Project Brief
"Constructing resilient communities through effective organizational contract, flexible living solutions, and connected infrastructure network."
Heavy capital supported large-scale developments bring opportunities but also challenges to the underserved communities. Many development cases have shown the possible risks of losing original community identities regarding social and physical representations. To create resilient community developments, Incremental Community takes advantages of market interventions which are improved through competition to serve modern urbanization. All these evolving products created by market competition increased the chances for recreating the ways of community revitalization. In this Incremental Community, it identifies resources that currently exist or under development in the market to help communities to preserve social and physical identities.
Hypothesis
Capital intensive developments in weak markets often create disruptions in existing community fabric regarding social and physical identities. In these underserved communities where could have self-grown organically, the robust development shines on new users' needs and leaves limited options for communities' own internal development. As the Hazelwood community has the last piece of large-scale urban brownfield in the City of Pittsburgh which offers 178 acres of land for capital-intensive redevelopment. The large-scale development would bring an influx of new capital, developments, and users to Hazelwood Green site, but current patterns of market speculations suggest that existing community residents will benefit unevenly from the new investments.
Capital intensive development often disrupts existing low-income community’s social and physical identities. The large scale developments in these weak markets often displace existing residents and create visual disconnection between existing neighborhood and new interventions.
Thesis
To seek ways of creating better welfare in the community development for existing and future residents, Incremental Community aims to seek inclusive development structure to streamline vacant land developments within the community's physical environment. The thesis helps identify a possible organizational structure to form public-private development partnerships, and furthermore, create a hybrid Community Land Trust and Limited Equity Cooperative to support the community-oriented development. With organizational structure ready, Living Solution and Infrastructure Network sections suggest using incremental components and district scale infrastructure to provide cost-effective and sustainable living options for the community.
The concept intends to provide an inclusive development framework and components to help the community adapt when possible capital-intensive developments come. The establishment of streamlined development would allow existing residents to participate in a localized economy that grows with the adjacent large-scale development. The hypothesis uses Hazelwood as an experiment community conceptually to test inclusive development as the community is under institutional planning and real estate market speculation due to possible large-scale development at Hazelwood Green site. The research hopes it could use the Hazelwood community to showcase possible development process, which balances the general welfare of existing and new residents. Ultimately, the thesis is anticipating a scenario test in a community like Hazelwood, so the Incremental Community Concept could be translated into other community developments.