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Reports: Affordability

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Urban growth boundary did not make Portland unaffordable
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New Urban News Article, 3/1/2005
New figures undercut claims that the Oregon region’s housing costs have gone out of sight.
For the past several years, opponents of “smart growth” policies have insisted that Portland, Oregon’s urban growth boundary has made the region a much less affordable place to buy a house. But it now appears that the critics’ arguments relied to a large degree on figures that were wrong.

How to make urban housing more affordable
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New Urban News Article with image, 12/1/2006
Here are ideas new urbanists can use to offset high housing prices and economic segregation.

Affordable placemaking
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Chapter 18 of the New Urbanism Best Practices Guide

Housing must be affordable and functional for the people who will inhabit it, yet it should also be emotionally satisfying. This chapter explores how to be economical without compromising walkability and placemaking. The text is organized around strategies in three main areas: design, policy, and transportation.

Affordable housing looms as a critical urban challenge
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New Urban News Article with images, 10/1/2009
As the recession bottoms out, planners are looking how to leave room for moderate-income residents in walkable neighborhoods.
Once the nation’s shaken economy recovers, real estate analysts expect a growing number of urban neighborhoods to become so expensive that people of modest income will be priced out of them. This would undermine socioeconomic diversity, which has long been a new urbanist ideal.

Factory-built housing: an answer to affordability questions?
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New Urban News Article with images, 9/1/2004
The potential grows for using manufactured and modular units in new urban developments.
In 1991 a new urban plan called Rosa Vista was created for a manufactured home community in Mesa, Arizona. That plan, by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ), was never built, largely because no manufacturer could be found that would meet the design code. But over the last decade, the factory-built housing industry has evolved in ways that should encourage new urbanists to think seriously about this type of construction. Among the changes cited by experts:

How to build production housing in a TND
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New Urban News Article with images, 4/1/2004
Developer John Anderson calls it the “little black dress, blue blazer solution.” If certain elements of a house and street are right, “it will forgive all kinds of other things.” Key elements of relatively affordable production housing include details of windows and porches, private sideyards and backyards, colors, walkable streetscapes, efficient use of materials and land, and interior design.

Fighting for good, affordable neighborhoods
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New Urban News Article with images, 4/1/2007
The design process for new urban military housing is revealed — with important lessons for how to cut costs without compromising principles.

The right detail for the right price
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New Urban News Article with images, 9/1/2007
How to get authentic-looking traditional details is one problem that new urbanists have been trying to solve, with mixed success, for two decades. Building affordable housing is another. These two goals are sometimes in conflict, but they needn’t be, according to Donald Powers of Donald Powers Architects in Providence, Rhode Island.