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Community Service Activities

Brownfields Development Projects
Investigators: Nancy Frank, Harvey Rabinowitz

Both researchers have worked on a number of projects involving the analysis of existing Brownfields in Milwaukee to determine how they may be returned to urban use. Frank's emphasis is on creating a cost-benefit analysis that adequately addresses reclamation issues. Rabinowitz's emphasis is to identify feasible design alternatives based on realistic cost-benefit analyses.  

Economic Development
Investigator: Virginia Carlson
Student researcher: Venessa Kuehner 

As part of a national study by the Brookings Institution on the causes and effects of urban sprawl, Virginia Carlson investigated the role of Illinois' economic development programs in the Chicago area. This study complements her on-going work on the evaluation of the Annie B. Casey Jobs Initiative Programs in Milwaukee and Chicago. Carlson will be the Deputy Director for Data Policy, Neighborhood Markets Project, at the Brookings Institute through 2006. At Brookings she is undertaking a project, which is identifying ways to use demographic, market and programmatic information that connects low-income people to the economic mainstream and make urban areas competitive places for investment in the next decade The NMP's goal is to dramatically impact the landscape of private investment and public investment in urban neighborhoods.  

Studies of Welfare Reform and Women's Economic Status
Investigator: Virginia Carlson
Research Assistants: Kelly Raleigh-Otobed, Terence Johnson, Timothy Marquardt

After publishing her dissertation, The Availability Of Women Workers: The Effect Of Location, and studying the fit between available jobs and women currently on welfare, Carlson participated in the HUD study, "Welfare Reform Impacts on the Public Housing Program: A Preliminary Forecast." She collected data for labor markets in three Ohio cities and developed model commuting zones as tools for determining job openings actually available to women in those cities  

Neighborhood Revitalization
For more information: Carolyn Esswein, March/MUP

Numerous contracts are undertaken with the City of Milwaukee Planning Department, other Wisconsin governmental agencies, and privately funded, non-profit development agencies to provide assistance to neighborhood groups for a wide range of projects involving training and /or preliminary planning and design. Projects have included Federally funded Community Block Grant projects both as sub-contractors to neighborhood agencies and as project directors. Current projects include: KK River Planning Project, Lisbon Avenue Neighborhood Development, City of Milwaukee storefront design projects, Milwaukee River Revitalization, and City Center Revitalization ;Urban Ecology Center, Inc .Riverside Park Master Plan.

Community Empowerment
Investigator: Josef Stagg

Stagg works with disadvantaged Milwaukee communities to identify their design needs and the technology they require to plan, themselves, workable solutions to those needs. His most recent project is to work with the Sherman Park community to develop a master plan for housing. He will install for them and train them in the use of a GIS program and the necessary data to begin the task of graphic analysis of current housing and related conditions. He will also guide them in using CAD and digital animation programs.  

Real Estate Studies
Investigator: Harvey Rabinowitz

Rabinowitz studies the impacts of transportation, public policy, environmental degradation, etc. on land use in urban and x-urban areas and develops alternative design solutions to address past, present and future development.

last updated on May 03, 2007