The city of Akron has lost 93,000 residents since 1960, so it has room to grow. Now it has a draft housing plan that uses a tax abatement program modeled on examples in Cleveland and Cuyahoga Falls.
Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan and the city's planners today will "present a comprehensive housing strategy to revive a once vibrant, All-American city," reports Doug Livingston.
"Planning to Grow Akron," as the newly released housing strategy is called, relies in part on a tax abatement program that Livingston previewed in an article from late January 2017.
In the current article, Horrigan reports on some of the additional changes that will support the tax abatement program, including "converting one-way streets into two-ways and encouraging community groups to engage entrepreneurs and businesses. And [the city will] need state approval to declare all of Akron a 'community reinvestment area,' as Cleveland did before rolling out its tax abatement program decades ago."
The article also details the work of the city's planners in researching the plan.
FULL STORY: Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan stakes legacy on growing population
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This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research