Planning for job access is essential to helping residents escape poverty and spatial inequality in underinvested areas.
I feel like we are a lost community, and there’s a lot of potential around here, but we don’t have anything to strive with.
Abandoned and decaying buildings suppress the value of land and hamper residents’ efforts to revitalize. By joining forces with city planners, non-profits, and a land bank, residents are working to take control of blighted properties and turn around their neighborhood.
Local and county land banks have demonstrably empowered residents while reducing land speculation.
Vacant and Abandoned Properties Eliminated in Cleveland since 2006
Side Yards Created
Affordable Single Family Homes Created
Affordable Units in Multifamily Buildings
Resilient and drought-tolerant, tepary beans are native to the desert Southwest, grown by Native peoples since pre-Columbian times. But when the Pima and Maricopa tribes of the Phoenix region lost access to their water, cultivation of the beans nearly disappeared. Now, with water restored, the beans are making a comeback—and so are their growers. This resurgence resulted from policies designed to address inequality and create opportunity by reconnecting people with their land and water.
Over the past 40 years, economic inequality in the United States has returned to levels last seen in the 1920s. This gap has become more pronounced in many cities where wealth and poverty are concentrated geographically.
The emergence of big data is making possible new measurements that can inform how state transportation agencies plan and manage their projects.
Ben Walsh was sworn in as the 54th mayor of Syracuse in January 2018, leading a postindustrial metropolis that, like many, has struggled with job and population loss.
A post-industrial city on the brink of bankruptcy, Hartford, Connecticut has overhauled its zoning and turned abandoned factories into craft breweries and makers spaces. Planning commissioner Sara Bronin talks about cutting-edge urban planning practices.
Attracted to its healthy economy and popular outdoor lifestyle, young people and urban professionals have flocked to Portland, causing explosive population growth and rapidly shifting demographics.
If we become a boutique city, where the core of our city has all these wonderful amenities but it’s affordable to only a very few, we have failed.
Patterns of school enrollment can tell us a lot about Portland’s shifting demographics. After a period of widespread school closures as families with children moved out of the city, school enrollments have finally started to stabilize. However, high rates of student transfers indicate that financially struggling families are being forced to move farther outward from the city center.
Students Change Schools
Family Housing Units Permitted
Because the Pima-Maricopa tribe owns its land collectively and has resisted the pull of selling for development, the community remains intact. Seeing beyond potential short-term financial gain has allowed the community to address historical inequities and remain connected to the land.
After decades of disinvestment, American cities are rebounding, but new development is driving up housing costs and displacing lower-income residents.
Liz Wood wanted to buy a house. It was 2006, she had been renting for a decade, and her monthly payments were getting high.
People who work with me are often surprised by the extent to which my philosophical canon derives from low-budget offbeat films, typically from the 1980s.
When [houseless people] step forward and say we have a way to find safety, stability, and community that will move us forward in life, we need to listen to them.
Informality in Phoenix takes the form of an unofficial and undocumented labor force of Latino immigrants, whose inexpensive labor provides the engine for an economy based on real estate and construction.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, middle neighborhoods sprang up to house middle-income families drawn to U.S. cities by the dramatic rise of industry.
In the few years since the Yes in My Backyard (YIMBY) movement splashed on the scene in cities across the United States, the YIMBY mantra has been persistent: clear away the regulatory barriers and let developers build more housing.
Those in the Yes in My Backyard (YIMBY) movement have a simple goal: increase the supply of housing in cities, and sky-high prices should come down. But they face a growing backlash from neighborhood activists fearful of gentrification and displacement.
Minneapolis may seem like an unlikely place for the start of a revolution. But the Midwestern city has passed some of the most progressive housing policies and zoning reforms in the country.
Imagery in the above videos are courtesy of the following:
Creating Housing: Oregon State Government; The Oregonian/Barcroft Media; The Oregonian Op-Ed; Pond5; Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability; Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives; Shane Burley; Willamette Week.
Forgotten Triangle: Brookings Institution; Carmen Angelo/WTAM-iHeartMedia; Cleveland Metro School District; Case Western Reserve University; Cleveland Plain Dealer; Ed McDonald/Taco Slayer Aerial Urban Exploration & Community Activism; Ohio Department of Transportation; Pond5.
Good Neighbors: Zach Putnam.
Roads and Rails: City of Phoenix.
Seeds and Water: Arizona Historical Society; Central Arizona Project; Gila River Indian News; High Country News; Imagn.
Urban Removal in Albina: Albany Democrat Herald; Corvallis-Gazette; KOIN; Mapping Inequality; Oregon Historical Society; Oregonian Publishing Co.; Portland City Archives (A2010-003.3600, A2010-003.6541, A2012-005); Prosper Portland; Pond5.
Click here to watch the original Making Sense of Place series in its entirety.
