AGENDA: Nurture and sustain neighborhoods of choice, quality, and distinction throughout the community.

In-Depth: Create Quality Neighborhoods

Strong, distinctive neighborhoods are among Louisville Metro’s most compelling assets. In many ways, neighborhoods remain the fundamental unit of community life and their “quality of place” is a key element of the competitive package Louisville offers.

Beyond Merger urged the adoption of a comprehensive strategy to assess the condition of neighborhoods throughout the community, followed by aggressive reinvestment to shore up and revitalize fragile and declining neighborhoods.

Louisville Metro has translated the commitment to neighborhoods into a goal to create “neighborhoods of choice with housing at all price points in all areas of the community.” The vision is that a range of housing types and prices for every generation, from affordable and starter homes, to family-size steps up, along with downsizing options for older residents, should be available throughout the community.

Achieving the vision for neighborhoods of choice will require extensive reinvestment in older neighborhoods and strong planning as new neighborhoods take shape. It will address a prime indicator of social health: the number of residents living in distressed communities, which declined to just over 10 percent during the 1990s. Louisville advanced in comparison to its peer cities on that measure.

The accompanying map presents a typology of Louisville Metro neighborhoods based on concentrations of poverty. Since poverty levels alone do not capture important characteristics of neighborhoods, researchers for the Population Reference Bureau and The Annie E. Casey Foundation combined several measures of vitality to identify severely distressed communities. The green dots highlight neighborhoods where high concentrations of poverty coincide with other characteristics that define neighborhoods of distress, including the prevalence of families headed by single women, the percentage of residents who do not have a high school diploma, and the percentage of working-age men not connected to the labor force.

The map represents a critical snapshot, or baseline, as Louisville Metro Government undertakes neighborhood assessments and the design of a comprehensive housing strategy. The map will change if there is sustained commitment to the success of vital community development initiatives, including the development of new, mixed-income neighborhoods on the site of large public housing complexes, the expansion of downtown housing options, and the addition of more affordable housing near suburban job centers.

The quality and affordability of Louisville’s housing stock have long been recognized as hallmarks of the quality of life available here. The median price of a home in Louisville Metro jumped over the last decade to $103,000, however, moving it from among the most affordable into the middle among its peer cities.

A disconcerting finding in Beyond Merger was that while the rate of homeownership had risen for white families between 1990 and 2000, it actually dropped for African-American families and now stands at 40 percent – although rates of homeownership rose for all families during that period.

Residents judge the quality of public services and community life most directly from their front porches or the foot of their driveway. The vast majority of Louisville Metro residents in all areas give their neighborhoods high marks. In a recent public opinion survey conducted for The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 87 percent of Louisville Metro residents children, and 63 percent regarded their neighborhoods as close-knit communities.

Overall, residents gave Louisville Metro Police high marks for fairness and responsiveness, but only 60 percent found the quality of street repairs satisfactory.

Bottom Line
Achieve the Vision of Neighborhoods of Choice Throughout the Community