Shared outdoor public space/entertainment districts are catalysts for urban development. 2020 proved this, and the changes are here to stay.

Partners for Better Housing, a nonprofit real estate developer, is piloting an innovative approach to mixed-income homeownership in a new construction neighborhood located in south Fayetteville. The Willow Bend neighborhood is a public-private partnership of the city of Fayetteville and many other community partners and will eventually include 80 high-quality, single-family homes. Using what is called a shared equity model, Partners for Better Housing provides a discount to income-qualified homebuyers that decreases their mortgage amount to an affordable level.

When Go Forward Pine Bluff began the monumental task of putting into motion the Delta city’s infrastructure and economic rebirth a few years ago, CEO Dr. Ryan Watley had to rely on the public’s imagination and trust the vision of a new Pine Bluff. But even he knew how critical tangible progress was to fuel that optimism and sustain momentum.

The laundry room has been retrofitted into a Zoom-ready office. Playgrounds and libraries have been closed. Restaurants are setting up shop in parking spots to accommodate desperate diners. The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered our sense of private and public space. Having been confined to the former, we yearn for the latter. So where do we go and what do we do? The Slow Streets movement might be the answer: Give people the keys to the streets.

“I was an overnight success all right, but 30 years is a long, long night,” Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, once said. Argenta, North Little Rock’s downtown, has a similar take on its success. Over the years, Argenta has lifted its head up and showed flashes of brilliance. When it happens, the reporters line up for quotes about our “overnight success.” Funny thing, some of these reporters were not even born when we started this project.

There’s no shortage of grand designs in Arkansas’s bustling northwest corridor, as the region is regularly touted as one of the fastest-growing in the country. Among the rattling bulldozers and towering cranes bringing to life glass, steel and concrete has sprung an ambitious project that is all about the quiet tranquility of nature and facilitating the human connections that define a community.

Casino legalization in Arkansas will alter the way impacted cities plan for the future, but it may take some time for those plans to take shape. City planning updates have been launched in Hot Springs and West Memphis to accommodate the addition of live casino gaming at the cities’ respective racetracks and the commercial growth expected to piggyback off it. But city officials don’t yet know exactly what those updates could look like.

Pine Bluff Mayor Shirley Washington pulls no punches when the topic of discussion is revitalizing her once-thriving Delta city. 

“Progress,” she said flatly, “cannot come soon enough.” 

Decades of population loss, failing to adapt to changing economic tides and epidemic drug issues made Pine Bluff synonymous with crime and decay. The city’s Main Street became so decrepit, certain portions were blockaded as some buildings literally fell down where they stood. 

On the Grand Prairie of the Arkansas Delta, just an hour east of the center of Little Rock, rice is king. Anyone who doubts that need only glance at the miles of flat, terraced ground that’s everywhere in and around places like Stuttgart. Here, rice is as much an identity as a business and grain silos dwarf the otherwise-tallest structures in town.