residents can accomplish daily tasks without vehicles. “I would love to make everything more walkable, get people out and communicate again,” he says. “Everybody needs their vitamin D, so getting them outside, that’s finding a way to get them out there.” HOUSING SOLUTIONS IN A LANDLOCKED CITY Bristol, Virginia faces a housing challenge, that is common across America, but complicated by a unique geographic constraint. The independent city cannot annex additional land, forcing all residential development onto existing parcels within its 13-square-mile footprint. With a population of roughly 16,300 and a median household income of around $44,706, the city must balance affordability with quality in a tight housing market. “Just like everyone else, the major struggle is to get housing up at a large and fast scale, and it needs to be quality homes,” Chapman says. “One thing that I want to focus on is that we need quality homes for individuals, and it needs to be more within our workforce pricing.”Virginia Housing and the Tobacco Commission provide crucial support through incentive programs for developers willing to build workforce housing within specific price parameters. “They’re offering incentives for these developers to come in and build that workforce housing that’s going to serve the area because it does have to sit within certain parameters in order for them to help with any funding,” Chapman explains. The landlocked reality shapes development patterns. “With us being landlocked, we have to work with the land we have. We cannot annex land,” Chapman says. “It is hard for us to create the neighborhoods when you don’t have the land to create the neighborhoods.” New construction typically means multifamily buildings rather than traditional single-family subdivisions. “If it’s a new build, it’s still going to be multifamily more than likely,” he notes. The city maintains a partnership with Bristol,Tennessee.“They can annex the land, so when recruiting businesses, we’re going to use their demographics, their home stock and stuff like that in order to bring in those businesses and those employees,” Chapman says. Building Infrastructure and the Innovation Economy 64 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 06, ISSUE 12
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