Evaluating Progress Toward Sustainable Development in Milwaukee’s Menomonee River Valley: Linking Brownfield’s Redevelopment with Community Quality-of-Life

Once heralded as the industrial heart of Milwaukee, the Menomonee Valley is now referred to as the largest brownfield district in the state of Wisconsin. As in other cities in the Rustbelt, government officials and concerned stakeholders are aiming to ensure a more sustainable future for this industrial district and the local community. This chapter reviews a community indicator study prepared for the Valley by the Center for Urban Initiatives and Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Sixteenth Street Community Health Center, a Milwaukee nonprofit organization. Specifically, the chapter: (1) describes the procedures employed for identifying priority issues affecting the Valley and the relevant indicators to examine them; (2) outlines the approach employed for gathering and presenting baseline data for the 2003 ‘‘State of the Valley’’ report and for the recently released 2005 report (www.mvbi.org); and (3) summarizes key results from the benchmarking research and reviews the strengths and weaknesses of the initiative. In all, the benchmarking initiative provides a straightforward and cost-effective framework for developing an indicator program that can be applied to monitor brownfields redevelopment and urban renewal efforts in a manner that incorporates community quality-of-life factors.