tRUST-lab

The workshop in Fall 2023 explored on-the-ground conditions and future possibilities for a critical neighborhood in East Cleveland: Buckeye/Woodhill. Like many Cleveland neighborhoods on the east and southeast side, Buckeye/Woodhill was once a neighborhood comprised primarily of Eastern Europeans who came to the US at the turn of the 19th century to work in this industrializing center on the shores of Lake Erie. Much later, suburban
development, white flight, manufacturing loss, and other urban dynamics affected the community and led to a shift in demographics over the decades. Today, Buckeye-Woodhill remains a proud neighborhood of individuals, families, businesses, and services, while also continuing to weather the ill-effects of racialized planning, urban renewal, and environmental injustice.

Addressing these issues, and issues similar to these, throughout Cleveland’s south and southeast neighborhoods has been a priority of the Mayoral administration of Justin Bibb, who was elected in November 2021. More specifically, the Bibb administration and City Planning departments have become interested in pursuing the idea of the “15-minute City”, a planning trend that has garnered recent national and international attention as a way of connecting people to services without the need of an automobile. Cleveland’s goal is to:

“Advance the mayor’s vision for a 15-minute city, where people’s basic needs can be met within a short walk, bike ride, or transit trip. The overarching goal of this work is to make Cleveland a more attractive, desirable, and safer city in which to live, work and play. The 15-minute city framework encourages private investment along historic commercial corridors with high-frequency transit service, increases transportation choice and freedom, and promotes healthy living and sustainability — all of which improves quality of life for residents. The 15-minute city framework encompasses many of the social and economic goals of the Bibb Administration, including addressing traffic safety through Vision Zero, decarbonizing our city and responding to climate change through proximity and transportation choice, improving air quality and public health, creating conditions for more affordable and diverse housing options, legalizing many of the existing homes in our neighborhoods through a form-based code pilot program, and supporting a small business ecosystem that affords entrepreneurship opportunities for Clevelanders, among others.”

- Office of Mayor Justin Bibb, July 2023

The work during the semester entailed assessing a portion of the Buckeye-Woodhill neighborhood for the purposes of testing the 15-minute city concept and its application to a specific place and a specific set of existing urban conditions. The goal was to understand current neighborhood dynamics, social structures, physical conditions, and new zoning regulations, while envisioning urban design scenarios (infill development, rehab, streetscapes, public spaces, and other) for how the area may evolve over time into a 15-minute city model.
 

Workshop Partners
The client for this work was the City of Cleveland Planning Commission, specifically the Office of Strategic Planning Initiatives who is undertaking a rigorous planning effort to understand and apply the 15-minute city principles in neighborhoods that are looking to catalyze public and private investment. Additionally, we partnered with the Western Reserve Land Conservancy (WRLC), a non-profit entity focused on planning and revitalization work in Cleveland. Given Cornell’s planning and urban design work over the past 5 years, the City and WRLC asked us to prepare analyses, concepts, narratives, and visualizations to imagine the Buckeye/Woodhill neighborhood as part of the 15-minute framework. The goal of the workshop was to produce meaningful, substantive work that was serious and feasible, and also aspirational and innovative, building excitement about the possibilities and promoting an ongoing conversation about the trajectory of Buckeye/Woodhill’s built and natural environments.