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Mayor Dan Horrigan wants to grow Akron's population again.

The Planning to Grow Akron report was designed to develop strategies that will facilitate an increase in the supply of marketable, market-rate housing in the City in order to attract residents with middle to high incomes, reverse Akron's gradual decline in population and grow the City's tax base.

In order to accomplish this goal, Planning to Grow Akron attempts to answer three questions:

What is the state of our current housing supply?
What is the state of our current housing demand?
How do we change our housing supply in order to generate more demand?

Planning to Grow Akron discusses how we should go about revitalizing our residential neighborhoods and reinventing Akron as a place to live. The report takes a "30,000-foot" glance at Akron's existing housing stock and provides a framework for strategies to promote growth and investment in the City's neighborhoods. These strategies will be used as the basis for more specific evaluation and implementation in the coming months and years.

Recommendations of Planning to Grow Akron include:

Recommending city-wide property tax abatement to spur development of new housing construction and housing rehabilitation;
Developing neighborhood-based plans to create nodes of activity and increased walkability;
Promoting downtown housing as an alternative to vacant office space;
Increasing the utilization of the Summit County Land Bank for acquisition of property, demolition and land-banking in targeted areas;
Modernize the Zoning Code to adopt form-based zoning to reduce impediments for worthwhile projects and encourage mixed-use development;
Expedite the permitting process and foster relationships with developers, homebuilders and lenders;
Increasing the identification and marketing of historic areas and community assets to spur economic development.