Tornado Rebuilding Master Plan & Strategy

Rebuild Springfield

Information

Location Springfield, Illinois
Size 3840 acres
Completion 2012
Services Architecture, Sustainability

BNIM was selected by DevelopSpringfield and the Springfield Redevelopment Authority to lead the recovery planning of several Springfield neighborhoods after a tornado ripped through the city in early June 2011. The EF-3 tornado caused a six-mile path of destruction through the city and suburbs, damaging over 600 homes, businesses, and institutions along with hundreds of historic trees. BNIM and the planning team created a citywide plan, specific district plans, and an implementation strategy to rebuild the seven neighborhoods affected by the tornado.

Springfield, like many other US cities, experienced deindustrialization and disinvestment in the central neighborhoods with certain areas plagued with absentee landlords, vacant properties and crime. The tornado, for all its devastation, created an opportunity for the City of Springfield to go beyond recovery and harness the collective will of the people to shape its future, while preserving and enhancing the historical and cultural underpinnings that make Springfield so special.

Over a period of four months, BNIM and the planning team engaged the community, identified strategic infrastructure and development projects, and developed an implementation plan for a stronger, economically vigorous, socially cohesive and environmentally sustainable city. Plan initiatives addressed a diverse range of community needs including reforestation, housing development, small business support, neighborhood marketing, streetscape improvements, vacant lot strategies, healthy food systems, public facilities, social services and more.

People

Team

Laura Lesniewski
Bob Berkebile
Thomas Morefield
Amanda Wilson
Charles McDowell

To Our Mother Tornado, Teatro V!da Emmy Cepeda, Jasmine Jimenez, Keila Matos, and Zoe April Martinez (Facilitated by Magdalena Gomez) Our Mother came to clean up a disaster: Isolation. To join our hands and create the city we all want: security, connection, cleanliness, beauty fresh-feeling parks where we enjoy freedom. City of equality. to let go of egos and begin at the bottom. Our Mother came to clean up a disaster: Ignorance. “They’re just kids” you say we don’t know what we want but when we talk we are ignored; now it’s our turn to speak. You had your chance. Empty streets scream fear. People feel insecure in their own homes. Our Mother came to clean up a disaster: Fear. Our Mother, helping her children the North and the South make peace, work together like they should to help our city be reborn. She gave us a blank page so we can draw colorful streets full of lights, clean and beautiful. Our Mother came to clean up a disaster: Domination. This is not a game, no more fighting for trophies on the wall. We stand for our home, our city; we see her She wants change; productive change. Now I stand for my home, my city. Our Mother came to clean up a disaster. Good people the city wants our well-being her family engaged in daily change from neighborhood to neighborhood. When I hear “impossible” I say, “I’m Possible” Everything is possible. We are possible. Let us destroy deception and hypocrisy. Name is of no value here- We need Action, Voice, Conviction. An impossible vision placed perhaps above monetary gain but never above the People’s desire for justice.