Alan Mallach

Inclusionary housing in California and New Jersey: A comparative analysis

Abstract Many people have argued that inclusionary housing (IH) is a desirable land use strategy to address lower‐income housing needs and to further the geographic dispersal of the lower‐income population. In an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of IH, this article examines the experiences of New Jersey and California, two states where IH has been applied frequently over an extended period. While the concept of regional “fair share” is central to both states’ experiences, the origins of the programs, their applications, and their evolutions are quite dissimilar. IH originated in New Jersey from the famous Mount Laurel cases and in California from housing affordability crises and a legislatively mandated housing element. The experiences of both states indicate that IH can and should be part of an overall affordable housing strategy but that it is unlikely to become the core of such a strategy.

Comment on Hollander's “The bounds of smart decline: a foundational theory for planning shrinking cities”

In recent years, the present condition and uncertain future of America’s shrinking cities have become a matter of considerable public interest and the idea that cities should plan strategies around the realities of their markedly smaller populations has emerged as an important subject for scholarly research, planning practice and urban policy intervention. While this idea represents a legitimate, and arguably long overdue, response to a cluster of difficult issues that have been decades in the making, at the same time, as Hollander reminds us, it raises important issues of equity and social justice. These are not new issues in urban policy, but they are critically important ones; Hollander provides a valuable service by stressing the extent to which, as new planning tools to address the distinct condition of shrinking cities begin to emerge, the social justice concerns they raise must be recognized and addressed. It is important, moreover, as Hollander recognizes, that social equity concerns be explicitly addressed, rather than seen as an implicit and therefore easily overlooked or distorted element in the substructure of policy formation.Most planners, and arguably most urban public officials and policymakers, would probably characterize themselves as politically liberal, and therefore concerned at some level with social justice. Whether or not, as some scholars argue, the ideology of liberalism is inherently at odds with serious conceptions of social justice (Imbroscio 2010), as history has taught us, when they are no more than values they are easily subverted by other concerns. The question remains, however, what theory of social justice, understood in the most fundamental sense of a just distribution of rights, opportunities and resources (Barry 2005), and what application of that theory to the planning of shrinking cities, are most likely to be conductive to realizing just outcomes. I would argue that it is necessary to go beyond Hollander’s formulation if one is to build a theoretical framework that can indeed help foster that goal. This comment will first try to re-frame the underlying problem represented by shrinking cities; and second, while it