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As we kick off the new year, the OP team is pushing forward efforts to support DC’s Comeback Plan and Mayor Bowser’s vision to make Washington, DC a place for successful businesses, opportunity-rich neighborhoods, and thriving people.
In late December 2022, the DC Council approved my confirmation as Director of the DC Office of Planning. I am thankful for this public service opportunity. I look forward to continuing to advance implementation of the updated Comprehensive Plan, community plans, and zoning and preservation initiatives that support District goals around economic recovery, housing equity, resilience, and racial justice.
Sincerely,
Anita Cozart
Director, DC Office of Planning
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Mayor Bowser and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development recently released DC's Comeback Plan: Our 2023-2027 Economic Development Strategy. The Comeback Plan lays out six bold goals, across three focus areas – successful businesses, opportunity-rich neighborhoods, and thriving people – that the District will strive to achieve over the next five years. These goals include creating 35,000 new jobs in high-growth target sectors; increasing access to opportunity for residents and eliminating key amenity gaps across all neighborhoods; adding 15,000 residents to the Downtown population by adding seven million square feet of residential units; and increasing economic prosperity in DC by lifting the median household income of Black residents by $25,000.
You can watch a recording of the event here and view the full plan at comeback.dc.gov.
Please use this link to submit your ideas on DC's Comeback Plan by February 1st, 2023.
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Mayor Bowser and the Mayor’s Office of Racial Equity recently released the District’s first-ever Racial Equity Action Plan, a three-year roadmap outlining actions that the District will take to close racial equity gaps and measure progress toward a more equitable DC. As part of this initiative, OP is developing an agency-level Racial Equity Action Plan to ensure that our work advances racial equity in the District.
OP is hosting an open house to gather feedback from residents to inform its Racial Equity Action Plan.
Saturday, February 11, 2023
10:00am - 12:00pm
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, 901 G St NW
Drop by to learn more and to share your input about OP’s efforts to embed racial equity in its planning work and advance racially equitable outcomes in the District. For more information on the event and to sign up click here.
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This month, we launch a series on promoting affordable housing and building toward an anti-displacement strategy, as called for in the 2021 Comprehensive Plan. The series starts with defining and measuring displacement.
Between 2000 and 2013, 22 of the nation’s 25 largest cities attracted 3.2 million people mostly to close-in neighborhoods around major job centers. The growth slowed by 2020 but the impact of migration on central neighborhoods has led to increased displacement pressures across the nation.
Like the national trend, migration to central neighborhoods in DC led to rising housing costs for many households. The migration trend increased housing demand, which led to accelerated housing production that expanded housing supply and helped ease rising costs, but also led to significant neighborhood change. The new demand from higher income households also corresponded with a decrease of primarily lower-income and Black households in many neighborhoods.
The Comprehensive Plan’s Housing Element identifies three forms of displacement:
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Physical displacement as households must move when the properties they occupy are redeveloped,
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Economic displacement as housing cost increases in the neighborhood force the household to find other housing options, and
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Cultural displacement as residents lose a sense of belonging or shared identity in their neighborhood due to neighborhood change or growth.
It is important to distinguish between gentrification and displacement. Definitions of gentrification vary but generally it is when lower income neighborhoods see an increase in the number of higher income households and related investment in housing and neighborhood businesses. Gentrification is linked to, but does not always lead to, displacement. In addition, displacement happens due to other reasons such as abandonment and disinvestment. Regardless of the reason, when left unchecked, displacement can result in exclusionary neighborhoods. Several studies have tried to identify and measure which changing neighborhoods throughout the nation are leading to gentrification and displacement.
- A 2019 study published by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) based on data collected between 2000 and 2013 found that seven cities accounted for nearly half of the gentrifying census tracts including: New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Diego and Chicago. The study also found that gentrification affected only 1.5% of census tracts, and only a small percent of those tracts showed signs of racialized or cultural displacement. When NCRC replicated their study in 2021 based on data from 2013 to 2017, they found that New York was the only city to place in the top ten during both time periods.
- The University of Minnesota Law School conducted a study on several types of neighborhood change (i.e. abandonment, low-income concentration, growth and displacement). The study found that, under the right conditions, rising incomes in neighborhoods do not always lead to a decline in low-income households.
In developing an anti-displacement strategy, it is essential to understand the conditions that lead to displacement and how best to implement programs that protect, preserve, and produce opportunities for low-income households. The next article will discuss how other cities have approached this challenge in greater detail. Share your thoughts on how displacement is defined by emailing us at planning@dc.gov or calling us at 202-442-7600.
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OP is committed to supporting next generation of designers and planners that reflect the rich culture and diversity of the District. This month, OP staff joined high school students at the School Without Walls and Ballou to introduce them to urban planning and design. These interactive presentations gave students the opportunity to think like a planner and explore the fundamental concepts of urban planning.
If you are interested in having OP present to a class or youth program, or know of students who would like to connect with OP staff to discuss careers in planning, design and preservation, please contact us via email at planning@dc.gov or call us at 202-442-7600.
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OP’s Historic Preservation Office recently prepared and sponsored the nomination for the Peter Bug Shoe Academy to become a DC historic landmark, which the Historic Preservation Review Board unanimously approved at its November 2022 meeting. Historically known as Buchanan School Plaza, the site opened in 1968 as an “adventure style” playground at 13th Street and E Streets SE in Capitol Hill. It was designed by noted landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg and featured an array of versatile and unusual features, including tunnels, pyramids, and a sunken basketball court. The playground originated as part of Lady Bird Johnson’s beautification campaign and was one of the best realized sites from that program in the District. Since the late 1970s, the remnants of the former playground and its recreation pavilion have been revived by educator and civic activist John “Peter Bug” Matthews as a nonprofit shoe academy. For more than forty years, the Peter Bug Shoe Academy has mentored the youth of Capitol Hill in life skills and a trade. It has become a truly beloved neighborhood icon.
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OP is pleased to announce a $70,000 grant award from the National Park Service as part of the Underrepresented Community History Grants program. Through this grant, OP’s Historic Preservation Office, in collaboration with the DC Preservation League, will research and document the history of affordable and workforce housing for African Americans in the District of Columbia and, as a result, identify four properties to be listed in the DC Inventory of Historic Sites and National Register of Historic Places. The goal of this two-year project is to better reflect and recognize the full story of the District’s culture and heritage in these official listings, to expand appreciation of existing affordable housing as a sustainable asset, and to increase opportunities for the rehabilitation of older and affordable housing stock in the city through historic preservation tax credits and other financial incentives.
The grant is OP’s fifth Underrepresented Communities project, having completed context studies for LGBTQ history and currently completing others for Women’s Suffrage and Asian and Pacific Islander history in the District. The Latino Historic Context Study project is also anticipated to commence in 2023.
For 85 years, children have enjoyed this giant frog sculpture at Langston Terrace. The complex first opened in 1938 as DC’s first federally funded housing option for African American families. (photo: National Archives, circa 1945)
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With the release of the 2021 Comprehensive Plan update, OP took the opportunity to reconsider how urban design can better guide development and promote more equitable social experiences. In previous urban design corners, we described Shaping a Shared Civic Identity and Designing the Livable District. This month, we will detail several policies that serve to activate public spaces in all neighborhoods of the District.
A central theme of UD-3 Fostering a Vibrant Public Realm is that community members are the ones best positioned to define the role of public spaces in their neighborhoods and that our position as designers is to provide tools and guidance that enables them to better advocate for strategies to make their spaces equitable and accessible. UD has worked diligently to promote neighborhood activation at the grassroots level through such efforts as the Our City, Our Spaces document and the Public Space Activation and Stewardship Guide.
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Buildings also play a key role in shaping positive and welcoming public spaces and are actively encouraged to support environments for better social interaction. For example, Policy UD-3.2.1 promotes the construction of porches, balconies, stoops and shared yards to support a culture of sidewalk socialization – where neighbors can interact with one another and maintain ‘eyes on the street’ to promote a shared sense of communal responsibility in taking care of their neighborhoods. Likewise, larger residential buildings should prioritize individual porches and entrances for ground floor units to create opportunities for socialization beyond an internal lobby.
Read more about the Urban Design Element of the Comprehensive Plan here.
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As the nation’s capital, and as a city of neighborhoods and residents, with a local history of people, places and events deserving their own commemoration; Washington, DC is home to many Commemorative Works honoring individuals and events of national and local significance. This month, we are featuring the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
 In January 1971, the DC Library Board of Trustees voted to name the new soon-to-open central library at 901 G Street NW for civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One Board member proposed naming only the Black studies room for Dr. King, noting the library should be named for no one like the main public libraries in New York City and Boston. A crowd attending the meeting, as well as the three Black Board of Trustee members, urged the Board to name the library for Dr. King, which it did with a 5-2 vote.
When the library was dedicated in 1972 it replaced the aging Central Library at Mount Vernon Square. The new building is one of the few International Style public buildings in Washington, the only DC building designed by influential modern architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and his only realized library design. Since 1986, a mural depicting the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Jamaican-American artist Don Miller has been displayed in the main lobby. The library is designated a DC Landmark and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, which requires review of changes proposed to the building’s exterior and public spaces, including the lobby, vestibule, and first-floor reading rooms. A $211 million modernization of the building was completed in 2020.
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Learn more and get involved in our community planning projects:
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