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Taubman Center faculty affiliates and senior staff pursue a variety of research projects on the politics, economics, and implementation of policies that shape the built environment, particularly in urban areas. Recent projects and publications include the following: Regulating Infrastructure: Monopoly, Contracts and Discretion Regulating Infrastructure: Monopoly, Contracts, and Discretion
More information | Related article in the 2003 Taubman Center Report Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment
More information | Related article in the 2003 Taubman Center Report | Related article in the 2002 Taubman Center Report Discriminating Risk: The U.S. Mortgage Lending Industry in the 20th Century
More information | Related article in the 2002 Taubman Center Report Private Infrastructure and the Search for Commitment Many countries have turned to private companies to build and operate infrastructure and utilities over the past couple of decades. However, that approach is provoking a growing backlash, as consumers decry high prices and poor service while investors lament disappointing returns. In Regulating Infrastructure, Monopoly, Contracts, and Discretion, a forthcoming book, Jose A. Gomez-Ibanez, a professor at the Kennedy School and the Harvard Design School and a Taubman faculty affiliate, contends that the challenge is to create contractual agreements that protect both utilities and customers while allowing regulators to respond to unforeseen circumstances. More information | Related article in the 2003 Taubman Center Report Policymaking and Politics for Transportation and the Environment When the US Environmental Protection Agency promulgated a new National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ground-level ozone in July 1997, it began a process that, after some litigation-induced delays, will soon lead to the designation of new nonattainment areas. The technical, institutional, and political challenges confronting new eight-hour ozone nonattainment areas are substantial, note Jonathan Makler, a Taubman researchers, and Arnold Howitt, the center's executive director, in new paper. Makler and Howitt, however, suggest that those charged with implementing the new lessons can make this process more manageable if they focus on lessons gleaned from the experiences of one-hour ozone nonattainment areas during the 1990s. Does the United States face a crisis in housing affordability? According to Edward Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard and a Taubman faculty affiliate, and Joseph Gyourko, a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, the answer is largely no. In many parts of the country, they contend, the price of homes is close to the cost of construction. Moreover, they show in Economy Policy Review, the high price of housing in a few key areas—mostly on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts—stems from stringent zoning and land-use controls that severely limit the construction of more homes. They conclude that advocates of affordable housing “should focus less on producing subsidized housing and more on changing land-use regulatory policies.” More Information | Related article in the 2003 Taubman Center Report Overcoming Housing Barriers in Greater Boston While both state and local governments have a legitimate interest in regulating certain aspects of housing development , the high cost of housing in greater Boston is caused in large part by unduly restrictive state and local regulatory policies and processes, according to Charles C. Euchner, executive director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, which is affiliated with the Taubman Center. In a white paper jointly published by the Rappaport Institute and the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy, Euchner describes many of these obstacles and suggests ways that state and local governments can "clear away some of the regulatory underbrush in order to encourage the development of enough housing to accommodate the people who have made the area their home." More Information | Related article in the 2003 Taubman Center Report Inclusionary Zoning and the the Constitution Facing skyrocketing housing costs, some localities and states have turned to “inclusionary zoning” to provide badly needed affordable housing. Under such provisions, developers create affordable housing in return for permission to build market-rate housing—often in higher densities than zoning otherwise allows. However, such programs often provoke constitutional challenges. In an article in Affordable Housing Policy Review, Jerold S. Kayden, a Taubman faculty affiliate, explores the record of Supreme Court rulings on inclusionary zoning. He concludes that the Court’s requirements “are neither frivolous nor fatal” and sheds light on how communities can best craft such ordinances. More Information | Related article in the 2003 Taubman Center Report New Urbanism and Social Capital Do New Urbanist designs produce stronger communities? Writing in the National Civic Review, Thomas Sander, executive director of the Taubman Center's Saguaro Seminar, notes that to advocates, the answer is yes, because New Urbanism’s focus on a walkable mix of residences, businesses, and retail shops, accessible public spaces, narrow, safe, and inviting streets, houses with front porches and windows facing the street, and links to public transportation all seem premised on promoting positive social interactions. For a variety of reasons, however, the data supporting these claims "is not yet compelling." This does not mean the claims do not have merit, he adds; only that they make take more time to emerge. More information | Related article in the 2003 Taubman Center Report Conservation in the Internet Age: Threats and Opportunities More information | Related article in the 2000 Taubman Center Report The Politics, Policies, and People that Shape Boston's Built Environment The 2002 edition of Governing Greater Boston: Meeting the Needs of the Region's People—an annual “field guide” produced by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston—provides a comprehensive, balanced, and reliable resource on the politics, policy, and people that shape the region's built environment. Edited by Charles C. Euchner, who directs the Institute, which is affiliated with the Taubman Center, the book complements the 2003 edition of Governing Greater Boston, which focused on the human service issues, such as education, welfare reforem, education, and immigration. More information | Related article in the 2002 Taubman Center Report What Today's New Urbanists Can Learn from Yesterday's New Towns Related article in the 2002 Taubman Center Report Privatization and Public Transport Related article in the 2001 Taubman Center Report
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Many countries have turned to private companies to build and operate infrastructure and utilities over the past couple of decades. However, that approach is provoking a growing backlash, as consumers decry high prices and poor service while investors lament disappointing returns. In Regulating Infrastructure, Monopoly, Contracts, and Discretion, recently published by Harvard University Press, Jose A. Gomez-Ibanez, a professor at the Kennedy School and the Harvard Design School and a Taubman faculty affiliate, contends that the challenge is to create contractual agreements that protect both utilities and customers while allowing regulators to respond to unforeseen circumstances.
Since the demise of urban renewal in the early 1970s, the politics of large-scale public investment in and around major American cities has received little scholarly attention. In Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment, Alan Altshuler and David Luberoff, director and associate director of the Taubman Center, analyze the unprecedented wave of large-scale (mega-) public investments that occurred in American cities during the 1950s and 1960s; the social upheavals they triggered, which derailed large numbers of projects during the late 1960s and early 1970s; and the political impulses that have shaped a new generation of urban mega-projects in the decades since. They also appraise the most important consequences of policy shifts over this half-century and draw out common themes from the rich variety of programmatic and project developments chronicled in the book.
Racial and class biases embedded in the mortgage industry’s rules and cultural norms continue to put African Americans and Latinos at a disadvantage when buying homes, according to Taubman faculty affiliate Guy Stuart in Discriminating Risk: The U.S. Mortgage Lending Industry in the Twentieth Century. Using interviews with Chicago-area real estate and lending professionals and data from both the Census Bureau and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, Stuart shows that while lenders have eradicated blatantly discriminatory practices, they have ignored the racial and economic class biases encoded in their decision-making processes. Once recognized, these can be changed, argues Stuart, who offers concrete policy proposals to ameliorate these problems.
The Internet-like previous advances in communications, transportation, and other networked services such as electricity-is enabling dramatic changes in North American demographic and land-use patterns, according to Conservation in the Internet Age: Threats and Opportunities, edited by James N. Levitt, formerly a Taubman Center research fellow. The book grew out of a conference co-sponsored by the project and the Taubman center. The book's authors observe that because the Internet and other innovative networks allow more people to live and work in remote areas, they are helping revitalize rural economies. In the process, however, new settlement patterns are contributing to growing landscape fragmentation and wildlife habitat disruption problems. The authors also point out that the Internet and its kin offer significant benefits to conservationists, allowing them to pursue innovative and highly effective science, education, advocacy, resource protection and stewardship strategies.