Mickey Lauria

Residential mortgage foreclosure and neighborhood change

Abstract We use New Orleans as a case study to explore residential mortgage foreclosure as one mechanism linking prior black population and changes in employment levels with changes in aggregate income, housing tenure, vacancy rates, and black population size. Mortgage foreclosure data are merged with 1980 and 1990 census data aggregated at the block group level. Structural equation modeling results indicate that both economic change and prior racial composition are associated with reductions in median block group incomes. Racial transition and loss of employment and income also increased foreclosure rates. Economic change and prior racial composition together impact neighborhoods through their effects on income and foreclosure rates, which in turn differentially affect vacancy rates, the change in black population, and the housing tenure status of residents. The differential effects of these variables point to the persistence of a dual housing market for blacks and whites in New Orleans.

RESIDENTIAL MORTGAGE FORECLOSURE AND RACIAL TRANSITION IN NEW ORLEANS

In this article, the authors explore residential mortgage foreclosure as a mechanism that links economic shocks and the process of racial transition (Lauria 1998). Their analysis indicates that housing foreclosures added momentum to an ongoing process of racial transition, net of the effects of exogenous economic shocks and such other variables as median income of residents, change in the value of owner-occupied housing, and the existing racial distribution of population. Foreclosure appears to have the strongest effect on racial transition in block groups where resident incomes are above the lowest levels and there is a preexisting and increasing black population.

What Can We Learn from Empirical Studies of Planning Theory? A Comparative Case Analysis of Extant Literature

In 1995, Judith Innes recognized the increasing influence of a new type of planning theorist. Adverse to “armchair theorizing,” these theorists have taken a fine-grained analysis of planning practice as the basis for reconstruction of planning theory. Despite the proliferation of this theoretical project, its impact on urban planning has yet to be analyzed in a comprehensive manner. The major impetus for the research is to assess the ways that empirical research in planning practice has informed or failed to inform planning theory. Have empirical studies of planning practice resolved existing theoretical contentions? Or have they generated only more conflicting opinions and a lack of resolution of the existing debates? This article presents a meta-analysis of empirical studies in planning theory.

A New Model of Neighborhood Change: Reconsidering the Role of White Flight

Abstract New Orleans, a highly segregated city with low homeownership, experienced a tremendous number of housing foreclosures between 1985 and 1990. This study highlights the process and impact of foreclosure in the urban housing market, which contributes to an understanding of their impact on the spatial structure of the city. Two aspects of foreclosure are examined: the differential impacts of foreclosure on low‐income and African‐American householders and changes in socioeconomic conditions (neighborhood change and the spatial structure of the city) resulting from foreclosure. Conventional wisdom holds that urban neighborhood transformation is driven largely by white flight. The data presented in this article suggest a counterhypoth‐esis. Middle‐income professional whites employed in businesses impacted by recession who had recently bought housing with high loan‐to‐value ratios were forced to sell or have their houses foreclosed upon. The depressed market, in turn, made such housing affordable to midd...

SELECTIVE URBAN REDEVELOPMENT: A POLITICAL ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE

The theories of conventional economics (other urban social sciences) and political economics did not foresee the current selective urban redevelopment in our decaying central cities. Subsequently, neither group of theories has to date adequately incorporated an after-the-fact explanation that is consistent with their respective theoretical frameworks. It is the task of this paper to do so within the classical economic framework by extending Harveys (1973) and Smiths (1979) analysis on urban development. In so doing, it is necessary to introduce a new set of communitycontrolled actors. These actors operate in a parallel but opposing fashion to the traditional development actors. They operate as a legitimate channel for capital from the state that provides the opportunity for redevelopment to occur in areas not profitable for private redevelopment. Subsequently, it is necessary to consider the inherent possibilities and limitations of this redevelopment.

Urban Regeneration and Public Housing in New Orleans

Public housing, if located proximate to the central business district or other valued development sites, is often seen as a threat to urban regeneration activities. Growth coalitions may develop strategies to remove the threat to increase the value of the land and probability of reinvestment. In cities with an African-American majority electorate, like New Orleans, the electoral coalition of the governing regime is inherently unstable and has to pursue its development strategies carefully. Public housing poses a more intractable political barrier to regeneration strategies than do privately owned slum neighborhoods. In New Orleans, the governing coalition has been forced to retreat to its previously faltering spatial-containment policy.

The transformation of local politics: manufacturing plant closures and governing coalition fragmentation

Abstract A theoretical problem remains in the urban regime literature in that the connection between fiscal strain and regime fragmentation and thus the potential for coalition breakdown is not fully elaborated. Whelan et al. (1994) demonstrate that a shifting electoral coalition, in particular the emergence of a black majority electorate, can also lead to regime instability and fragmentation and the subsequent political struggles for dominance in an emerging governing coalition. In this paper a second mechanism for regime change is suggested; that is, that under conditions of economic restructuring and the subsequent fiscal strain, non-local actors, in this case national political actors operating primarily through party connections, can manipulate local political dependencies to forge governing coalition fragmentation and a regime change in a particular direction. This first finding is important because it highlights the often neglected role of party politics in the governing coalition/urban regime and the local state literature. Secondly, the complexity of state relations uncovered here does not bode well for a theoretically coherent concept of the local state but does display how the historical development of local social relations interacts with the state apparatus at the state and national level to create a particular ‘local’ politics. Finally, this transformation requires a shift in the location of political consensus building from the local democratic political electoral arena to a non-democratic quasi-public arena: a corporate-led governing coalition.

An investigation of the time between mortgage default and foreclosure

This paper evaluates the speed at which lenders enter the mortgage foreclosure process, interpreting slower rates as evidence of forbearance. A telephone survey was conducted to evaluate the presence of lender discrimination in defaults that lead to foreclosure in New Orleans, Louisiana between 1985 and 1990. These data are used to estimate the independent effects of race and neighbourhood characteristics on the extent of lender assistance during the foreclosure process. The analysis does not reveal discrimination based on race of borrower or racial composition of the neighbourhood. Instead, greater time in default is granted loans with lower interest rates and loans with outstanding balances below the mean value of housing in the surrounding neighbourhood.

Does planning theory affect practice, and if so, how?

When I was first asked to discuss these articles, I thought ‘interesting I get to read papers trying to discern the effect of planning theory on practice’. I assumed that the authors would closely examine planning practice to infer what theories were influencing that practice and how or perhaps under what spatial and temporal circumstances. Given that I have been evaluating the extant empirical planning theory literature (Lauria and Wagner, 2006), I thought this might fit right in with my work and could potentially enhance that project. Unfortunately, only one of these articles takes this approach and rather loosely at that. The other two take different more conceptual and more abstract approaches. One way to evaluate this central question is to examine some sampling of planning practice to determine the influence of specific planning theories (March). An alternative approach could be to conceptually characterize contemporary planning practice based on the extant literature and compare this representation to specific planning theories (Raja and Verma’s approach). Finally, a third approach (Moroni’s) is a philosophical exegesis. All three recognize the incipient normative nature of all planning theory and practice and thus argue for the explicit evaluation of the normative content of such theory and practice. All three argue that planning theory does affect practice but in differing ways. Finally, all three argue that planning theorists need to be more concerned with precisely how their theoretical apparatuses influence practice. One approach to discussing these articles that might provide further insight is to evaluate them within the framework of my earlier work on ‘What can we learn from empirical planning theory?’ March loosely uses a case study approach. He uses ‘vignettes of practice’ to ‘demonstrate the importance of governance settings to the value and success of planning theories’ in practice. Without delving deeply into epistemological/ontological discussions, it is important to say that the use of vignettes or even examples to help persuade skeptical scholars of the reasonableness of one’s theoretical arguments does not alleviate the need to demonstrate the appropriateness of the cases or the validity and reliability of the representations. This is particularly perplexing here since March warns the Discussion

Planning Experience and Planners’ Ethics

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Ethical considerations are integral to most aspects of planning, but the bases of planners’ ethical decisions are not well understood. In fact, there has been no follow-up to Elizabeth Howe and Jerome Kaufman’s original 1979 survey of the ethics of American planners in this journal (45(3), 243–255). Our research evaluates the differences in planning roles and planners’ ethical perspectives since then. In their study, Howe and Kaufman use hypothetical scenarios to determine which of three roles planners play: technician, politician, or a hybrid. They also evaluate how the role that planners assume affects their ethical views. Our research uses similar scenarios to evaluate these relationships in contemporary planning practice while simultaneously evaluating the influence of professional experience on the ethical bases of those choices. We confirm many of Howe and Kaufman’s findings, but first we find that today’s planners assume different roles than they did in the mid-1970s, conforming more often to a technical role and less to a political or hybrid role. Second, today’s planners tend to make virtue-based choices when concerned with ideological and legal issues, but revert to rule-based or utilitarian choices when faced with the dissemination and quality of information and segments of the population receiving special advantages. Finally, we find that planners, at all stages in their careers, maintain a mixture of virtue- and rule-based ethical choices while affirming the profession’s core values (as represented in the 2009 AICP Code). Takeaway for practice: The vast majority of practicing planners in our sample (80%) use the AICP Code of Ethics in response to our hypothetical scenarios. At the same time, self-interested responses were rarely made. These findings reaffirm the code’s value to the profession.