A Better Way To Do Development

9:06 PM EDT on May 15, 2006

Otis White's Civic Strategies newsletter reports on a Los Angeles-based real estate developer, Rick Caruso, who is finding that the most effective way to get big development projects done is to work with neighborhood and community groups on plans and designs from the very beginning rather than shutting them out of the process:

"...Caruso's secret seems to be working with the neighbors in the earlydesign stages and not walking through the door with renderings inhand. This approach works not only in California but in citiesaround the country. Recently, a developer wanted to build a 40-storydowntown condo tower in St. Paul, Minn., where people are sensitiveabout high-rise buildings overwhelming the city. The company metwith neighborhood groups more than a dozen times and ran through 24 different designs before coming up with one that satisfied theneighbors and make sense financially...."

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

Stay in touch

More from Streetsblog New York City

Congestion Pricing

Stockholm Leader’s Message to NYC: ‘Congestion Pricing Just Works’

"In Stockholm, people really thought that congestion pricing would be the end of the world, the city will come to a standstill, no one would be able to get to work anymore and all the theaters and shops would just go bankrupt. None of that happened."