Regional Revitalization - The Process

Regional Revitalization Initiatives are designed to integrate stakeholders (business, academic, government, and non-profit), integrate assets (all twelve sectors), and integrate communities.  This integration happens as a result of shared tools, shared learning, and shared interests.

Regional Revitalization Initiatives are based on a 3-step orientation and training process for each community (or group of communities) throughout your region:

1. First comes our Revitalization Vision Workshop.  This one-day event familiarizes your local stakeholders with the basic concepts of the global trend towards restorative development, integrated restoration projects, and integrated revitalization programs.

2. Second is our 1-day Revitalization Design Workshop. This one-day event focuses on a particular project (such as an historic building, waterfront, etc.) and--as such--is an optional step in the revitalization process: You can skip straight to the Strategy Workshop if you don't have a particular catalytic project that needs to be integrated into the process.  This workshop familiarizes local leaders, planners, designers, economic developers, etc. with the Asset Integration Checklist of our Integrated Revitalization Guide. This 24-point system is the quickest and easiest way to tackle the complex task of integrating the restoration of all twelve sectors of assets, so that the restoration of one contributes as much as possible to the restoration of the others. This can lead to tremendous cost savings, in addition to powerful synergies that quickly accelerate your socio-economic renewal.

3. The grand finale for a community is our 5-day (or 3-day, in some cases), Revitalization Strategy Workshop.  This session steps attendees through both the Asset Integration Checklist and the Stakeholder Integration Checklist from our Integration Revitalization Guide.  At the end of this intensive workshop, local leaders from all four stakeholder groups (business, government, non-profit/citizen, and academic) will fully understand integrated restoration projects and integrated revitalization programs. But we all know how quickly such knowledge can fade, so they will also have their own Revitalization launch Guide, produced by them during the workshop. Their customized Launch Guide is a decision-making tool that will be useful for years to come as they create and implement their own integrated revitalization strategy, policies, and plans.

   • This week-long workshop uses our Integrated Revitalization Guide to help ensure that all restorable assets are addressed and (if desired) their restoration is funded.  It also ensures that a community or region's policies, codes, incentives, etc. advance (or at least, don't impede) restorative development, while helping to ensure that all four stakeholder groups are able to fully contribute to your region's revitalization.

The Regional Revitalization Initiative process is eminently affordable, because you don't have to wait until all of the communities or counties in your region have been trained before you start seeing the payback.  After each event, each community will start (or accelerate) its own revitalization, so your region's economy begins its renewal in a piece-by-piece fashion.  But the real magic can happen when each of these local revitalization starts integrating with the others. 

This will be unusually easy, because each will be using similar terminology, the same 8-sector taxonomy, and the same tools for designing and measuring their programs.  With those shared resources and shared experiences, your businesses, government agencies, NGOs/citizen groups, and your colleges/universities will be far more imbedded in your regional socio-economic growth strategy than you ever thought possible. 

To enroll or obtain further information: Call Storm Cunningham at 703-348-7878, or email him at storm@revitalization.org