Posts by Tamar Shapiro
President’s Corner: Announcing next steps with gratitude for the past five years
Community Progress Friends: I write today to share the bittersweet news that I will be leaving Community Progress in the summer of 2017 to relocate abroad with my family, due to a unique fellowship opportunity for my husband. Today, the Board of Directors announced these plans and opened the search for a new President and…
Read MorePresident’s Corner: Fresh approaches to the “preventive medicine” of vacant property revitalization
At Community Progress, we seek to help communities that are dealing with entrenched, often large-scale vacancy and abandonment in their neighborhoods. This is critically important, but it is not enough. In the same way that many in the healthcare sector have embraced the importance of preventive medicine, we must find ways to halt deteriorating property…
Read MoreBuilding a movement at the Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference
In just a few months, Detroit will play host to community development leaders from across the country for the Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference (RVP), charting the course for the emerging movement to reuse our nation’s vacant properties. After visiting five other cities over the last eight years, we could not be more excited to bring…
Read MoreIt looks different around here: Our new brand, and what it means
It’s looking a little different around here today. And it feels a little different, too. Today marks the public culmination of our strategic planning and rebranding process. Over the past year, we’ve done some soul-searching. The peak of the foreclosure crisis has passed, but its impacts continue to hurt neighborhoods around the country. Other communities…
Read MoreFinding common ground in the fight against blight
Originally posted on The Catalyst: Ideas and Insights from Living Cities As a part of the Project on Municipal Innovation (PMI) – A network of Mayoral chiefs of staff and policy leaders from 35 of the country’s largest and most creative U.S. cities that Living Cities convenes biannually with the Ash Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School –…
Read MorePresident’s Preview: Communities across the country are turning to creative board-ups
Like many of you, I envision a future in which entrenched blight and vacancy in our communities is no more than a bad memory. While we work on the long term, however, communities also need near-term options to keep their residents safe and prevent decline. Lately, several organizations have come to my attention that are…
Read MorePresident’s Preview
Next week, over 700 professionals from around the country will descend on Philadelphia for the fifth Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference, coming together to share ideas and inspire action to revitalize vacant properties. Reclaiming Vacant Properties will offer a host of innovative and interactive sessions on everything from the relationship between greening and improved public health, to…
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