Negotiating risk in property-based arts economic development: Exploring the innovative but untimely development partnership between the Seattle Art Museum and Washington Mutual

Property-led arts development (PAD) is central to urban policy and planning. The demand for physical arts infrastructure runs parallel with the public call for arts nonprofits to act more entrepreneurial in shaping and re-imaging urban space. Increasingly, these groups have become active property developers negotiating the risks and rewards of land development rather than remaining passive fundraisers of bricks and mortar campaigns. This shift in organizational identity raises questions about whether the politics of urban arts development have changed. This study asks four questions: (1) how are nonprofit arts organizations becoming more entrepreneurial in property development, (2) how are nonprofit arts organizations reshaping the urban landscape through development partnerships, (3) how are nonprofit arts developers responding to the 2008 economic crash, and (4) how does PAD align with new thinking on downtown development alliances? This research explores the innovative but failed land development deal between the Seattle Art Museum and the now-defunct Washington Mutual to build a joint tower in the central business district. Their atypical private/nonprofit partnership changed Seattle’s downtown landscape through flexible ownership structures, generous planning incentives and off-budget municipal maneuvers. The lauded project turned sour when the homegrown financial institution collapsed, forcing the museum into debt with limited private or public sector solutions. While SAM overcame the immediate crisis, the case is a cautionary tale about the long-term risk of contemporary PAD. The case shows that innovative practices do not predetermine success. Further, the partnership study illuminates how contemporary arts investments reflect as well as contradict new thinking in urban politics literature about evolving patterns of influence in U.S. downtowns.     

Incentivizing residential land development

Abstract

The owners of undeveloped urban land are often blamed for restricting housing supply and thereby driving up house prices in the face of increasing demand. This article shows how greater variation in amenity values across a housing market reduces competition between developers and makes delaying development more attractive to landowners. Competition can be enhanced, and development of land accelerated, by reducing this variation. In particular, governments can increase housing supply in more desirable areas by taking actions that boost the amenity value of land in less desirable areas.     

Lessons for LEED® for Neighborhood Development,Social Equity,and Affordable Housing

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design® for Neighborhood Development (LEED®ND) is a rating system designed to encourage sustainable development. I explore why and how most LEED®ND projects ultimately fail to meet the equity goals inherent in sustainability. I survey 114 LEED®ND accredited professionals (APs) and conduct 20 interviews with LEED®ND APs to illuminate the role of the rating system in developer decisions to include affordable housing in their projects. I also explore why nonprofit developers see value in seeking LEED®ND certification for their projects. Although a limited sample, it provides insights into how the certification process affects developer decisions. I find that the LEED®ND rating system does a poor job of encouraging developers to provide affordable housing: Only 40% of LEED®ND-certified projects include affordable housing. LEED®ND APs do not feel that the system offers sufficient incentives to overcome the risks and costs of providing affordable housing. Nonprofit developers might pursue LEED®ND to create savings for residents, but may be deterred by the cost of certification. Most respondents feel that the affordable housing credit should be increased and improved to provide adequate incentives to developers.

Takeaway for practice: Planners cannot count on LEED®ND certification to ensure the provision of affordable and mixed housing in sustainable neighborhoods. The LEED®ND system could be improved by weighting the affordable housing credit more heavily; developers could also be incentivized to build a greater mix of housing. The certification costs could be lowered or subsidized for projects with affordable housing and assessed on a per unit basis. Additional credits could be given to projects that significantly reduce utility costs for low-income residents.     

The Migrant Metropolis and American Planning

Problem: Immigration poses various problems for U.S. cities and regions, and the roles planners should play in migrant communities are not clear.

Purpose: I consider how practitioners and scholars have understood and addressed the planning challenges and opportunities presented by the major migrations of ethnic minorities to U.S. cities and regions over the past century.

Methods: I trace discussions of planning and migration at professional planning conferences over the past century and survey planning scholarship and practice related to immigration and migrant communities in three principal eras: early 20th century southern and eastern European immigration; the mid-century internal migrations of African Americans and Puerto Ricans; and immigration in the late 20th and early 21st century.

Results and conclusions: Over the past century, immigration has had physical, economic, and social effects on people and places that are legitimate concerns of urban planners. Yet, the planning profession has had an ambiguous and often ambivalent relationship with migrant communities and has struggled to define specific roles for planners within those communities while social workers and other community and economic development practitioners played larger roles. Planning scholars have not paid as much attention to migrants' adaptation and mobility in U.S. society or their impacts on receiving communities, labor markets, housing, and congestion as have other scholars and urbanists.

Takeaway for practice: Planners have engaged with migrants in a variety of ways. Understanding this history provides context for contemporary debates about immigration and helps frame challenges and opportunities in migrant and receiving communities as planning problems.

Research support: None.     

Prospects for walkable, mixed-income neighborhoods: insights from U.S. developers

In the U.S. today, there is a significant danger that walkable communities are becoming unaffordable to low and even moderate-income residents. This paper reports on the results of a survey of affordable housing developers that was conducted to provide a better understanding of what kinds of strategies could be used to substantially increase the prevalence of walkable, mixed-income neighborhoods from the point of view of developers. Thirty-four developers from around the U.S. were interviewed by telephone in November and December, 2010. Five themes emerged from the survey: the need for financing and access to capital and subsidy; the need for reform of financial regulation; the need for reform of land use regulation; the need for incentives; and the need for better communication and networking. Responses to the survey underscored the frustrations affordable housing developers are having with development more generally, and how those frustrations are amplified when trying to locate affordable housing in walkable, mixed-income neighborhoods. The paper concludes by suggesting strategies that could be employed to help promote walkable, mixed-income neighborhoods, beyond the obvious need for better access to capital: support for research that focuses on the benefits of mixed-income neighborhoods; documentation and illumination of best practices; and the fostering of communication and partnerships among a diverse set of advocates.     

One step ahead of the bulldozer: historic preservation in Houston,Texas

Community development corporations (CDCs) are often at the forefront of providing affordable housing and social services, restoring disinvested communities, and rebuilding neighborhoods. Most CDCs work in older, inner-city communities that, given their age and location, likely contain older and historic buildings. Thus, there is a seemingly logical overlap between community developers’ target neighborhoods and the tools, strategies, and resources associated with historic preservation. This article uses a qualitative case study of Houston’s Avenue CDC to explore how and why community developers use preservation within the context of a high-growth city. For more than two decades, Avenue has worked in three core neighborhoods in an effort to stave off gentrification via teardowns and townhome redevelopment. The findings show that, for community developers in growing cities, carefully crafted preservation strategies may be a way to challenge the forces of gentrification, displacement, and wholesale physical destruction.     

THE LOCATION CHOICES OF PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS DISPLACED BY REDEVELOPMENT: MARKET CONSTRAINTS,PERSONAL PREFERENCES,OR SOCIAL INFORMATION?

ABSTRACT: Since the early 1990s, federal housing policy in the U.S. has become increasingly concerned with the confluence of the neighborhood quality and location of assisted housing residents, and the HOPE VI program is one within this family of programs. Yet a lack of dispersal has characterized HOPE VI and other efforts to relocate public housing residents. Using one HOPE VI site in Seattle, Washington, as a case study, this article fits a conditional multinomial logit model to examine how ethnically diverse relocatees make relocation decisions. The postrelocation neighborhood's minority composition, poverty concentration, and distance from the original public housing site interact with market characteristics, personal preferences, individual characteristics, language proficiency and information based in social networks to influence eventual location outcomes. Results suggest that personal preferences and information available through close social relationships may play an important role in determining location outcomes, and that some social network contacts may enable moves to neighborhoods of lower poverty. Once these factors are taken into account, the housing market conditions do not determine location decisions of relocatees. Implications for HOPE VI and other similar relocation programs are discussed.     

Deconcentrating Poverty With Housing Programs

Problem: Housing programs of the past have exacerbated the problems of concentrated poverty. Current housing programs serving very low-income households, including homebuyers as well as renters, should be examined to determine the extent to which they help households make entry into neighborhoods with low concentrations of poverty.

Purpose: This research is designed to assist planners in understanding how well various approaches to resolving housing affordability problems can facilitate the poverty deconcentration process.

Methods: Administrative data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development are used to assess the degree to which federal housing programs help lowincome homebuyers and renters locate in neighborhoods where less than 10% of the population is below poverty.

Results and conclusions: Subsidizing households ought to be more effective than subsidizing housing units at helping lowincome households locate in low-poverty areas, and whether a household rents or buys should not matter to whether a program succeeds at deconcentration of the poor. Yet, analysis of national datasets across several housing programs finds neither of the previous propositions to be true. Housing vouchers suppliedto households are not helping renters locate in low-poverty areas any more effectively than are current project-based subsidies. It also turns out that tenure matters; a disproportionately higher share of low-income homebuyers are locating in low-poverty neighborhoods than are lowincome renters.

Takeaway for practice: I recommend that housing planners seeking to make poverty deconcentration more effective use housing placement counselors, administer programs at the metropolitan scale, lease and broker market-rate housing directly, promote mixed-income LIHTC developments, practice inclusionary zoning, and monitor the impacts of these efforts.

Research support: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.     

The Complexity of Public Attitudes Toward Compact Development

Problem: The future of compact development depends in part on understanding and shaping the public's attitudes toward it. Previous studies have suggested life cycle, socioeconomic, attitudinal, and ideological dimensions to preferences regarding development patterns, but rarely have all of these factors been examined systematically across a broad, generalizable sample of respondents.

Purpose: To examine public attitudes toward compact development, we asked survey respondents to weigh four important tradeoffs between compact and sprawling growth. We assess the relative influence of a variety of individual characteristics on these attitudes.

Methods: We use results from two large-scale, randomized telephone surveys, one conducted in California in 2002 and the other in four other southwestern states in 2007. Using logistic regression, we assess which personal characteristics are associated with stated preferences regarding compact development, and illustrate their degree of influence.

Results and conclusions: Support for the compact development alternatives is significant, in some cases exceeding support for traditional, decentralized suburban patterns. However, question wording appears to matter considerably, and individuals’ beliefs about different facets of compact development are often inconsistent. Although race, income, age, and the presence of children in the household are strongly associated with some views on the four tradeoffs, only political ideology is consistently associated with opposition to compact development.

Takeaway for practice: The significant support evident for compact development may not translate into actual housing choices unless local governments and lenders do more to support the production of such housing and neighborhood environments. If, as our results suggest, a major constituency for transit-oriented and mixed-use projects is low income residents, renters, and minorities, then well crafted urban infill projects that take into account the needs of these groups will help fulfill the potential of smart growth. Advocates might also frame compact development to appeal more to political conservatives.

Research support: The 2002 survey was conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, with financial support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, and David and Lucille Packard Foundation. The 2007 survey was conducted and supported by the Institute for Social Science Research at Arizona State University. All views expressed are solely those of the authors, not these organizations.     

Publications Received

Problem: Most housing programs in the United States do not focus on the most pressing housing needs. In 2003 more than 13 million households spent at least half their incomes on rent or the costs of homeownership, an increase of more than 35% since 1993. The vast majority of these households were poor. Yet housing policy has shifted away from deep-subsidy programs targeted to the poorest households toward providing shallow subsidies to higher-income households.

Purpose: This article considers whether, given that the federal government is unlikely to increase funding for low-income housing, state and local governments are likely to increase housing assistance to the lowest-income households in the future, how such assistance could be structured, and how states and localities might be persuaded or compelled to provide this assistance.

Methods: We examine the income distribution of households supported by major programs administered by state and local governments and the extent to which these programs target the poor and provide them with sufficient levels of subsidy. We reviewed program data reported to funding agencies and trade associations, census data on housing problems compiled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and data from surveys of policies and practices conducted by academic researchers and policy organizations.

Results and conclusions: We find that the shift to state and local administration of federal funds has not significantly shifted priorities. We provide evidence that states are not using their discretion go beyond federal requirements, and are not serving income groups below those they are required to serve. Locally funded programs are less likely to target the poor than state or federal programs.

Takeaway for practice: Rather than hoping for substantial local housing assistance targeted to the poor, we recommend making more effective use of existing federal resources.

Research support: None.     

DOWNTOWN REDEVELOPMENT AS AN URBAN GROWTH STRATEGY: A Critical Appraisal of the Baltimore Renaissance

ABSTRACT: Since the early 1970s, Baltimore has been heralded as a model of how declining, older U.S. cities can be revitalized Baltimore's economic development strategy has hinged on the creation of a “good business climate”; the linchpin of the strategy has been the redevelopment of downtown into the “corporate center” of a new Baltimore economy based on advanced services and tourism. Despite the favorable publicity accorded Baltimore's transformation, systematic analysis of social and economic trends suggests that corporate center-business climate redevelopment has done little to boost aggregate levels of prosperity in the city. Moreover, the Baltimore strategy has generated uneven patterns of growth and exacerbated urban dualism Baltimore has become “two cities”: a city of developers, suburban professionals, and “back-to-the-city gentry who have ridden the downtown revival to handsome profits, good jobs, and conspicuous consumption; and a city of impoverished blacks and displaced manufacturing workers, who continue to suffer from shrinking economic opportunities, declining public services, and neighborhood distress. The article explores three main reasons for these results: (1) business domination of Baltimore's public-private “partnership,” (2) the absence of explicit mechanisms linking downtown redevelopment to the revitalization of low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, and (3) the inherent pitfalls of building an urban economy on downtown-centered corporate services and tourism. The article concludes by briefly examining the implications of the Baltimore case for the general problem of how to generate equitable, sustainable economic development in older U.S. cities.     

‘Deliberative development’: Australia’s Baugruppen movement and the challenge of greater social inclusion

Abstract

German Baugruppen are the most well-known of the collaborative, self-organized alternatives to speculatively produced multi-residential housing, delivering housing at a significant price discount to market. However, Baugruppen have been criticized for excluding less affluent households with financing and social capital barriers identified by Hamiduddin and Gallent as reinforcing socio-economic stratification. Collaborative, self-organized housing is, however, under-researched and there has been scant attention to financing. Collaborative, self-organized multi-residential housing in Australia is known as ‘deliberative’ development to differentiate it from ‘speculative’ development. We draw on case studies of deliberative development in Australia to reveal how projects are financed and how financing impacts on social equity considerations. Proponents of contemporary deliberative development in Australia are deeply concerned about housing affordability and declining rates of home ownership. This has focused attention on development financing as a key to systemic change paving the way for inclusion of less wealthy households.     

Housing pathways,aspirations and preferences of young adults within increasing urban density

Abstract

There is growing recognition within housing preference studies that younger housing consumers are more amenable to compact dwellings. Yet, there remains uncertainty around the drivers of these preferences. In Auckland, the development of a spatial plan emphasizing intensification has attracted opposition from residents, reinforcing a notion that compact housing is largely unappealing. Utilizing a housing pathways approach, we question this notion through examining the housing narratives of Generation Y, a cohort whose preferences are largely ignored in this debate and poorly understood within housing research. This paper highlights the influence of past experiences on attitudes to changing urban environments, providing several themes related to housing experiences that have the potential to influence preferences. We conclude that a process of ‘acclimatisation’ to density is likely as Generation Y become exposed to higher-density housing. However, to encourage positive experiences, compact dwellings must attend to the dynamic nature of contemporary housing pathways and provide quality housing, located where young people aspire to live.     

Future Directions in Housing and Public Health: Findings From Europe With Broader Implications for Planners

Problem: Chronic diseases such as asthma are rising at alarming rates in the United States and worldwide. Housing environments play an important, underappreciated role in these trends.

Purpose: In this article, we document the magnitude of the association between housing conditions and asthma and related respiratory symptoms, present examples of new systems for addressing adverse effects of housing on health, and discuss how planners might require or encourage such innovations.

Methods: We use logistic regressions based on household survey data from seven European cities to show the magnitude of the association between housing conditions and noise annoyance and the exacerbation of asthma and related respiratory symptoms. To support our argument that new housing intervention systems show great promise for alleviating current housing-related health challenges, we offer several different examples of green building criteria that incorporate health measures.

Results and conclusions: After taking into consideration individual-level characteristics, we found that respondents across a range of cities who were strongly annoyed by general neighborhood noise had twice the odds of a doctor-diagnosed asthma attack or related respiratory symptom than those not at all annoyed. Those strongly annoyed by traffic noise had 68% higher odds. Drainage problems at the housing unit were associated with 54% higher odds of experiencing respiratory symptoms, building structural problems with 27% higher odds, and a leaky roof with 35% higher odds. We identify healthy housing development, construction, and housing rehabilitation systems as promising initiatives for addressing the web of associations between housing and health. We suggest that funds such as Community Development Block Grants or housing trusts could subsidize such efforts, and various existing planning processes could incorporate health requirements or scoring criteria.

Takeaway for practice: There is compelling evidence that housing conditions are associated with poor health. Planners should inform themselves about these and identify opportunities to incorporate health considerations into planning that affects housing.

Research support: None.     

Housing: an infrastructure of care

Abstract

In this article, we conceptualize housing as an infrastructure of care. Drawing on the recent infrastructural turn in social sciences we understand infrastructures as dynamic patterns that are the foundation of social organization. New infrastructural analyses attend to how infrastructures pattern social life and identify the values that are selectively coded into infrastructures, (re)producing social difference through use. We argue that housing patterns care across three domains: through housing materialities, markets and governance. First, we identify how housing patterns the organization of care at a household and social scale. Second, we attend to the relational politics of care through housing, asking how care is ordered through housing and to whose benefit. Third, we consider where and how care is located in housing. This third direction opens a substantively new approach in housing scholarship, identifying housing as a sociomaterial assemblage that is constitutive of care. We provoke housing researchers to ask: is this a housing system that cares?     

How market competitive is America's public housing? The case of Baltimore

This study estimates what would happen to one local Housing Authority (HA)-the Housing Authority of Baltimore City (HABC), Maryland-if the public housing program were transformed to: eliminate certain key aspects of Federal government regulation, especially with respect to occupancy and rent rules; end Federal operating subsidies to HAs; provide current public housing residents with a portable housing certificate under the Section 8 Existing Housing program, permitting them to choose whether to use it in HA developments or in the private market; and require HAs to compete in the marketplace for residents and revenues. Martin Abravanel is a Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute. Terrence Connell is Manager of the Statistical Analysis Team, Real Estate Assessment Center, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Deborah Devine is a Social Science Research Analyst in the Program Monitoring and Research Division, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Debra Gross is Director of Research, Council of Large Public Housing Authorities. Lester Rubin is a Social Science Research Analyst in the Program Monitoring and Research Division, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.     

It’s Time to End Single-Family Zoning

Abstract

Local planning in the United States is unique in the amount of land it reserves for detached single-family homes. This privileging of single-family homes, normally called R1 zoning, exacerbates inequality and undermines efficiency. R1’s origins are unpleasant: Stained by explicitly classist and implicitly racist motivations, R1 today continues to promote exclusion. It makes it harder for people to access high-opportunity places, and in expensive regions it contributes to shortages of housing, thereby benefiting homeowners at the expense of renters and forcing many housing consumers to spend more on housing. Stacked against these drawbacks, moreover, are a series of only weak arguments in R1’s favor about preferences, aesthetics, and a single-family way of life. We demonstrate that these pro-R1 concerns are either specious, or can be addressed in ways less socially harmful than R1. Given the strong arguments against R1 and the weak arguments for it, we contend planners should work to abolish R1 single-family zoning.     

31 Flavors of Inclusionary Zoning: Comparing Policies From San Francisco,Washington, DC,and Suburban Boston

Problem: Over the past several decades, inclusionary zoning (IZ) has become an increasingly popular, but sometimes controversial, local means of producing affordable housing without direct public subsidy. The conversation about IZ has thus far largely ignored variations in the structure of IZ policies, although these variations can impact the amount of affordable housing produced and the effects of IZ on production and prices of market rate housing.

Purpose: We provide a detailed comparison of the ways in which IZ programs have been structured in the San Francisco and Washington metropolitan areas and in suburban Boston.

Methods: We create a unique dataset on IZ in these three regions by combining original data collected from several previous surveys. We use these data to compare the prevalence, structure, and affordable housing output of local IZ programs.

Results and conclusions: In the San Francisco Bay Area, IZ programs tend to be mandatory and apply broadly across locations and structure types, while including cost offsets and alternatives to onsite construction. In the Washington, DC, area, most IZ programs are also mandatory, but have broader exemptions for small developments and low-density housing. IZ programs in the Boston suburbs exhibit the most heterogeneity. They are more likely to be voluntary and to apply only to a narrow range of developments, such as multifamily housing, or within certain zoning districts. The amount of affordable housing produced under IZ varies considerably, both within and across the regions. There is some evidence that IZ programs that grant density bonuses and exempt smaller projects produce more affordable housing.

Takeaway for practice: Although variation in IZ program structures makes it hard to predict effectiveness, IZ's adaptability to local circumstances makes it a particularly attractive policy tool. IZ programs can easily be tailored to accommodate specific policy goals, housing market conditions, and residents' preferences, as well as variations in state or local regulatory and political environments.

Research support: This article is adapted from a longer working paper written with financial support from the Center for Housing Policy, the research affiliate of the National Housing Conference.     

Neighborhood Affordability and Housing Market Resilience

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Although many researchers have examined factors associated with vulnerability to foreclosure, few have investigated the role neighborhood affordability plays in foreclosures in metropolitan areas. In this study, we examine the effects of location affordability (i.e., housing and transportation affordability combined) on resilience to foreclosure in more than 300?U.S. metropolitan areas during the U.S. housing recovery period. Using hierarchical linear regression with changes in zip code–level home foreclosure rates, our findings suggest the relationship between affordability and foreclosure resilience varies according to urban form (central/high-density city versus suburban low-density area) and types of metropolitan housing markets (boom–bust versus strong versus weak). In the national analysis, where location affordability was high, home foreclosure rates dropped substantially in central/high-density areas but not in suburban low-density areas. When we disaggregated the zip codes according to the market type, location affordability contributed to recovery in central cities in strong and weak metros and in the suburbs of boom–bust metros. There was no positive association in the suburbs of strong and weak metros. With improved data, future studies could measure an association between affordability and lower income renter households.

Takeaway for practice: Our study of the affordability crisis that followed the foreclosure crisis shows that planners can foster resilient and affordable housing markets by expanding and densifying affordable neighborhood locations and considering interactions between the costs of housing and transportation. Planners can improve neighborhood affordability with local and regional strategies based on the local residential density and the type of metropolitan housing market.