Inherited Homes and Urban Inequality
Homeownership has long been one of the primary ways families build wealth in the United States. But when families become homeowners through inheritance, the legal rules governing inherited property can introduce new challenges that threaten housing stability and wealth preservation.
Changing Notions of Urban Crisis
By Richardson Dilworth (UAR Managing Editor)
In this brief introductory essay I focus on articles on urban crisis published in the first two decades of UAR, leading up to the 1985 symposium, “Whatever Happened to the Urban Crisis?”, which included an introductory essay by Mark Gottdiener (1985) and three articles, by Eric Monkkonen (1985), Alexander Ganz (1985), and Irene Rubin (1985). I then provide a quick and admittedly incomplete overview of changing notions of urban crisis since that symposium to suggest that, despite healthy usage of the term in the decades that followed and the invention of new terms such as “permacrisis” and “crisis cities” that suggest some evolution in this particular framework, the framework itself has always been so malleable and potentially inclusive that its subject is not crises per se but rather how and why we might define things as crises.
Are Direct Mayoral Elections Holding Women Back?
Across Europe, women are steadily increasing their presence in local councils, yet they are still far less likely to become mayors. Our research suggests that the way mayors are elected plays an important role in shaping this legislative-executive gender gap. We conducted the cross-sectional time-series analysis using the original dataset describing women’s descriptive representation among local councils and local executives in 33 European countries. We found that countries where mayors are directly elected by citizens tend to have fewer women mayors compared to countries where councillors elect the mayor or the executive committee.
Can a voter-approved crime prevention district reduce crime?
Local officials face a stubborn challenge: public-safety gains can be fragile when budgets and political attention shift from year to year. Our new Urban Affairs Review study examines a practical governance tool that Texas communities have used to stabilize crime-control funding: Crime Control and Prevention Districts (CCPDs). The central takeaway is simple: cities that adopt CCPDs tend to see meaningful reductions in crime for several years.
Are Opportunity Zones Working?
When Congress created Opportunity Zones in 2017 as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the promise was compelling: use tax incentives to redirect private capital into distressed communities that had been overlooked by investors. Seven years later, with the program recently made permanent by Congress in 2025, a crucial question remains: is it actually working? New research analyzing over 70,000 property transactions across the United States reveals that Opportunity Zones are delivering measurable impacts on real estate markets—with important nuances about where and how the policy succeeds.
When Cues Collide
In many city elections across the United States, voters face a similar challenge: they are asked to choose among candidates they know very little about. Ballots often list only names, not party labels, and local races receive little media attention. In these low-information settings, voters look for clues that can serve as “shortcuts,” or anything that will help them quickly decide which candidate to vote for.
Reviving Living Wage Policies
As local leaders grapple with soaring housing costs, persistent inflation, and a tight labor market, living wage ordinances offer a targeted way to support low-income workers without waiting for federal action. With the federal minimum wage remaining at $7.25 since 2009, cities and towns have stepped up, but adoption remains spotty. A recent research note highlights that only 14% of the largest U.S. municipalities have enacted such policies, yet they could play a bigger role in reducing poverty and boosting local economies.
Which Neighborhoods Have Farmers’ Markets?
Farmers’ markets offer valuable resources not only to the people who shop at them, but also to the broader communities in which they are situated. They are an important source of fresh and sustainable produce, often surpassing the quality of food available at traditional grocery stores, and they frequently operate as gathering places that facilitate social interaction and cohesion.
This raises a basic and surprisingly underexplored question: Which neighborhoods actually have farmers’ markets, and why?
Ingredients for Success
Recently, there has been renewed interest in engaging citizens locally. While political motivations vary, a common goal is to enhance participation and representation by creating formal bodies of community representatives to play an advisory role in policy processes. While these intentions are laudable, the best-intentioned reform can flounder if not designed properly. Yet there has been little attention to design, and in particular, to overcoming the challenges that confront the implementation of most participatory designs. This study contributes to this participation literature by illuminating how to design for more effective implementation.
Should we Pursue Municipal Mergers?
Municipal amalgamation, the process of merging smaller administrative units into larger ones, has been a key policy tool globally to address issues like fiscal pressure, governance challenges, and urbanization. But do these mergers deliver the promised benefits? Our recent research provides a comprehensive review of the effects of municipal amalgamations, highlighting key findings that are essential for policymakers and citizens alike.
Housing Vacancy, Structural Decline, and Voter Turnout in South Korea
Vacant homes are often treated as a technical concern for urban planners or housing officials. They are discussed in terms of land use, neighborhood maintenance, or redevelopment strategies. Yet in many places, empty homes are also a visible sign of deeper change. They tend to appear where people are leaving, where local services shrink, and where the future of a community feels uncertain. In South Korea, this pattern has become increasingly pronounced. While much public attention focuses on high housing prices and speculation in major cities, a different housing reality is unfolding elsewhere, marked by rising vacancy in smaller cities and rural districts.
When Encampments Are Cleared, the Harm Spreads Further Than We Think
Across U.S. cities, homeless encampments are being cleared at an accelerating pace. These “sweeps,” “cleanups,” or “abatements” are typically justified in the name of public health, safety, or order. The harm to people living in encampments is increasingly well documented. What is far less visible is another consequence: the emotional toll these displacements take on the people who are tasked with carrying them out.
Measuring Gentrification with Mortgage Application Data
Our study presents a new approach to measuring U.S. gentrification at the census tract level. We utilize a popular public data set – the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) Loan Application Register – and leverage it in an unconventional way. The premise of our study is that there is valuable information about household income levels contained within this mortgage banking dataset. More specifically, the mortgage application data can provide a window into the income levels of households who are seeking to move into a neighborhood. We develop several new measures that benchmark the income of mortgage applicants against existing homeowners in a neighborhood. In our study we show statistically significant relationships between these measures and more traditional gentrification over the 2010 to 2017 period. Furthermore, instead of using a binary measure of gentrification, our tool allows one to gauge the breadth and intensity of the gentrification forces occurring from homebuyer demand in a given tract.
Political Architecture: Contextual Development and Opposition to Housing
Over the past few years, the architecture of new apartment buildings has received significant attention. In particular, a style of new building sometimes called “fast-casual” or “gentrification architecture.” Many readers may recognize these buildings: blocky, generally black-and-white (although some come with neon pops of color), and unornamented. They’ve inspired countless debates, with critics calling them ugly and bland, or more creatively “Lego structures” and “oversized tin cans.”
Cultured Sites of Contestation
Across Europe and beyond, cities are reimagining abandoned military sites as vibrant cultural spaces. But what happens when the very institutions that support these transformations begin to commodify them? Our paper explores this tension by comparing two distinct governance models for culture-led regeneration of former military barracks, Metelkova in Ljubljana and Kasárna Karlín in Prague, which have both significantly enriched their neighborhoods through creative placemaking, demonstrating how culture can transform abandoned urban spaces into vibrant spaces.
State Preemption in Theory and Practice
Minimum parking requirements—zoning regulations that require a certain number of parking spaces to be built with new developments—come with a long list of downsides. The requirements increase the costs of development, reduce housing densities, subsidize car ownership, and reduce walkability. They also make it difficult to adapt and reuse historic buildings. In response, cities as diverse as Anchorage, Buffalo, and San Diego have reduced or eliminated parking requirements in recent years.
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.
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.