Contributor Blog

It was the collapse of the housing bubble that triggered the current economic crisis.  As is the case in the aftermath of many calamities finger pointing abounds. There are an ample number of would be culprits. Take your pick; The Federal Reserve for keeping interest rates too low, mortgage brokers for pushing inappropriate loans, ratings agencies for blessing dubious securities, the list goes on.  A common criticism aimed at all of these culprits is that they lacked the foresight to see the inevitable housing bust. It was the housing bubble that camouflaged all of the bad decisions.

The on-going foreclosure and subsequent credit crisis should offer important lessons for housing policy and public policy more broadly. Chief among these lessons might be the falsity of the notion that government regulation is always bad. But some conservative commentators cling to the dogma that government intervention is the root of all evil. An explanation being offered by some is that government intervention in the form of Community Reinvestment Act encouraged irresponsible lending and led to the subsequent housing bust.

Deindustrialization has wreaked havoc across many American cities and towns. One only need visit the landscape of the rust belt, places like Buffalo, Detroit or Flint, Michigan to get a sense how damaging this transformation can be. Behind the ugly ruins of abandoned factories and shuttered stores are the lives of real people who have suffered. Manufacturing provided jobs, good paying ones at that, that helped create a blue collar middle class.

 

The Federal Reserve’s bailout (arranged liquidation to some) of Bear Stearns over the weekend seriously calls into question the headlong march toward neoliberalism that has been ascendant for the past few decades.

Last Year Planetizen published their first Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs. The Guide includes basic information about the programs (location, specializations, faculty, etc) and an overall ranking of the schools and ranking by specialization. It is these rankings that are the source of much consternation within the planning academy.

This year in Parents Involved in Community Schools Inc. v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County (Ky.) Board of Education the Supreme Court ruled that school districts could not assign students on the basis of race, even if the goal was to promote integration. To some this is the end of an era, with affirmative action and other diversity promoting programs in jeopardy as the court has now come full circle using the Brown decision to outlaw programs that promote integration. Most commentators on this ruling have highlighted the implications for school integration programs and even affirmative action more broadly. But the ruling also speaks to an issue pertinent to planners as well—racial segregation in American cities, and by racial segregation I am referring to the segregation of African Americans who are by far the most segregated group in America.

Although the latest immigration bill being debated upon in congress has attracted relatively little attention from planners, the planning implications of reforming or not reforming current immigration policy are huge. Immigration impacts labor markets, and thereby commuting patterns, transportation planning and economic development. Immigration swells the population of many cities and towns forcing planners to rethink their plans for housing, schools and other public services. Often overlooked, however, is f immigration’s impact on the planning process itself.

Just east of downtown Brooklyn on a 22 acre site Forest City Ratner is proposing a mega-project that would transform the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) Vanderbilt rail yards and a few adjacent blocks into 6,430 units of housing, 336,000 feet of office space, 247,000 feet of retail space, a hotel and an arena that would be the new home of the NBA New Jersey Nets. Like almost any mega-project proposed in a dense city like New York, Atlantic Yards is raising the ire of many. In this case, however, the names and roles of the usual suspects have changed. At least some view the developer as a savior and champion of the inner city poor, while many of the project’s opponents are viewed as reactionary elites only concerned about the potential loss of their parking spaces. This reversal of protagonists is due in large part to the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) negotiated between the developer and several community groups.

Getting stuck in traffic is fast becoming one of those necessary evils that everyone complains about but seldom does anything about it. Or at least anything that seems terribly effective. Neither additional road building nor public transit seemed to have had a major impact on traffic congestion in places where these types of remedies have been attempted.

The merit of rent regulation is a recurring debate in New York City. On one side are tenant advocates arguing that rent regulation is desperately needed to help poorer households, maintain socioeconomic diversity in New York City, and prevent the City from becoming the preserve of the super rich. Real estate interests on the other hand argue that rent regulation deprives property owners of the right to market their apartments as they see fit, causes landlords to under-invest in their properties, and that in many instances the beneficiaries of rent regulation are affluent. What makes the debate so bedeviling and contentious is that both sides are correct.