News

Award Winning Study Identifies Redevelopment Opportunities for Portsmouth, Virginia

Portsmouth Redevelopment Opportunities assesses the opportunities for residential redevelopment in Portsmouth, Virginia. As one of the older cities in Virginia, Portsmouth was largely “built-out” in the Sixties and Seventies, constraining the potential for larger scale redevelopment and new construction. Recent redevelopment efforts have been very successful, suggesting the potential for Portsmouth to gain a larger share of diverse segments of the housing market. To help the City address this potential, a UAP graduate studio class examined the constraints, challenges and opportunities in expanding the City’s competitive position for currently underrepresented market segments. The studio prepared a comprehensive analysis of residential redevelopment potential in Portsmouth that includes very advanced analysis of both the economic sectors in Portsmouth and of housing location choice within the metropolitan area. The report demonstrates an innovative approach for identifying geographic clusters for targeting future redevelopment. This portion of the analysis utilized local property records, field checking, and multi-criteria screening to create the redevelopment clusters.

This studio project, led by Dr. Ted Koebel, won the 2008 Student Project Award of the Virginia Chapter of the American Planning Association (VAPA).

To view this report, click here (note, the report is in Adobe pdf format, and is 6.7 megabytes).

New Metropolis Lecture Series

Virginia Tech's Urban Affairs and Planning Program in Alexandria is pleased to announce the Metropolis Lecture Series. Lectures focus on cutting-edge topics and ideas about metropolitan development in the United States and abroad. Once a month, Virginia Tech invites speakers of broad regional, national and international reputation in scholarship, research, and policy. Click here to subscribe and listen to the podcasts of the lectures.