Digital Commons Network^™

Research: Planning And Provision Of Public Infrastructure. A Case Study Of Drainage Canals In Tema, Ghana.Pdf, Kwadwo Gyan

Kwadwo Gyan

A Decent Home For Every Family? Housing Policy Initiatives Since The 1980s, Sondra J. Fogel, Marc T. Smith, Anne R. Williamson

Sondra Fogel

Afandamental economic and social principle embedded in the American psyche remains the value of shelter. However, housing policy is the result of a complex exchange among economic, political, and social agendas competing for attention within the multiple levels of local, state, and federal governments. This article intends to capture what we consider afea of the significant initiatives since 1980 that reflect these tensions and comprise our current housing policies and directions. Furthermore, we suggest additional housing issues that may need to be addressed by the next presidential administration.

Remarks On Public Transit (Part Of Panel Discussion On Cities And Economic Development) At Pepperdine Univ., Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Spatial Negotiations In A Commercial City: The Red Sea Port Of Mocha, Yemen During The First Half Of The Eighteenth Century, Nancy Um

Nancy Um

The city of Mocha in Yemen was one of the most important Red Sea ports of the early modern Arab world, handling the trade of spices, textiles, metals, local aromatics and coffee beans. This essay examines the urban structures that governed the needs and practices of merchants in the city during the first half of the eighteenth century. Drawing on contemporary Arabic chronicles, archival European trade documents, historical photographs, and field work in the city, it documents the conspicuous absence of a network of public trade structures, like the urban khan, the expected locus for trade in an Arab city …

Bringing Home The Right To Housing To Advance Urban Sustainability, Lisa Alexander

Lisa T. Alexander

No abstract provided.

Getting It Right: Examining The Local Land Use Entitlement Process In California To Inform Policy And Process, Moira O'Neill, Giulia Gualco-Nelson, Eric Biber

Eric Biber

California’s housing affordability crisis has rightly received a great deal of attention by state lawmakers, the press, academics, and ordinary Californians. Important questions raised in this discussion are: What laws or regulations might impede housing construction in high-cost areas? What solutions might help reduce those barriers with a minimum impact on other important values, such as environmental protection, public participation, and equitable treatment of low-income communities of color? More specifically, does state environmental law (the California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA), or local land-use regulations, constrain housing development? To help answer that last question, we collected data on all residential development …

Market Urbanism Blog Posts - First Half Of 2019, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Do You Believe In Ghost Apartments?, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Non-Enforcement Takings, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

The non-enforcement of existing property laws is not logically separable from the issue of unfair and unjust state deprivations of property rights at which the Constitution's Takings Clause takes aim. This Article suggests, therefore, that takings law should police allocations resulting from non-enforcement decisions on the same "fairness and justice" grounds that it polices allocations resulting from decisions to enact and enforce new regulations. Rejecting the extant majority position that state decisions not to enforce existing property laws are categorically immune from takings liability is not to advocate that persons impacted by such decisions should be automatically or even regularly …

The Neighborhood Veto And Its Discontents, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Review Of The Fight For Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences And Future Implications Of The 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

Threading The Needle Of Fair Housing Law In A Gentrifying City With A Legacy Of Discrimination, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

Super Problems In Superstar Cities, Michael Lewyn, Beth Gazes

Michael E Lewyn

2018 July-December Market Urbanism Blog Posts, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Building Community, Still Thirsty For Justice: Supporting Community Development Efforts In Baltimore, Renee Hatcher, Jaime Alison Lee

Renee Hatcher

Baltimore is a city of many challenges, but it possesses true communitybased strength. The city’s residents and community organizations are its greatest assets. This article highlights some of the community’s work and how the Community Development Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law (CDC) supports this work through its experiential learning curriculum. The challenges facing Baltimore’s communities (systemic disinvestment, structural racism, vacant buildings, unemployment, and the criminalization of poverty, to name a few) existed long before the national media coverage and uprising surrounding the death of Freddie Gray, an unarmed Black man who suffered a fatal spinal injury …

Evicted: The Socio-Legal Case For The Right To Housing, Lisa T. Alexander

Lisa T. Alexander

Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a triumphant work that provides the missing socio-legal data needed to prove why America should recognize housing as a human right. Desmond's masterful study of the effect of evictions on Milwaukee's urban poor in the wake of the 2008 U.S. housing crisis humanizes the evicted, and their landlords, through rich and detailed ethnographies. His intimate portrayals teach Evicted's readers about the agonizingly difficult choices that low-income, unsubsidized tenants must make in the private rental market. Evicted also reveals the contradictions between "law on the books" and "law-in-action." Its most …

March-July 2017 Market Urbanism Posts, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

The Obama Administration's Parting Shot, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

My Planetizen Blog Posts July-August 2017, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Jan-Feb. 2017 Market Urbanism Posts, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Does The Threat Of Gentrification Justify Restrictive Zoning?, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Planetizen Blog Posts September-December 2017, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Planetizen.Com Blog Posts First Half Of 2017, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

2017 Market Urbanism Report Blog Posts, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Evaluating Katrina: A Snapshot Of Renters’ Rights Following Disasters, Eloisa Rodriguez-Dod, Olympia Duhart

Eloisa C Rodríguez-Dod

Hurricane Katrina destroyed the homes of many people living in parts of the Gulf Region. The storm displaced as many as 800,000 victims and it is still difficult for them to return home. Consequently, many homeowners have turned to renting because of the slow recovery process. Renters face added difficulties; they are often the last in line for government benefits and other assistance. There is much hostility towards the rights of renters, creating even more difficulties for them. This article focuses on the difficulties evacuee renters faced in New Orleans following the disaster. This article discusses legislation and attempted legislation …

The Threat Of The Wandering Poor: Welfare Parochialism And Its Impact On The Use Of Housing Mobility As An Anti-Poverty Strategy, Susan Bennett

Susan D. Bennett

This Essay discusses how, if one accepts the premises of mobility-based anti-poverty strategies, the geographical parochialism and structural rigidity of the welfare system undermine mobility goals. The Essay also examines the possibility that current trends in housing policy will undercut anti-poverty goals.

Just, Smart: Civil Rights Protections And Market-Sensitive Vacant Property Strategies, James J. Kelly Jr.

James J. Kelly Jr.

This essay, prepared for and published by the Center for Community Progress, a national, non-profit intermediary dedicated to developing effective, sustainable solutions to turn vacant, abandoned and problem properties into vibrant places, examines the legal and normative implications of local governments' use of neighborhood real estate market data to strategically focus vacant property remediation tools. I and other writers, such as Frank Alexander, Alan Mallach and Joseph Schilling, have argued for the importance of understanding the economic feasibility of market-based rehabilitation of derelict, vacant houses in making decisions as to how and when to use a variety of code enforcement, …

Growing Inequality And Racial Economic Gaps, Thomas W. Mitchell

Thomas W. Mitchell

Over the past several decades, economic inequality has grown dramatically in the United States while inter-generational economic mobility has declined, which has challenged the very notion of the "American Dream." In fact, the United States is more economically unequal than most other industrialized countries. Further, there are dramatic and growing racial economic gaps in this country. Despite the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and the various spinoffs it has catalyzed, there has not been any sustained, widespread social movement to address economic inequality in the United States over the course of the past several decades. Furthermore, it is unlikely that a …

Hip-Hop And Housing: Revisiting Culture, Urban Space, Power, And Law, Lisa T. Alexander

Lisa T. Alexander

U.S. housing law is finally receiving its due attention. Scholars and practitioners are focused primarily on the subprime mortgage and foreclosure crises. Yet the current recession has also resurrected the debate about the efficacy of place-based lawmaking. Place-based laws direct economic resources to low-income neighborhoods to help existing residents remain in place and to improve those areas. Law-and-economists and staunch integrationists attack place-based lawmaking on economic and social grounds. This Article examines the efficacy of place-based lawmaking through the underutilized prism of culture. Using a sociolegal approach, it develops a theory of cultural collective efficacy as a justification for place-based …

Structural Subjugation: Theorizing Racialized Sexual Harassment In Housing, Kate Elengold

Kate Elengold