The housing choice voucher program was designed with two main goals in mind: to eliminate concentrations of poverty and the social problems it causes and to provide poor households with greater access to higher-opportunity neighborhoods. However, research suggests that voucher holders would like to move to higher-opportunity neighborhoods, but often are unable to do so. One of the most prominent reasons for this is that, in most cities and states, local law allows landlords to discriminate against potential tenants on the grounds of their "source of income" (SOI). This article reviews the literature on discrimination of voucher recipients and the potential for SOI antidiscrimination laws to mitigate some of these negative outcomes.
Many rapid transit projects are justified by a desire to achieve intangible city image and branding goals such as promoting messages of modernity, economic growth, global competitiveness, and world city status. The relationship between rapid transit and city image is poorly understood in the planning literature. In response, this article presents a theoretical framework of rapid transit in image-led planning. The framework and examples of rapid transit in image-led planning in practice reveal that while important, rapid transit alone is not a sufficient condition for wholesale image change, and image-led planning must be mindful of a host of important practical considerations.
The principles of New Urbanism such as increased density, mixed land uses, and street connectivity are often recommended in response to the typical conditions of suburban developments. Much current empirical research has begun to test whether these principles can increase property values. The findings of these studies have, however, been quite inconsistent. This research attempts to quantitatively synthesize these conflicting findings through a statistical meta-analysis. This study finds that a lower density, decreased street connectivity, and a closer proximity to a transit stop can contribute to increased housing premiums, while mixed land uses are not shown to always do so.
We critically review the literature on the relationship between users of public spaces and their auditory environments, and how this knowledge is integrated in the planning, design, and management of public spaces as well as in technologies for acoustic and spatial data collection, analysis, and communication. To address the gaps identified in the review, we propose an activity-centered framework as a conceptual tool developed to support the integration of different types of knowledge in incorporating sound and the auditory environment in the planning and design of public spaces, by focusing on the activities that users perform in these spaces.
Local governments own and operate most large US commercial airports. They have long considered air traffic development and airport expansions as essential tools to support regional economic growth. This literature review investigates the validity of this claim. Recent econometric studies estimated airports’ economic benefits, while geographers cautioned that airport expansions cannot trump macroeconomic trends. The burgeoning knowledge on the economic and environmental risks of airports and air service sheds critical light on airport-based economic development strategies. Planning scholarship should investigate airport planning practices, analyze the variations of airports’ economic effects between metropolitan areas, and measure the impacts of airport expansions.
Despite the widely shared assumption that public participation impacts planning implementation, empirical research rarely tests this belief. By reviewing what is known about if and how public participation impacts plan and planning implementation, and why we know so little, this review identifies a significant gap in the planning literature. The article synthesizes public participation and planning implementation literature to explain why this gap exists. This review is focused on one central research question: why is our empirical understanding of the overlap between public participation and implementation so limited? Building from these limitations, the article concludes with suggested directions for future research.
As marginalized neighborhoods benefit from cleanup and environmental amenities often brought by municipal sustainability planning, recent trends of land revaluation, investments, and gentrification are posing a conundrum and paradox for environmental justice (EJ) activists. In this article, I examine the progression of the urban EJ agenda—from fighting contamination to mobilizing for environmental goods and resisting environmental gentrification—and analyze how the EJ scholarship has reflected upon the complexification of this agenda. I argue that locally unwanted land uses can be reconceptualized from contamination sources to new green amenities because of the displacement they seem to trigger or accelerate.
Various mapping methodologies have been used to explore complex social, economic, and environmental components of the food system. Planning scholars, geographers, public health officials, and community organizations have created maps to better understand disparities in the food environment. This review provides an analysis of the nature of geographic information systems mapping in scholarly research and web-based food mapping since 2008. Our review of thirty-four journal articles and seventy web-mapping projects covers the purpose, study area, topics, methods, and application of food mapping research and initiatives. Scholars and community stakeholders will benefit from this review of methodologies to inform their research and policy initiatives.
Climate change is expected to alter human health in important ways, with significant regional variations. To understand these effects, I review the climate change health forecasting literature and connect it to planning. I find that this literature indicates that local contexts deeply influence health outcomes, with implications for planning practice. However, this literature is fragmented by place and topic and prevents planners from anticipating the cumulative impacts on individuals and places. Future research should consider physical environment, socioeconomic and political characteristics, and interactions with health effects, to present a comprehensive understanding of the health effects of climate change.
Urban planning has an important role to play in supporting human health. While this is increasingly recognized in a burgeoning interdisciplinary body of literature, there remains an ongoing need to clarify and conceptualize the relationship between planning and health. This is especially the case from the perspective of built environment professionals, as they increasingly focus on health and well-being issues. The key contribution of this article is such a conceptualization—a framework to group and review the literature in this rapidly expanding area of research. We suggest three domains where urban planning can most effectively focus support for health and well-being. These domains address the principle risk factors for contemporary chronic disease—physical inactivity, obesity, and social isolation. Our framework is then used to review an evidence base that supports the development, prioritization, and implementation of healthy built environment practice. This article concludes with a critical discussion of theoretical and practical tensions identified as potential impediments to the progression of this new and exciting interdisciplinary area of research.
Subsidized housing controversies frequently involve the fear of crime, a connection that is not well understood in policy and planning. This article thus critically reviews the literature on subsidized housing and crime. Three key findings emerge. First, subsidized households have too frequently lived in violent housing developments and neighborhoods. Second, the spillover effects on crime in surrounding neighborhoods are typically very small. Finally, although the precise mechanisms through which subsidized housing may affect crime are less clear, it is most likely that concentrated disadvantage plays the biggest role when effects are observed, rather than the physical attributes of subsidized housing.
This review presents a conceptual model to understand and trace the effects of land development on municipal expenditures and revenues. It includes discussion of the how local voters determine levels of expenditures and levels of service subject to external constraints. It also discusses the production function of local public services. This review and model can serve as a basis for evaluating fiscal projections for land development proposals. It finds that direct fiscal impacts measured in most fiscal impact analysis techniques are only a subset of the types of impacts that would likely be expected to result from land development within a community.
The effect of urban form on residential energy use has attracted much research, but it may be difficult to grasp the conclusions of that research because of inconsistencies in scope and methods employed. This article reviews the literature on how urban form affects residential energy use, particularly energy for space-conditioning (heating and cooling). Climate-responsive design principles are examined first and linked to research on how several factors affect residential energy use: housing type, density (physical compactness and dwelling unit density), community layout (street orientation and building configuration), and planting and other surface coverage. The research on each of these factors is summarized under three categories: experiments, simulation modeling, and statistical analysis of empirical data. Finally, implications for future research are discussed and suggestions for planning are made.