New Books: Affordable Housing in the United States
Listen to our conversation with Gregg Colburn, co-author with Rebecca Walter of Affordable Housing in the United States, published in 2024 by Routledge. Affordable Housing in the United States offers a comprehensive and accessible guide for students and practitioners on affordable housing policy and best practices, along with well-researched case studies on the approaches of three different cities: Chicago, Seattle, and San Antonio. We discuss the book itself, and wade into the more recent challenges and uncertainties around affordable housing provision and preservation under a new federal administration.
Call for Papers: “The New Urban Crisis”
The Urban Affairs Review is pleased to announce its inaugural graduate student paper competition. In this first year, our theme is the “The New Urban Crisis.” The concept of urban crisis has been explored by scholars since the 1950s and has been deployed to capture myriad city problems from traffic congestion to fiscal deterioration to putative moral decay. In this competition, we encourage authors to examine what might be new about the contemporary challenges facing cities in the U.S. and beyond. Topics may include the impact of budgetary austerity; rising inequality; the targeting of cities by the Trump administration and other authoritarian regimes around the world; climate change; or the intersecting crisis captured by the term, “polycrisis.” Alternatively, researchers might argue that there is no “new urban crisis” at all.
When do Local Governments Discriminate?
There is a long history of municipal governments worldwide passing resolutions, laws, and regulations governing discrimination and anti-discrimination. These cities are increasingly stylized as “human rights cities,” where municipal governments seek to protect civil rights of their residents: examples include sanctuary city movements, passing municipal versions of international law, and instituting laws to protect LGBTIQ citizens. In short, cities have emerged as a critical space for civil society to protect human rights, which is especially important given the increasing prevalence of repressive laws targeting minority groups in many authoritarian and backsliding countries.
New Books: The Making of 21st Century Richmond
Tune in to our discussion with co-authors Thad Williamson and Julian Hayter about their new book, The Making of Twenty-First-Century Richmond (2024). The book explores the fraught history of Richmond, VA, a mid-sized city working to emerge from the shadows of its early history as the capital of the Confederacy and the challenges of urban decline in recent decades. Drawing on multidisciplinary methods, The Making of Twenty-First-Century Richmond analyzes the root causes and internal dynamics that have shaped the city over time through close examinations of education policy, economic development, and housing.
Fundamentals of Solidarity
Coalitions amongst people of color are essential for building political power—particularly as resources and influence fall along lines of race and ethnicity. In “Fundamentals of Solidarity: Race Based Caucus Organizing in Houston,” I consider how Black organizers-built solidarity with each other and with the staff of Houston in Action (HiA).
Can Community Coalitions Unlock Equitable Benefits from Transit Investments?
Transit-oriented development (TOD) represents a promising form of development in urban transit corridors offering walkable communities, reduced car dependence, and enhanced access to opportunities. But all too often, the benefits of new transit investments are overshadowed by rising housing costs and the displacement of long-time residents and small businesses.
Reimagining Public Participation in Urban Development
Public participation is widely regarded as a cornerstone of democratic urban governance. Around the world, governments and planners have embraced participatory practices to involve residents in decisions that shape their cities. Yet much of the academic and policy discourse continues to frame participation as a state-led process, where the public is invited by government actors to engage in predetermined formats designed to improve plans, policies, and projects.
Series: The Collapse of Philadelphia’s Arena Megaproject
Join us for an exploration of the failed Philadelphia 76ers Arena Proposal in Center City. First proposed in 2022 with promises to revitalize the faltering Market East corridor, the arena generated tremendous and widespread backlash from communities across the city and region. The project, which was publicly and strongly backed by Mayor Cherelle Parker, was ultimately cancelled in early 2025, only a few weeks after the City Council approved it.
Do Local Governments Listen to the Experts?
When Amazon.com, Inc. announced its search for a second headquarters in 2017, 238 localities across North America worked to submit proposals. While the media and much of the general public focused on the spectacular incentive packages and which cities were poised to “win,” less attention was paid to how these proposals offer novel and sought-after information about how cities practice economic development policy across a wide range of areas. Localities were asked to offer highly systematic documentation of a wide range of economic development policies, and with an unprecedented degree of time and human effort they responded in earnest.
New Books: Unruly Domestication
Join us for our conversation with Dr. Kristin Skrabut, author of Unruly Domestication: Poverty, Family, and Statecraft in Urban Peru, published in 2024 by the University of Texas Press. Unruly Domestication explores how Peru's "war on poverty" took shape in the city of Lima through extensive ethnographic research to better understand how the politics of poverty, statecraft, and family structure become entangled.
New Books: Solidarity Cities
Featuring Maliha Safri, Marianna Pavlovskaya, Craig Borowiak, and Stephen Healy, authors of Solidarity Cities: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation, published by University of Minnesota Press. Solidarity Cities explores the diverse practices of cooperation and mutual support as alternatives to racial capitalism through case studies of Philadelphia, Worcester, MA, and New York City.
Public Transportation Governance Types
Public transportation plays a central role in contemporary urban life. Research indicates that well-designed and well-structured transit systems can expand opportunities for citizenship, stimulate economic growth, improve the well-being of vulnerable groups, and yield a range of benefits for cities. This is especially evident in the Global South, where millions of residents – particularly those with lower incomes – rely on buses, trains, and subways for their daily mobility.
New Books: Contested City
Featuring Alissa Walter, author of Contested City: Citizen Advocacy and Survival in Modern Baghdad published in 2025 by Stanford University Press. Contested City charts the political history of modern Baghdad and how residents navigated and negotiated with the state through periods of economic growth, war, and sanctions.
Wetland and stream compensatory mitigation as a funding vehicle for US public housing authorities
What if restoring polluted streams behind public housing complexes could directly fund new affordable housing? This innovative approach, explored in our recent Urban Affairs Review article, introduces public housing authorities (PHAs) to a unique opportunity to generate additional revenue by participating in federal "compensatory mitigation" markets. Through our study of the Durham Housing Authority (DHA) in North Carolina, we demonstrate pathways through which urban stream and wetland restoration can be financially viable, environmentally beneficial, and socially impactful.
New Books: Urban Power
Featuring Ben Bradlow, author of Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg published in 2024 by Princeton University Press. Urban Power examines how social inequalities are created and addressed through the urban built environment by comparing the case studies of São Paulo and Johannesburg.
Social and Political Pillars of Police Diversity
Police officers serve a public service role, as highlighted by scholarly literature on street-level bureaucracy. Thus, it matters whether police departments represent the social characteristics of communities. In socially diverse cities, police diversity promises to facilitate police–community interactions. However, to what extent are US police departments diversifying their personnel?
Do Canadian Municipalities Have a Hidden Ideological Pulse?
Are Canadian municipal politics simply about fixing potholes and managing traffic, or does ideology shape municipal behavior more deeply? In contrast to the U.S. and several other federations, Canadian municipal elections are overwhelmingly non-partisan. Fewer than one in five municipal officials run on party slates. This fact leads many to infer that Canadian city halls are free from the left-right ideological divide that exists at higher levels of government.
New Books: Not in My Gayborhood!
From UAR’s new series, featuring Theodore Greene, author of Not in My Gayborhood! Gay Neighborhoods and the Rise of the Vicarious Citizen, published in 2024 by Columbia University Press. This book explores “gayborhoods” in Washington, DC, where Greene investigates how neighborhoods retain their cultural identities even as their inhabitants change.
Which Local Governments Adopt New Technology First?
Emerging technologies, including real-time digital tracking systems, AI, and satellite imagery, can enhance public service delivery by enabling real-time performance monitoring, automating routine tasks, and improving the targeting of services. These tools also have the potential to support more responsive and personalized interactions with citizens, increasing both efficiency and trust in government institutions. Under what conditions are new and emerging technologies adopted by local governments?
Succession Planning for the Future of Intergovernmental Organizations in the U.S.
Intergovernmental organizations play a pivotal role in America’s regions in important areas like transportation planning, Area Agencies on Aging services, and economic development, to name a few. These organizations serve as conveners and coordinators among local governments in their regions and represent their members to state and federal agencies. Given their importance, how can they ensure continuity and sustainability during leadership changes or staff turnover?