic funding as the sink cost of house and property sale price cap limits the profit margins for market gains... but it's a way to control the market impact on affordability in the community, and LC uses a resale formula during the transaction of the property, which help promote the home ownership in the community and truly opens Lawrenceville to everyone ."