Nico Calavita

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.

Inclusionary Housing in California: The Experience of Two Decades

Abstract Answering the call for a “new comprehensiveness” in planning that enhances community equity, this paper presents a case study of Inclusionary Housing (IH), a program that can foster both residential integration and affordable housing. IH in California has evolved in response to, and has adapted to changing economic and political conditions. Survey findings for 75 IH programs show that they have produced more than 24,000 units, provide flexibility to the developers in meeting program requirements, establish affordability terms that are usually met at 30 years or longer, and favor moderate-income home buyers. Interviews with planners in San Diego County reveal that IH programs are usually established as a response to an actual or perceived threat of litigation due to noncompliance with state “housing element” law. Planners can enhance a new comprehensiveness by emphasizing state mandates and regional housing needs and by pursuing IH as one of the regulatory choices available to decision-makers.

Capturing the Public Interest Using Newspaper Op-Eds to Promote Planning in Conservative Times

News media and newspaper op-eds in particular have played a significant role in the ascendancy of a free-market ideology during the past few decades, leading to the erosion of the regulatory function of government and the devaluation of planning. Here, the authors make the case that planners, especially planning academics with tenure, should become more engaged in the public debate about the role of government and public planning through the writing of newspaper commentaries.

Transfer of Development Rights as Incentives for Regeneration of Illegal Settlements

In Italy, southern cities are often characterized by widespread phenomena of illegal settlements, that have resulted among other things in a worsening of the quality of life of the urban-rural interface, and the decline of the considerable architectural interest of the entire city. .The goal of this paper is to propose an approach that would help requalify what is already built, to make the best of what has been realized by focusing on the quality and liveability of the city. This approach is based on a particular methodology based on the promotion of Urban Complex Programs (PUC), which provide a system of development rights resulting from the demolition of unfinished illegal settlements . The benefits of this approach are many, including improvements in efficiencies and safety, meeting demands of environmental protection and reducing consumption of energy, responding to the highest standards of protection and seismic risk prevention. They can be obtained only on one condition: that they are based on a system of collective and public conveniences in accordance with the principle of sustainability in multiple dimensions (environmental, cultural, technological, political, institutional, social and economic). But for this approach to be viable it needs also to be convenient for the private actors as well. With this paper we hope to provide first an original approach that can improve the conditions of cities burdened with the problems of illegal settlements that is both sustainable and convenient and, second, an instrument that can provide information for both the public and private sectors on the fairness of the procedure and their mutual interest in pursuing this approach.

The Establishment of the San Diego Housing Trust Fund: Lessons for Theory and Practice

In this paper we give an example of a successful interventionist approach in equity planning by presenting the course of action taken, the strategies chosen, the resources utilized, and the skills exhibited by the planners of the City of San Diego Housing Commission in their successful effort to establish a housing trust fund in that city. We suggest that progressive planners can develop and implement redistributive plans under conditions of adversity. To do so, however, they must devise creative strategies that make sense in the context of the prevailing social and political environment by framing the issue in terms responsive to business concerns and by building consensus through the creative accommodation of competing interests. Consensus building, however, can succeed only if the courting of business interests is accompanied by the mobilization of a strong political movement and the building of coalitions in favor of redistributive programs.

Land Value Recapture in the US: the Case of San Francisco

During the period immediately after World War II, planning in North America and Europe followed highly centralized, top-down, command-and-control approaches that were based on the rational-comprehensive model of planning, which implies an all-knowing, all-powerful government. Part and parcel of this approach was the government’s control of development land and its value. Beginning in the 1970s, as the precepts of an all-knowing, interventionist state clashed with the reality of uncontrollable global forces driven by multinationals and international finance, it became clear that planning had become a market-driven process, a “servant of the market,” and that inflexible, detailed plans would not work in most real-life situations. Consequently, such plans were either ignored or overridden

Reviews : Metropolis 2000: planning, poverty and politics: Thomas Angotti New York and London, Roudedge, 1993. 276 pages,

reflective deconstruction of symbols that heretofore have been taken for granted. This volume of essays is a call to discursive vigilance. Its strength is in making this point and in providing us important examples of how this is done. The biggest disappointment of the book is its failure to live up to its promise to more fully connect theory and practice. While the potential for this connection is clear,