Five More CURA Studies!

Both Virginia Commonwealth University and I have fallen down on our pledges to promote the Virginia-focused public policy work of the university’s Center for Urban and Regional Analysis (CURA). Since last I highlighted one of CURA’s studies on Bacon’s Rebellion, the center has published five more without any notice on this blog. Hopefully, we have rectified the breakdown in communications, and I will provide access to future studies on a timely basis.

To make partial amends, I would like to alert Virginia’s policy wonk community to those five studies published over the past year or so.

Evaluation of the Virginia Enterprise Zone Program  (December 2016)

Analysis of the impacts of the program on employment and real-estate values, the features of the program that work well, and determination of how enterprise-zone performance can be enhanced. (Prepared for the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development.)

The Impact of Heritage Tourism on the Virginia Economy (February 2017) ‌ 

Estimates the quantitative impact of heritage tourism on the state’s economy, and provides a qualitative picture of the role of heritage tourism in community development in Southwest Virginia, Northern Virginia, and on the Eastern Shore. (Prepared for Preservation Virginia.)

Downtown Hopewell Space Feasibility Study (August 2017)

Studied the community demand for potential uses of a 14,000-square-foot building, located in downtown Hopewell. The study looked at successful kitchen incubators and makerspace facilities in other states, conducting a business survey, and presenting a cash flow analysis of five scenarios for potential uses of the space. (Prepared for Hopewell Downtown Partnership.)

Understanding the Jobs-Affordable Housing Balance in the Richmond Region (July 2017)

This report maps and describes the geographic relationship of affordable housing and low-wage jobs in the Richmond region through two different spatial models: a Thiessen polygon-based approach and a gravity-based approach. The report also examines housing value and crime data in neighborhoods around six different affordable housing developments to identify any impacts the developments had on topics of concern to neighbors of affordable housing. (Prepared with the support of the Community Foundation.)

Second Annual MetroView Development Tracker (July 2017)

MetroView Development Tracker provides a snapshot of land use, property value, development footprint, and jobs-housing balance as of 2014-2015 for 15 counties, 6 independent cities, and one town comprising the greater Richmond metropolitan area. Detailed land use profiles for the RRPDC and Crater PDC boundaries and for individual county/city are also included in the report.