Welcome to Suburban Conversion

This blog is a discussion on real strategies of how we are going to repair the suburbs.  I have been moved to enter the blogging world out of a personal frustration with the current array of ideas that I have heard regarding this topic.  Several months ago, I attended the Florida Redevelopment Conference, which overall was one of the best in recent years.  However, the sessions dealing with corridor redevelopment left me without any new insights.  Then, only two weeks ago I enrolled in a webinar entitled "Transforming the Suburbs: A Step by Step Guide."  Again frustration, as the only case study presented was that of Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City, home to Sprint/Nextell, a Fortune 500 company and a community that has a median household income of over $70,000.  With so much community wealth, the presented conversion strategy outlined for Overland Park did not have much transferability to most other American suburbs.

In this blog I hope to vet some ideas being discussed and implemented for Casselberry, Florida, perhaps a community much more typical of most American suburbs  .  Casselberry was founded in the 1940's and saw most of it growth during the 1950's -- 1980's.  It is a built-out community of 26,000 people without a defined downtown or center.  It is dominated by two major arterial commerical corridors and numerous commercial strip centers.  Its residents are employed in the service trades and in retail.  Many families get their start in Casselberry and move on when they have the means to do so.  Retirees like Casselberry with its small chain of lakes and a public 18-hole golf course.  Casselberry is middle America, whose residents are stressed dealing with the economic pressures of a struggling economy.  But it is a community with hope and a desire to pull itself up by its bootstraps. 

Some of the topics on my mind include economic developent, neighborhood reinvenstment, upgrading community amenities, stormwater strategies, placemaking on a budget, repurposing and redeveloping old dead shopping centers, and code enforcement as a tool for reinvestment.  We'll go from there. 

I'm greatly interested in hearing from you on challenges but especially successes from your communties.  Has anyone successful remade a commercial corridor?  How is your community dealing with foreclosures?  Has anyone successfully created connectivity between one "cul de saced" neighborhood and another?  Let's begin the discussion on practical ways to connect, re-make, and reinvigorate America's suburban places.