Redevelopment

Boston North Station area, ca.1960. CCBY from Wikimedia Commons

Redevelopment is any new construction on a site that has pre-existing uses.

 

Description

Variations on redevelopment include:

• Urban Infill on vacant parcels that have no existing activity but were previously developed, especially on Brownfield land, such as the redevelopment of an industrial site into a mixed-use development.
• Constructing with a denser land usage, such as the redevelopment of a block of townhouses into a large apartment building.
• Adaptive reuse, where older structures are converted for improved current market use, such as an industrial mill into housing lofts.

Redevelopment projects can be small or large ranging from a single building to entire new neighborhoods or "new town in town" projects.

Redevelopment also refers to state and federal statutes which give cities and counties the authority to establish redevelopment agencies and give the agencies the authority to attack problems of urban decay. The fundamental tools of a redevelopment agency include the authority to acquire real property, the power of eminent domain, to develop and sell property without bidding and the authority and responsibility of relocating persons who have interests in the property acquired by the agency. The financing/funding of such operations might come from government grants, borrowing from federal or state governments and selling bonds and from Tax increment financing.

Other terms sometimes used to describe redevelopment include urban renewal (urban revitalization). While efforts described as urban revitalization often involve redevelopment, they do not always involve redevelopment as they do not always involve the demolition of any existing structures but may instead describe the rehabilitation of existing buildings or other neighborhood improvement initiatives.
 

 

 

References 

• San Francisco Planning Commission. "New City : San Francisco Redeveloped." 1947. [redevelopment prospectus for Western Addition].  https://archive.org/details/newcitysanfranci1947scot.
   
• Wikipedia. "Redevelopment." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redevelopment.