"Don't waste a crisis."
Michael Pagano wasn't referring to the most recent Cincinnati snow storm, which delayed Hamilton County Planning Partnership's latest workshop on Jan. 21 by a few hours. In the first presentation of this workshop, third in a series on "Sustainable Hamilton County: Reinventing Our Communities," Dr. Pagano acknowledged that the real crisis was the severe economic downturn of 2007, which, he insists, "should encourage a political discourse about reforming the fiscal architecture of municipalities."
Planners, county administrators, elected leaders and community activists braved the icy commute to UC's Tangeman University Center to attend the workshop "Fiscal Sustainability and Quality of Life of Our Communities." Pagano, Dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois in Chicago, was blunt in his recommendations for cash-strapped local and state governments. Reforming the current tax structure and incentivizing healthy development will happen, he says, when regions and their governments begin to work together.
Joining Pagano in this call for regional cooperation were fellow presenters and panelists: Florida planner and New Urbanism leader Peter Katz; Levea Brachman, executive director of Greater Ohio; and Travis Miller, planning manager for the Ohio Kentucky Indiana Regional Council on Governments (OKI). Katz and Miller recommended the use of property tax and land use analysis to see the true cost of development in a new economy that values walkable, compact, urban neighborhoods.
Brachman encouraged municipalities to look at their older neighborhoods, brownfields, and a dense downtown core not as liabilities but as valuable assets in that new economy.
"Hamilton County's new landbank…could be extremely valuable in addressing the vacant property redevelopment challenge that faces the urban core as well as many suburbs." She found that these innovative efforts and visionary plans like Agenda 360 in southwest Ohio "demonstrate that governance reform is possible and beneficial to not just local jurisdictions but the entire region and the entire state."
Jonathan Wocker, a planner with McBride Dale Clarion, complimented the Hamilton County Planning Partnership on this series of workshops. "[It's] doing a great job bringing together speakers and participants to talk about these issues. When you look at the topics collectively, you really start to see the impact that these types of programs can make."
A final, follow-up session, "Sustainable Hamilton County: We Can Do It!" is scheduled for March 11. It will give participants the chance to discuss their thoughts about the sessions and suggest what the community needs to do to move forward with a sustainable revitalization plan. For information about this session, contact Catalina Landivar, Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission Senior Planner, at (513) 946-4455 or
[email protected].
Writer: Becky Johnson
Photography by Scott Beseler.
UC's Tangeman University Center
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