A homeowner association, or a homeowner community, is a private association-like entity often formed either ipso jure in a building with multiple owner-occupancies, or by a real estate developer for the purpose of marketing, managing, and selling homes and lots in a residential subdivision. In the United States, the developer will typically transfer control of the association to the homeowners after selling a predetermined number of lots.
A housing estate is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country.
A condominium is an ownership structure whereby a building is divided into several units that are each separately owned, surrounded by common areas that are jointly owned. The term can be applied to the building or complex itself, as well as each individual unit within. The term "condominium" is mostly used in the USA and Canada, but similar arrangements are used in many other countries.
Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavors or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes. Public water supply systems are crucial to properly functioning societies. These systems are what supply drinking water to populations around the globe. Aspects of service quality include continuity of supply, water quality and water pressure. The institutional responsibility for water supply is arranged differently in different countries and regions. It usually includes issues surrounding policy and regulation, service provision and standardization.
Spencer Heath McCallum, commonly known as Spencer MacCallum, was an American anthropologist, business consultant and author. He was especially noted for his discovery of the pottery of the town of Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, Mexico.
In urban planning, transit-oriented development (TOD) is a type of urban development that maximizes the amount of residential, business and leisure space within walking distance of public transport. It promotes a symbiotic relationship between dense, compact urban form and public transport use. In doing so, TOD aims to increase public transport ridership by reducing the use of private cars and by promoting sustainable urban growth.
Tax increment financing (TIF) is a public financing method that is used as a subsidy for redevelopment, infrastructure, and other community-improvement projects in many countries, including the United States. The original intent of a TIF program is to stimulate private investment in a blighted area that has been designated to be in need of economic revitalization. Similar or related value capture strategies are used around the world.
A community garden is a piece of land gardened or cultivated by a group of people individually or collectively. Normally in community gardens, the land is divided into individual plots. Each individual gardener is responsible for their own plot and the yielding or the production of which belongs to the individual. In collective gardens the piece of land is not divided. A group of people cultivate it together and the harvest belongs to all participants. Around the world, community gardens exist in various forms, it can be located in the proximity of neighborhoods or on balconies and rooftops. Its size can vary greatly from one to another.
Long-term care (LTC) is a variety of services which help meet both the medical and non-medical needs of people with a chronic illness or disability who cannot care for themselves for long periods. Long-term care is focused on individualized and coordinated services that promote independence, maximize patients' quality of life, and meet patients' needs over a period of time.
Affordable housing is housing which is deemed affordable to those with a household income at or below the median as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index. Most of the literature on affordable housing refers to mortgages and a number of forms that exist along a continuum – from emergency homeless shelters, to transitional housing, to non-market rental, to formal and informal rental, indigenous housing, and ending with affordable home ownership.
Spencer Heath was an American engineer, attorney, inventor, manufacturer, horticulturist, poet, philosopher of science and social thinker. A dissenter from the prevailing Georgist views, he pioneered the theory of proprietary governance and community in his book Citadel, Market and Altar. His grandson, Spencer Heath MacCallum, popularized and expounded on his ideas, most notably in his book The Art of Community.
Mixed use is a type of urban development, urban design, urban planning and/or a zoning classification that blends multiple uses, such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment, into one space, where those functions are to some degree physically and functionally integrated, and that provides pedestrian connections. Mixed-use development may be applied to a single building, a block or neighborhood, or in zoning policy across an entire city or other administrative unit. These projects may be completed by a private developer, (quasi-) governmental agency, or a combination thereof. A mixed-use development may be a new construction, reuse of an existing building or brownfield site, or a combination.
The Canadian federal budget for the fiscal year 2006–2007, was presented to the House of Commons of Canada by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on May 2, 2006. Among the most notable elements of the federal budget were its reduction of the Goods and Services Tax by one percentage point, income tax cuts for middle-income earners, and $1,200-per-child childcare payment for Canadian parents.
Conservation development, also known as conservation design, is a controlled-growth land use development that adopts the principle for allowing limited sustainable development while protecting the area's natural environmental features in perpetuity, including preserving open space landscape and vista, protecting farmland or natural habitats for wildlife, and maintaining the character of rural communities. A conservation development is usually defined as a project that dedicates a minimum of 50 percent of the total development parcel as open space. The management and ownership of the land are often formed by the partnership between private land owners, land-use conservation organizations and local government. It is a growing trend in many parts of the country, particularly in the Western United States. In the Eastern United States, conservation design has been promoted by some state and local governments as a technique to help preserve water quality.
Green infrastructure or blue-green infrastructure refers to a network that provides the “ingredients” for solving urban and climatic challenges by building with nature. The main components of this approach include stormwater management, climate adaptation, the reduction of heat stress, increasing biodiversity, food production, better air quality, sustainable energy production, clean water, and healthy soils, as well as more anthropocentric functions, such as increased quality of life through recreation and the provision of shade and shelter in and around towns and cities. Green infrastructure also serves to provide an ecological framework for social, economic, and environmental health of the surroundings. More recently scholars and activists have also called for green infrastructure that promotes social inclusion and equality rather than reinforcing pre-existing structures of unequal access to nature-based services.
Seven neighbourhoods are of considerable note:
A voluntary society, voluntary community or voluntary city is a term used in right-libertarianism to describe an entity in which all property and all services are provided through what the proponents of the term call "voluntary means" and in which they include private or cooperative ownership.
A residential cluster development, or open space development, is the grouping of residential properties on a development site to use the extra land as open space, recreation or agriculture. It is increasingly becoming popular in subdivision development because it allows the developer to spend much less on land and obtain much the same price per unit as for detached houses. The shared garden areas can be a source of conflict, however. Claimed advantages include more green/public space, closer community, and an optimal storm water management. Cluster development often encounters planning objections.
In land-use planning, urban green space is open-space areas reserved for parks and other "green spaces", including plant life, water features -also referred to as blue spaces- and other kinds of natural environment. Most urban open spaces are green spaces, but occasionally include other kinds of open areas. The landscape of urban open spaces can range from playing fields to highly maintained environments to relatively natural landscapes.
PACE financing is a means used in the United States of America of financing energy efficiency upgrades, disaster resiliency improvements, water conservation measures, or renewable energy installations of residential, commercial, and industrial property owners. Depending on state legislation, PACE financing can be used to finance building envelope energy efficiency improvements such as insulation and air sealing, cool roofs, water efficiency products, seismic retrofits, and hurricane preparedness measures. In some states, commercial PACE financing can also fund a portion of new construction projects, as long as the building owner agrees to build the new structure to exceed the local energy code.
