Affordable housing looms as a critical urban challenge

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.

Consequently, some consultants, such as David Dixon, head of planning and urban design at Goody, Clancy Associates in Boston, are urging cities — and new urbanists — to take steps now to make sure the anticipated urban boom doesn’t reinforce a pattern of segregation by income.

During the two-year-long recession, housing in walkable neighborhoods in center cities and inner suburbs has fared better than competing properties in outlying, automobile-dependent locations, says Christopher Leinberger of the University of Michigan and Brookings Institution.