University Park Alliance’s Core City Vision

The Atlantic Cities recently featured the University Park Alliance and its work to create a “sense of place” and strengthen Akron’s urban core.

The article “Building Community Around Downtown Jobs” features the alliance as leading the multi-sector team of city leaders who are working to reshape the downtown Akron area.

In the article, Nate Berg writes that the goal of the University Park Alliance is to:

“revive the area in to a mixed-use and vibrant neighborhood, leveraging the university and other major institutional employers in the area to lure people back to what was formerly—and what officials hope will someday be again—a thriving neighborhood.”

Knight Foundation currently supports the University Park Alliance, which hopes to bring more services and amenities to the neighborhood in an effort to meet the needs of future residents.

By doing so, the foundation seeks to “re-engage people so that the core center of Akron matters to them.”

The Atlantic Cities, a new online publication that is part of The Atlantic Magazine, explores the most innovative ideas and pressing issues facing today’s global cities and neighborhoods. By bringing together news and analysis, the site describes itself as an “engaging destination for an increasingly urbanized world.”

The article on University Park was covered in the Neighborhood section of its website.

– By Jennifer Thomas, program director/Akron at Knight Foundation