"Brings policymakers, practitioners, and scholars up to speed on the state of knowledge on urban and regional policy issues. Conceptualizes fresh thinking of different aspects (economic development, education, land use), presenting main themes and implications and identifying gaps to fill for successful formulation and implementation of urban and regional policy"--Provided by publisher.
Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects, the third in a series, sets out to inform policymakers, practitioners, and scholars about the effectiveness of select policy approaches, reforms, and experiments in addressing key social and economic problems facing cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas. The chapters analyze responses to five key policy challenges that most metropolitan areas and local communities face: • Creating quality neighborhoods for families • Governing effectively • Building human capital • Growing the middle class • Enlarging a competitive economy through industry-based strategies • Managing the spatial pattern of metropolitan growth and development Each chapter discusses a specific topic under one of these challenges. The authors present the essence of what is known, as well as its likely applications, and identify the knowledge gaps that need to be filled for the successful formulation and implementation of urban and regional policy.
The mission of the Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects series is to inform policymakers, practitioners, and scholars about the effectiveness of select policy approaches, reforms, and experiments in addressing the key social and economic problems facing today's cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas. Volume four of the series introduces and examines thoroughly the concept of regional resilience, explaining how resilience can be promoted—or impeded—by regional characteristics and public policies. The authors illuminate how the walls that now segment metropolitan regions across political jurisdictions and across institutions—and the gaps that separate federal laws from regional realities—have to be bridged in order for regions to cultivate resilience. Contributors: Patricia Atkins, George Washington University; Pamela Blumenthal, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Sarah Ficenec, George Washington University; Alec Friedhoff, Brookings Institution; Kathryn Foster, University at Buffalo, SUNY; Juliet Gainsborough, Bentley University; Edward Hill, Cleveland State University; Kate Lowe, Cornell University; John Mollenkopf, Graduate Center, City University of New York; Mai Nguyen, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Manuel Pastor, University of Southern California; Rolf Pendall, Urban Institute; Nancy Pindus, Urban Institute; Sarah Reckhow, Michigan State University; Travis St. Clair, George Washington University; Todd Swanstrom, University of Missouri, St. Louis; Margaret Weir, University of California, Berkeley; Howard Wial, Brookings Institution; Harold Wolman, George Washington University
This document has evolved over three years to meet the need for a more comprehensive understanding of how neighborhoods change. The Office of Policy Development and Research at HUD formulated policy alternatives to stem the rising tide of abandoned residential buildings. It showed abandonment as the last stage of a process, not a random or isolated phenomenon. The failure of programs to counteract and halt the decline of neighborhoods has stemmed mainly from an imperfect understanding of this process. There have also been political problems with acting in neighborhoods before the symptoms were painfully evident and from the tendency of program developers to deal with the house, rather than the people who own it, rent it, loan on it, or insure it. Few programs have recognized that those people were part of a total neighborhood rather than occupants of individual buildings. The process of neighborhood change is triggered and fueled by individual, collective and institutional decisions. These are made by a myriad of people-households, bankers, real estate brokers, investors, speculators, public service providers (police, fire, schools, sanitation, etc.) and others. It is a reasonable conclusion that if a concentrated effort is made to affect these decisions then neighborhood decline can be slowed, halted, or in some circumstances, reversed.
Foreclosures have become one of the most important urban problems faced by contemporary cities. Our goal is to better understand factors that affect foreclosure rates in a typical, mid-sized U.S. city. While previous research has found that a key explanatory variable positively affecting foreclosures is the percentage of minorities in a neighborhood, our model finds that the effect of percent non-white is impacted by several key intervening variables, such as the presence and proximity of EPA listed Super-Fund Sites along with walkability, in these majority black neighborhoods. In the past, these factors have been ignored by social scientists because they are difficult to measure. Firstly, we look at how speculators in majority black neighborhoods account for a significant share of foreclosures in these neighborhoods. Secondly, we examine the effect of EPA-listed Superfund Sites and find that in this instance almost all are located either near or within many of these majority black neighborhoods and finally we look at walkability and its effect on foreclosures. We find that these three variables help explain the causes of greater foreclosures occurring in majority black neighborhoods. These three key variables add to previous explanations of high foreclosures resulting from unfavorable loan terms offered in black neighborhoods.
A multidisciplinary approach to problem-solving in community-based organizations using decision models and operations research applications A comprehensive treatment of public-sector operations research and management science, Decision Science for Housing and Community Development: Localized and Evidence-Based Responses to Distressed Housing and Blighted Communities addresses critical problems in urban housing and community development through a diverse set of decision models and applications. The book represents a bridge between theory and practice and is a source of collaboration between decision and data scientists and planners, advocates, and community practitioners. The book is motivated by the needs of community-based organizations to respond to neighborhood economic and social distress, represented by foreclosed, abandoned, and blighted housing, through community organizing, service provision, and local development. The book emphasizes analytic approaches that increase the ability of local practitioners to act quickly, thoughtfully, and effectively. By doing so, practitioners can design and implement responses that reflect stakeholder values associated with healthy and sustainable communities; that benefit from increased organizational capacity for evidence-based responses; and that result in solutions that represent improvements over the status quo according to multiple social outcome measures. Featuring quantitative and qualitative analytic methods as well as prescriptive and exploratory decision modeling, the book also includes: Discussions of the principles of decision theory and descriptive analysis to describe ways to identify and quantify values and objectives for community development Mathematical programming applications for real-world problem solving in foreclosed housing acquisition and redevelopment Applications of case studies and community-engaged research principles to analytics and decision modeling Decision Science for Housing and Community Development: Localized and Evidence-Based Responses to Distressed Housing and Blighted Communities is an ideal textbook for upper-undergraduate and graduate-level courses in decision models and applications; humanitarian logistics; nonprofit operations management; urban operations research; public economics; performance management; urban studies; public policy; urban and regional planning; and systems design and optimization. The book is also an excellent reference for academics, researchers, and practitioners in operations research, management science, operations management, systems engineering, policy analysis, city planning, and data analytics.
The global financial and economic crisis that hit the world since 2008 has affected the lives of many people all over the world and resulted in declining incomes, rising unemployment, foreclosures, forced residential moves, and cut-backs in government expenditure. The extent to which the crisis has affected urban neighborhoods and has led to rising intra-urban inequalities, has not yet received much attention. The implemented budget cuts and austerity programs of national and local governments are likely to have hit some neighborhoods more than others. The authors of this this book, which come from a variety of countries and disciplines, show that the economic crisis has affected poor neighborhoods more severely than more affluent ones. The tendency of the state to retreat from these neighborhoods has negative consequences for their residents and may even nullify the investments that have been made in many poor neighborhoods in the recent past. This book was originally published as a special issue of Urban Geography.
The practice of comprehensive planning is changing dramatically in the 21st century to address the pressing need for more sustainable, resilient, and equitable communities. Drawing on the latest research and best practice examples, The Comprehensive Plan: Sustainable, Resilient, and Equitable Communities for the 21st Century provides an in-depth resource for planning practitioners, elected officials, citizens, and others seeking to develop effective, impactful, comprehensive plans, grounded in authentic community engagement, as a pathway to sustainability. Based on standards developed by the American Planning Association to provide a national benchmark for sustainable comprehensive planning, this book provides detailed guidance on the substance, process, and implementation of comprehensive plans that address the critical challenges facing communities in the 21st century.
