An Urban Real Estate Cartel For Affordable Housing

"[T]he Democratic Party needs to broaden its political embrace, wrapping the greenest of its Utopians together with its fiercest capitalists in a strategy that has the potential to do more than any previous U.S. government program to protect the environment, house the homeless, and uplift the values of racial and cultural tolerance. Democrats must build up the population of America's cities by establishing a disciplined, national, urban real estate cartel.

Whether the means be formal or otherwise, mayors of Democratic cities need to find a way to join together to market their unused or underused land in a way that encourages large developers to create dense urban communities, without demanding a king's ransom in taxpayer subsidies in return. Such a strategy would bring new people into the city, improve the environment by reducing sprawl and gasoline use, and -- and here is the novel part of the plan -- create new Democrats through the shared experience of urban living, all without crippling the urban governments financially, as such projects often do now."

Thanks to Preserving the American Dream Listserv