Last week the LOCUS Leadership Summit: Opportunity Rising brought forward-thinking real estate developers and investors who are creating sustainable communities together with local elected officials and transportation and land-use planners. Here’s a short look back at what was caught live on Twitter at #LOCUSSummit2019.
Our new Foot Traffic Ahead report shows that walkable neighborhoods are in high demand in all of the country’s biggest metro areas but also massively undersupplied, leading to price premiums that make it a challenge for everyone to experience the benefits of living in them.
Walkable urban places (i.e. WalkUPs) occupy less than one percent of the total land mass in the 30 largest metro areas, but deliver outsized economic performance and there is great demand for more of such places. Meeting this pent-up demand for new WalkUPs would create a new economic foundation for the U.S. economy, one far more resilient than one predicated on suburban growth.
In Foot Traffic Ahead 2019, we rank the top 30 metros based on their WalkUPs.
The first ever Smart Growth Showcase at the 2019 LOCUS Summit is designed to connect shovel-ready projects that represent best practices and innovations in smart growth development with investment partners that can bring them to life. Get a sneak peek of the five featured projects before the Summit next week.
This year, LOCUS received a record number of nominations for the 2019 LOCUS Leadership Awards. Together, eight finalists have been selected in the Company of the Year, Project of the Year, and Richard Baron Affordable Housing Award categories.
How can cities and towns maximize the positive impact of their Opportunity Zones? The answer is different for every community, and that’s why LOCUS and Smart Growth America are offering tailored technical assistance to six Massachusetts communities in the first-of-its-kind Massachusetts Opportunity Zones Academy.
How does a city make sure it’s ready for investment? A question weighing on many municipal minds is how to organize planning, economic development strategies, and zoning regulations to make it clear to residents, developers, and investors that this is the right place to be. Further, how does a community encourage investment without sacrificing the characteristics that make it an attractive community to its residents?
Dozens of federal programs are designed to help finance smart growth development, and a new resource from LOCUS provides an overview of all of those programs in one convenient place. The 2019 Federal Financing Toolkit has been updated and expanded to include dozens of federal financing opportunities that are designed to help real estate developers and investors, as well as local elected officials, achieve their development goals.
The toolkit is free for LOCUS members. Log in to the Member Resources section of our website to access your copy. The toolkit is also available for non-members at a cost of $60 — sign up to purchase your copy. As demand for smart growth development rises across the country, real estate developers and investors as well as local … Continued
LOCUS and Smart Growth America are launching the 2019 Massachusetts Opportunity Zones Academy, a five-month technical assistance program, with the goal of building the capacity of three to five Massachusetts communities to leverage their designation as Opportunity Zones.