New Ideas in Urban Research 2019: Research Questions and Findings from Penn IUR’s Emerging Scholars and 2019 Doctoral Recipients

Penn IUR is invested in supporting and encouraging a new generation of urban scholars who are identifying and pursuing research questions related to urbanization. For this month’s issue of Urban Link, we interviewed recent PhDs—Emerging Scholars, who are a few years into their careers, as well as Spring 2019 degree recipients—on issues they are pursuing in their research.

Penn IUR Emerging Scholars

• Valuing Density for Single Family Home Buyers | Arthur Acolin
• Recognizing, Embracing and Supporting Urban Informality: A Changing Narrative | James Kwame Mensah
• Black Urbanism | Matthew Jordan Miller
• Expanding the Current Horizons of Housing Policy to Serve Low-Income Families in Mexico | Ariadna I. Reyes-Sánchez
• Parallel Pathways to Reform: Pursuing Fair Public Schooling and Fair Public Housing for Black Citizens | Akira Drake Rodriguez

Penn IUR 2019 Doctoral Recipients

• State Funding Policies and Public Education Infrastructure | J. Cameron Anglum
• How Decades of Neoliberal Governance Have Shaped the Possibilities for Movement-Building in Marginalized Urban Neighborhoods | James Morone
• Influence of Landscape Spatial Patterns and Land Use Planning on Grassland | M. Zoë Warner

Valuing Density for Single Family Home Buyers

Arthur Acolin, Assistant Professor of Real Estate, University of Washington

When households make housing choices, they face a multitude of dimensions on which to make a decision: To own or to rent? How big of a place to pick? What features of the units are essential? What locations to consider? These decisions are guided by a set of preferences optimized based on budget constraints and it is possible to use hedonic models, and the information about how much households are willing to pay to buy or rent houses with certain physical and location characteristics, to estimate how households value certain features such as number of bathrooms or proximity to a park.

In recent work two of my colleagues at the University of Washington, Rebecca Walter and Gregg Colburn, and I use this approach to analyze whether recent homebuyers in five metropolitan areas (Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Seattle and Philadelphia) pay more for similar houses that are surrounded by higher or lower levels of density. Our study does not aim to estimate whether households value density itself but rather whether neighborhoods with different levels of density have characteristics that lead households to be willing to pay more or less to locate there.

We find that in the core of each of these metropolitan regions houses with higher density within a half-mile radius sell at a premium on a per square foot basis controlling for detailed unit characteristics. Our findings suggest that in the moderate density settings found in these five regions, the marginal buyer values the increase in amenities associated with higher density (potentially more accessibility and diversity of employment and consumption options for instance) more than the increase in disamenities (potentially higher congestion for traffic, parking and environmental goods for instance).

These results indicate that the widespread opposition by homeowners to allowing higher levels of development in their neighborhoods is unlikely to be primarily driven by the desire to protect their home value or, if it is, more evidence is needed to understand in what context higher surrounding density might result in decreased or increased home value.

Recognizing, Embracing and Supporting Urban Informality: A Changing Narrative

James Kwame Mensah, Lecturer, Department of Public Administration and Health Services Management, University of Ghana Business School

In the Global South, the informal economy has become very important, offering opportunities to the most vulnerable populations such as the poorest, women and youth. In fact, the informal sector contributes about 55 per cent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP and 80 per cent of the labor force. Despite this, the sector is not recognized; it operates in hostile and life-threatening environments, and participants are often regarded as nuisances, embarrassments, and criminals. But these sentiments are changing due to recent research studies of which my recent Rockefeller Foundation sponsored study of Accra, the capital of Ghana is one. [1]

Accra epitomizes the informal city. Here, the vast majority of goods and services are rendered informally.The informal economy employs a full 86 percent of the city’s residents. These workers range from providers of public transport and domestic labor to street vendors who sell fresh produce, water, and other items, Recent years have also witnessed new types of specialized informal economic activities having specific names such as Okada (motor bicycles as taxis) and Bola taxis (tricycle waste collectors). For this study, I also mapped the concentration of informal activities in the city, thus enabling targeted policy responses.

Despite the predominance of informality in its economy, the Accra Metropolitan Authority forbids many operations. For example, the AMA bylaw 7 bans selling on streets. However, since 2018 the narrative has started to change. The AMA has consciously sought to recognize, embrace and support informality. This has come about because of Accra being part of the Rockfefeller Founadation’s 100 Resilient Cities and its planning process for which I did my study. In addition, I worked with a Princeton University-sponsored student project that looked more closely at street vendors, in particular it explored the question of whether they were the cause of traffic congestions. Through examining drone footage, we proved that they were not. These studies provide evidence that informal economy workers in Accra are not a nuisance but important and complementary to the formal economy, and key stakeholders in managing urban areas.

As a result, the Accra Resilience Strategy, published this past spring, pledges to embrace Accra’s informality to harness its contribution to building resilience. To achieve this goal, I am working with the city to setting up a department solely responsible for the affairs of the informal economy. Other efforts include initiatives to upgrade trotros (minibuses), integrate informal waste collectors in the formal system, explore ways to make the use of Okada acceptable, and work with informal sector associations. Further, the AMA is now thinking about how to improve the safety net for informal workers.

Black Urbanism

Matthew Jordan Miller, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design

Since 2015, my research has explored several questions around how and why Black-owned businesses cluster separately from majority-owned businesses within California, particularly Los Angeles. It has led me to a number of key results that I am translating into several forms of public scholarship. The most consequential meta-result is that there has been no cohesive framework to explore Black belongingness that unites the fields of Black geographies, urban design, and economic development; instead, much more narrates Black death, deficits, and “dis-belonging.” Thus, over the past year, I have redefined an asset-oriented framework called “Black urbanism” as both a visual praxis through my cinematic photography (@BlackUrbanism on Instagram) around the United States and as a dynamic phenomenon wherein blackness acts as a resource to design, plan, and develop places. For example, a key result I published last year in the Journal of Planning Theory and Practice is that innovative people-centered design methods (i.e. community world-building) are being coupled with longstanding but under-explored black aesthetic traditions like Afrofuturism in Los Angeles’ Crenshaw district and in the South Side of Chicago.

I am working on a solo-authored book based on my mixed-methods dissertation exploring Black urbanism vis-à-vis an extended case study on a historic neighborhood cultural district in South Los Angeles called Leimert Park Village. This fall, I am contributing to two edited books - one on just urban design and one on Black geographies – with chapters that revisit a reworked notion of Black public spheres and that maps the geography of Black millennial leisure in the Los Angeles region, respectively. I am finding that Black Millennials’ choices in leisure are recursive yet dispersed around the region, partly as a result of ex-urbanization and spatial stigma. I had the opportunity to present these emergent research findings and exhibit my artwork to audiences at UCLA, UC Berkeley, and University of Washington in Seattle, among others.

Expanding the Current Horizons of Housing Policy to Serve Low-Income Families in Mexico

Ariadna I. Reyes-Sánchez, Research Associate and Lecturer, University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design

The challenges of affordable housing policy in Mexico City are emblematic of those faced by Latin American cities in general. In Mexico, housing policy does not sufficiently assist low-income families, especially workers in the informal economy. To address their housing needs, low-income families have incrementally built and improved upon dwelling units on land that they informally occupy on the periphery, which lacks access to utilities. After the human settlement crisis in Mexico City in the late 1970s, the Mexican government enacted regularization programs in informal communities, currently known as colonias populares, and supported the upgrading of community infrastructure (Ward, Huerta, & Di Virgilio, 2015). After 60 years of rapid urbanization in the Mexico City metropolitan area, most of the population now resides in colonias populares (Connolly, 2009).

To examine the characteristics of people and buildings in consolidated informal settlements, I conducted field research in Isidro Fabela, which was founded in the 1960s and is located in the district of Tlalpan, Mexico City. Isidro Fabela currently lies on land adjacent to the city center and thus offers easy access to transportation systems (Figure 1). Additionally, this prime location has already triggered private-led development. Private developers are acquiring lots in Isidro Fabela to replace self-built homes with taller residential buildings occupied by upper-income residents. Unfortunately, however, those who sell their properties do not always receive fair compensation for the value of their land.

At the same time, over the last two decades, the Mexican government has supported the construction of affordable housing developments in the urban fringe. This affordable housing policy and private-led development are indirectly inducing low-to-moderate income families to move to the urban fringe, where housing is relatively affordable (Monkkonen, 2018). Peripheral communities do not offer easy access to services; thus, residents are forced to undertake long, inefficient, and unsafe commutes to job-rich areas in the city center (Guerra, 2014).

Figure 1. Urban development of the Mexico City metropolitan area and high-capacity public transportation. Colonias populares contain informal housing development that took place from 1960 to 1980s. Source: Elaborated by the author with information from INEGI (2010).

One of the primary challenges of housing policy in Mexico is to increase the affordable housing stock in the city while protecting existing low-income residents from displacement. To that end, policymakers must prioritize infill development strategies in the city. Housing policy should put disadvantaged populations at the center of its focus. Low-income families from colonias populares should be able to decide whether they want to stay in their homes or sell their land at fair prices. To that end, housing policy must change its current focus from financing affordable dwelling units to offering a diverse range of solutions that include financial, legal, and technical assistance, thus improving living conditions in colonias populares. The implementation of such a policy will require the democratic participation of residents, community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, planning practitioners and researchers, and government institutions. Interactions between stakeholders are essential to envisioning solutions that will help upgrade and increase the affordable housing stock in Mexico City and elsewhere in Latin America.

A full list of references available at bottom of this page.

Parallel Pathways to Reform: Pursuing Fair Public Schooling and Fair Public Housing for Black Citizens

Akira Drake Rodriguez, Lecturer, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School and the School of Social Policy and Practice

In a recent book chapter, “Parallel Pathways to Reform: Pursuing Fair Public Schooling and Fair Public Housing for Black Citizens,” my co-author Dr. Rand Quinn and I traced the parallel paths of postwar public school and public housing desegregation for the forthcoming edited volume, Perspectives on Fair Housing (Edited by Susan Wachter, Wendell Pritchett, and Vincent Reina, by the University of Pennsylvania Press). The chapter analyzes the failure of policymakers to think of school and neighborhood desegregation comprehensively, and that a recurring stumbling block to implementing and sustaining school desegregation is intractable neighborhood segregation, and vice versa. We categorize desegregation efforts into three broad policy efforts: mobility solutions (district-wide busing systems and voucher-based housing subsidies), spatially-equitable solutions (intra-state school finance reform and state legislation codifying affordable housing provision into municipal planning codes), and market-based or neoliberal reforms (school vouchers, charter schools, and public housing redevelopment initiatives such as HOPE VI or CHOICE Neighborhoods Initiative).

We recommend that policymakers take a long view of the parallel paths of housing and school desegregation when designing and implementing new legislations to achieve reparation and equity for Black citizens. The three reform efforts, in sum, have demonstrated first that place replicates inequality and that local governments need strong, regional goal-setting with State subsidy and Federal enforcement in order to minimize the role of place in socioeconomic outcomes. We also recommend a moratorium on market-based reforms that continue to drive spatially-driven inequality by allowing the private sector to “invest” in worthy social policies that have low (financial) risk and high (financial) return. The role of the State in causing the problem of racial and economic segregation in communities and schools has been well-demonstrates by a breadth of social science research. The State must thus be a primary contributor to the end of these segregated places and unequal outcomes.

State Funding Policies and Public Education Infrastructure

J. Cameron Anglum, Assistant Professor, School of Education, Saint Louis University

In my recent research, I examine the role of state public education funding policies in the financing of K-12 school infrastructure. From the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s, school districts across the United States spent over $1.25 trillion on capital outlays to invest in the physical infrastructures of their schools, much of it financed through long-term debt. Today, districts nationwide carry over $400 billion in long-term debt and pay over $17 billion in interest payments annually, figures that have doubled over the past two decades. Despite the immense magnitude of these investments, scant research has examined the subject of school district debt across diverse district types and state funding contexts.

Districts of varied economic profiles do not share equal access to credit markets to finance infrastructure improvements. Those of more precarious economic means, districts that typically serve greater shares of disadvantaged students, often have inferior credit ratings and pay higher costs of interest compared to wealthier districts. These costs of debt may constrain crucial investments in public infrastructure.

To help mitigate these potential district-level credit constraints, 38 states employ a range of policies to help local districts finance their infrastructure. Leveraging a natural experiment to municipal credit ratings, I find that districts in the remaining 12 states issue more debt when it becomes cheaper to do so, suggesting their spending is constrained by their costs of debt. On the other hand, I also present evidence which suggests that additional debt issuance in these districts may augment instructional expenditures rather than capital expenditures. As national dialogue regarding infrastructure investments and constrained school district budgets gains momentum, my work intends to inform state policymaking which seeks to improve local school district infrastructure, particularly in districts which serve large shares of disadvantaged students.

How Decades of Neoliberal Governance Have Shaped the Possibilities for Movement-Building in Marginalized Urban Neighborhoods

James Morone, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science, Haverford College

My dissertation, "The Post-1960s Development of Urban Neighborhoods and the Mediation of Contemporary Struggles over Neoliberalization," examines how neoliberal governance has shaped the possibilities for movement-building in marginalized urban neighborhoods. Through fieldwork in two Chicago neighborhoods, I found that this has created barriers to—but also opportunities for—building progressive social movements. Many residents of marginalized neighborhoods see their own interests as best represented by market-based economic development. This makes it difficult to engage residents around transformative economic programs. However, there are efforts at community control of schools, for police accountability, and for the protection of undocumented residents, examples of transformative economic programs.

I am currently working on three additional research projects. First, pursuing a thread from my doctoral research, I am examining the growth of social democratic political organizations in contemporary U.S. cities. I am studying the causes of these groups’ rapid growth, the segments of the population that have furnished the groups’ participants, and their presence in marginalized neighborhoods. Second, using archival data, I am reviewing the history of organized labors’ efforts at organizing beyond workplaces, in working-class communities. I am especially interested in understanding when and how class-based identities fuse with the racial- and territorial-based identities nurtured in residential communities. Finally, I am partnering with organizers and researchers at a Texas-based tenants rights’ organization, to study how the fees and fines imposed on tenants by landlords affect tenants’ willingness to organize and join tenant associations.

Influence of Landscape Spatial Patterns and Land Use Planning on Grassland: Bird Habitat Occupancy in Chester County, Pennsylvania

M. Zoë Warner, Doctoral Recipient 2019, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania

My dissertation research evaluates the influence of landscape spatial patterns and land use planning outcomes on grassland bird habitat occupancy in Chester County, Pennsylvania, which has a contiguous area of working landscapes that form an agricultural belt in the southern part of the county. For this research, I generated regression models to predict habitat occupancy in the agricultural belt for six focal grassland species. The models incorporated preservation and land use variables in addition to biological and landscape data to analyze the effects of zoning and preservation efforts on the focal species that use the grass-cropland network in Chester County.

The models suggest grassland bird habitat occupancy is influenced by local and landscape variables, with aggregation of patches and proximity to other grass-cropland patches being strong predictors of occupancy. These models demonstrate there is a relationship between ecological function and land use policy, which has shaped the spatial integrity of the grass-cropland network. Further, my landscape analysis shows the study area has a relatively high level of spatial integrity for a county that has undergone rapid development and a mixed agricultural core remains. Model outcomes and the landscape analysis indicate the grass-cropland network within the study area could provide suitable habitat for small but healthy populations of grassland birds.

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References

References for “Expanding the current horizons of housing policy to revitalize the existing housing stock in Mexico City” by Ariadna I. Reyes-Sánchez

Connolly, P. 2009. "Observing the evolution of irregular settlements Mexico City's colonias populares, 1990 to 2005." International Development Planning Review 31 (1):1-35. doi: 10.3828/idpr.31.1.2.

Guerra, Erick. 2014b. "The Built Environment and Car Use in Mexico City: Is the Relationship Changing over Time?" Journal of Planning Education and Research 34 (4):394-408. doi: 10.1177/0739456X14545170.

Monkkonen, P. (2012). Housing finance reform and increasing socioeconomic segregation in Mexico. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 36(4), 757-772.

Monkkonen, P. (2018). Empty houses across North America: Housing finance and Mexico’s vacancy crisis. Urban Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098018788024

Newton, C. (2013). The peoples housing process… getting the quality in the quantity. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 28(4), 639-651.Ward, P., Jiménez Huerta, E., & Di Virgilio, M. M. (2015). Housing policy in Latin American cities: a new generation of strategies and approaches for 2016 UN-Habitat III. New York, NY: Routledge.

Ward, P., Jiménez Huerta, E., & Di Virgilio, M. M. (2015). Housing policy in Latin American cities: a new generation of strategies and approaches for 2016 UN-Habitat III. New York, NY: Routledge.