The Latest from CommunityScale
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Commercial Triangle Neighborhood Plan
The Commercial Triangle Neighborhood Plan is a comprehensive project designed to revitalize a rapidly evolving post-industrial urban area into a transit-oriented district through strategic planning and design in Everett, Massachusetts. The plan focuses on…
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Modeling
CommunityScale builds custom statistical, spatial, and economic models to answer the specific questions communities face. Some questions don’t fit an off-the-shelf template. What happens to property values next to affordable housing? How do housing…
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Strategy
CommunityScale’s housing strategy work is the bridge from analysis to action. Every housing forecast or market study ends with a production target; every strategy engagement turns that target into a concrete list of things…
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Focus group
CommunityScale convenes focus groups, stakeholder panels, and standing advisory bodies to ground every analysis in local knowledge and to build the constituency needed for adoption. Focus groups calibrate the analysis by testing data assumptions…
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Survey
CommunityScale designs and deploys community housing surveys to capture resident experience, preferences, and priorities at scale. Surveys complement the quantitative analysis from Census, CoStar, HUD, and Zillow with lived experience and forward-looking preferences, the…
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Engagement
Engagement is CommunityScale’s practice for everything that moves a housing or zoning project from analysis to adoption: public meetings, workshops, city council and planning board presentations, open houses, charrettes, and communication materials. CommunityScale approaches…
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Dashboard
Housing Forecast app app.communityscale.io is CommunityScale’s flagship digital product: a national, always-updated housing forecast dashboard covering US counties, places, and metro areas. Every housing forecast engagement includes access to the client’s app.communityscale.io page by…
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How smart cities can become resilient to extreme heat
Extreme heat is the leading cause of climate change related death in the United States. It is more deadly than hurricanes, tornadoes, and flooding. And, as our planet warms, it is becoming more necessary to cool…
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Downtown Hammond, IN Master Plan (CNU award)
With the announcement of new commuter rail service to Chicago and the emergence of a surprisingly robust housing market demand, downtown Hammond is ready to punctuate a decades-long economic decline and jump-start its downtown…
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Riverside TOD Design Guidelines
While at Stantec and in collaboration with Jeff Speck, we developed a package of design guidelines for Mark Development’s transformational transit-oriented development proposal adjacent to Newton’s Riverside light rail station. The design guidelines translate…
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Everett Design Regulations
CommunityScale team members wrote the Everett Design Regulations working closely with Everett staff and the Everett Planning Board. Capitalizing on Everett’s increasing attractiveness in the market, the regulations help the City translate increasing development…
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Local Rapid Recovery Program
While at Stantec, members of our team lead the development of strategic, implementation-focused Covid-recovery plans for downtowns in Leominster, Athol, and Sturbridge, MA. Under the guidance of the Department of Housing and Community Development…
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Elkhart, IN River District Implementation Plan (CNU award)
Elkhart’s leaders knew their city, once reliant on manufacturing, needed to diversify its economy. The City’s appointed public/private River DistrictImplementation Team (RDIT) was formed to plan the River District, and work began on bringing…
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Mixed use district zoning for onMain, Dayton
CommunityScale team members authored a mixed use district ordinance for the City of Dayton, Ohio, with the developers of onMain as the client. The zoning was adopted unanimously by the City of Dayton. The…
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Northland Needham Development Master Plan
Northland Investment wanted to reinvent a classic strip mall in Newton, Massachusetts, an older suburb of Boston. The developer asked for an urban design strategy that would make the site a focal point for…