Housing and Urbanization in the United States

This course examines housing as both an individual concern and an object of policy and planning. It is intended to provide those with an interest in urban policy and planning with a broad background on why housing matters and how its unique attributes a) give rise to certain policy and planning challenges and b) should shape how practitioners respond to these challenges. We examine how the multiple roles and meanings ascribed to housing complicate solutions to pressing problems like affordability. We also study how many of today’s responses seek to address the consequences of previous policy and planning interventions, such as continued residential segregation by race and income, the persistence of barriers to affordable and healthy housing, and gaps in homeownership rates and housing wealth by race and ethnicity. 
The course first lays out a framework for understanding the roles housing plays in individuals’ lives, neighborhoods, and the metropolis. Class sessions examine the unique attributes and roles of housing, including the role of homes as constitutive of the private and domestic realms, housing as an icon and encoder of social status, and housing as a commodity. This section of the course also explores housing as a driver of urbanization and shaper of neighborhoods, as well as theories of neighborhood change.

The next section of the course focuses on government housing interventions in the United States from the beginning of urbanization up to the 1990s. Classes cover early efforts to eradicate slums and improve housing for the poor; systematic efforts to enforce segregation by race in the early 20th century including the practice of redlining; federal involvement in homeownership and suburbanization; and the policy motivations and design of early public housing and urban renewal programs. This section of the course also touches on interventions arising in response to the consequences of earlier policies such as urban renewal, new approaches to affordability, and the Civil Rights and citizen participation movements. While much early housing policy was driven by federal action, we also examine local interventions to regulate the development of housing and access to it via zoning and building codes, as well as early state efforts to support housing development through housing finance agencies.

The remainder of the class takes us to the present, examining persistent and new housing challenges as well as novel planning and policy interventions, many of which are occurring at the state and local levels. Sessions will focus on homeownership in today’s context; the causes and repercussions of housing unaffordability; neighborhood change and stasis (including concentrated poverty, ongoing residential segregation, and gentrification); the intersection of housing and health; the ongoing crisis of homelessness; the increasingly pressing challenges climate change presents for housing design, siting, and affordability; and shifts in demographics and consumer preferences that are reshaping housing demand–and opening new possibilities for creative solutions.