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The Promise And Perils Of New Regionalist Approaches To Sustainable Communities, Lisa T. Alexander Sep 2016

The Promise And Perils Of New Regionalist Approaches To Sustainable Communities, Lisa T. Alexander

Lisa T. Alexander

This Article argues that "new regionalism" is a form of "new governance." New regionalist approaches include collaborative efforts between cities and outlying suburbs to resolve metropolitan challenges such as affordable housing creation, transportation and sprawl. Such practices focus on regions as key sites for the resolution of public problems that transcend traditional local government and state boundaries. New regionalist praxis responds to local government law's failure to advance equity and sustainability throughout metropolitan regions. New regionalism promotes voluntary agreements and interlocal collaborations, rather than formal government or mandated regulation to resolve regional problems. New regionalism, then, is a form of …


Hip-Hop And Housing: Revisiting Culture, Urban Space, Power, And Law, Lisa T. Alexander Sep 2016

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 …


Cyberfinancing For Economic Justice, Lisa T. Alexander Sep 2016

Cyberfinancing For Economic Justice, Lisa T. Alexander

Lisa T. Alexander

This Article argues for the socially optimal regulation of online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and crowdfunding to advance economic justice in the United States. Peer-to-peer lending websites, such as Prosper. com orKiva.org, facilitate lending transactions between individuals online with-out the involvement of a traditional bank or microfinance institution. Crowdfunding websites, such as Kickstarter. com, enable individuals to obtain financing from large numbers of contributors at once through an open online request for funds. These web-based transactions, and the intermediary organizations that facilitate them, constitute emerging cyberfinancing markets. These markets connect many individuals at once, across class, race, ethnicity, nationality, space, and …


A Sociolegal History Of Public Housing Reform In Chicago, Lisa T. Alexander Sep 2016

A Sociolegal History Of Public Housing Reform In Chicago, Lisa T. Alexander

Lisa T. Alexander

This essay summarizes and compares Alexander Polikoff's Waiting for Gautreaux: A Story of Segregation, Housing, and the Black Ghetto and Mary Pattillo's Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City to convey the contributions and limitations of each book. Both works provide a rich sociolegal history of public housing reform in Chicago and illustrate the challenges Chicago has faced in implementing recent HOPE VI public housing reforms. I compare Polikoff's forty-year battle to desegregate public housing in Chicago with Pattillo's insightful observations of class dynamics between the new middle-class African-American power brokers of housing reform …


Stakeholder Participation In New Governance: Lessons From Chicago, Lisa T. Alexander Sep 2016

Stakeholder Participation In New Governance: Lessons From Chicago, Lisa T. Alexander

Lisa T. Alexander

The efficacy of the public-private partnership as a tool for social reform is the subject of continued scholarly and public debate. New governance theory, an increasingly popular form of jurisprudence, constructs an optimistic vision of stakeholder collaboration in public-private partnerships that justifies the use of the public-private partnership in regulatory reform. New governance scholars contend that recent governance trends such as devolution, deregulation, decentralization, and privatization create opportunities for previously marginalized stakeholders to more fully participate in public problem-solving. New governance scholars expect that both public and private stakeholders, with differing interests, skills and objectives, will effectively collaborate to solve …


Reflections On Success And Failure In New Governance And The Role Of The Lawyer, Lisa T. Alexander Sep 2016

Reflections On Success And Failure In New Governance And The Role Of The Lawyer, Lisa T. Alexander

Lisa T. Alexander

While the recent global economic downturn and the change in power in U.S. government force us to reexamine the efficacy of new governance approaches to public problem-solving and regulatory reform, the contributions of Symposium participants affirm that new governance will likely continue to be with us in the not-so-distant future. Thus, there is a continuing need to clarify the lawyer's role in new governance. This Afterword begins that task by (1) reassessing the core normative goals of much new governance jurisprudence and practice, analyzing and critiquing the limited role for lawyers envisioned in this field; (2) positing how lawyers should …