Integrated Revitalization Initiative^™

Our Integrated Revitalization Initiative develops tools and offers workshops to help communities and regions shift from an inefficient, project-by-project approach to redevelopment to a programmatic approach. This helps the community visualize, sequence, and fund the renewal of all of their built and natural assets, achieving synergies that give them more socioeconomic revitalization from each restoration investment.

Our Integrated Revitalization Guide--is a specification tool that's available for use by the public and non-profit sector free of charge.  Our Workshops help communities, regions, and NGOs use this tool effectively.  The tuition for these Workshops is sometimes paid by the community itself, or the Workshop can be sponsored by a foundation, bank, corporation, development agency, etc.  

SPONSORSHIP: Please email us if you'd like to receive information about being a sponsor, or call 703-348-7878. 

We have two types of sponsors:

• Workshop Sponsors donate the tuition for one or more Workshops for particular communities or regions;

• Initiative Sponsors support the Integrated Revitalization Initiative.  Besides helping us continue our work, these donations also help us keep the tuition low for those communities and regions that have to pay their own tuition.

The "integration" we refer to is along two axes: The twelve sectors of restorative development, and the four stakeholder groups (government, business, NGO/citizen, and academic.)  A properly integrated revitalization strategy cannot be held hostage by constraints in any  particular area (such as changing political agendas).

The Integrated Revitalization Initiative (IRI) has three purposes:

1. To research and develop effective insights, processes, and tools that will make it easier to plan and implement the revitalization of an area, based on restoring its built, natural, and social assets in an efficient, systematic manner. 

2. To educate business, government, non-profit, and academic leaders in the use of these insights, processes and tools.

3. To facilitate the application of these insights, processes, and tools to real-world projects, so as to revitalize our communities and natural resources as quickly as possible.

Our Integrated Revitalization Guide is at the heart of the Initiative. It comprises two parts: the Asset Integration Guide helps ensure that each project (both new development and restorative development) contributes to the restoration of all of the applicable  twelve sectors. The Stakeholder Integration Guide helps communities/regions encourage new restorative development projects, properly nurture those it already has, and capture the revitalizing momentum of those it has completed.  [That momentum is captured through a combination of internal marketing, external marketing, and academic tie-ins that help turn those projects into new research, new curricula, and new local job skills.]

The 4T's: Most community and regional revitalization programs--even when very well organized, managed, and planned--lack the 3 defining features of a rigorous, repeatable strategy for success.  As a result, they are often little more than a collection of good ideas, worthy projects, bold experiments, and inspiring visions.  Sometimes, they have labels that give the illusion of a coherent strategy--such as "smart", "sustainable", or "green"--but these terms are primarily dialogue tools: They chiefly serve as rallying points for intelligent new thinking about development and growth.  For a revitalization program to be efficient, successful, and accountable, it requires what we refer to as the "4T's":

• Theory: Revitalization strategies should have a sound theoretical basis that can be tested, evolved, and relied upon.  Integrated revitalization is based on two hypotheses:

  • Restorative development produces far more jobs and quality of life enhancement than growth based on new development (sprawl).

  • Integrating the restoration, remediation, and redevelopment of all twelve sectors of restorable assets--and integrating the involvement of all four stakeholder groups (government, business, non-profit, & academic)--produces a greater revitalizing effect than will the usual haphazard, project-by-project, or neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach.  It also speeds the process, while greatly enhancing access to funding, both public and private. [see graphic]

• Terminology:  Revitalization dialogue must have a shared vocabulary to allow meaningful participation and maximum integration of the broad spectrum of professions, disciplines, and stakeholders that are required to address all of the restorable assets of a community, region, or nation.

  • This new terminology is constantly evolving. Click here to see some key terms.

• Taxonomy: Revitalization tactics should be based on a logically organized system of measurable actions. This provides a simple, replicable way to inventory your restorable assets, organize your restorative actions, monitor the results, and easily adjust your strategy over the years, based on that feedback.

  • The first part of our taxonomy is this: Budgets and planning processes must be in "trimodal" format, meaning that all 3 modes of the development lifecycle are clearly separated.  Those three modes are new development (also known as 'sprawl" or "frontier mode"); maintenance/conservation; and restorative development.  It's impossible to systematically shift development activities from new development to restorative development if the latter isn't even a budget category.

  • The second part of our taxonomy is this: An area's revitalization agenda can be divided into 12 sectors, and the restoration of each of these 12 sectors can be measured according to 3 "restorable functions/values".

• Tools: Appropriate theory, taxonomy, and terminology will do wonders for an area's ability to have an effective dialogue and to craft a useful vision to guide their revitalization strategy, but it takes practical tools to ensure that the actual projects and programs spawned by this strategy accomplish what they were meant to accomplish.

  • Projects are evaluated according to our Asset Integration Guide's 24 metrics. These help ensure the maximum level of integration among the 12 sectors, thus producing a much greater "bang for the buck" in terms of socioeconomic revitalization.

  • Programs are evaluated according to our Stakeholder Integration Guide's 7 factors that help ensure the maximum level of continuity and integration in a community or region's ongoing revitalization effort.  Properly designed and implemented, an integrated revitalization program becomes the "flywheel" of socioeconomic renewal, capturing and perpetuating the momentum added by each restoration project.

To read more about the Integrated Revitalization Initiative, click here.