Search

Most local governments’ off-street parking requirements promote quantity over quality, focusing on ensuring an ample supply of parking. This has undesirable consequences for the built environment. Parking lots and parking structures routinely overwhelm the architecture and urban design of even the best buildings and neighborhoods. We argue that planners should worry less about the quantity of parking, and pay more attention to its quality. Through examples of zoning reforms adopted by some cities, we show how regulating the quality of parking has the potential to improve urban design.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has led households to find creative ways to share resources to address isolation, stress, and anxiety. We build on these social experiments to suggest that sharing in housing and neighborhoods can lead to better mental health and wellbeing. The capabilities approach, popularized by philosophers Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, provides a theoretical perspective for integrating sharing options into housing and neighborhood design, regulation, and investment. We offer a framework delineating dimensions of sharing that has the potential to encourage more sharing and shift planning emphasis from housing as an outcome to one that promotes sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underprivileged urban communities often have less parks than wealthier communities. Even when new parks are built and are physically accessible to such communities, park design and programming is often undertaken without community input and may result in psychologically inaccessible parks. To address this problem, the California Department of Parks and Recreation piloted a community outreach intervention in a newly created Los Angeles park. It employed the promotores model, which uses community members as outreach ambassadors. Using participant observations, interviews, and a survey, we evaluated the intervention's success in recruiting and training promotores, organizing community outreach, and making the park more accessible to underprivileged communities. We found that the promotores helped increase community involvement in park programming, thus enhancing procedural justice, and also helped enhance park use by previously underrepresented groups. We conclude with recommendations about how the promotores model can be improved and used more effectively in park planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2010.00495.x Byline: VINIT MUKHIJA (1), LARA REGUS (2), SARA SLOVIN (3), ASHOK DAS (4) Abstract: ABSTRACT: Inclusionary zoning-requiring and encouraging developers to build some affordable housing in market-rate projects-is a growing but deeply contested practice. We evaluate the experience of inclusionary zoning programs in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, including their structure and elements, effectiveness in delivering affordable housing, and effect on housing markets and supply, to address the debate. We find that the programs vary but are not heavily demanding and include cost offsets. Low in-lieu fees, however, can be the weak link. Many of the mandatory programs are effective, if effectiveness is measured by comparing the affordable housing productivity of inclusionary zoning with other affordable housing programs. We found no statistically significant evidence of inclusionary zoning's adverse effect on housing supply in cities with inclusionary mandates. We conclude that critics underestimate the affordable housing productivity of inclusionary zoning, and overestimate its adverse effects on housing supply. Nonetheless, inclusionary zoning is no panacea and needs to be part of a comprehensive housing strategy. Author Affiliation: (1)University of California, Los Angeles (2)Abode Communities (3)Abode Communities (4)San Francisco State University Article note: Direct correcpondence to: Vinit Mukhija, UCLA Department of Urban Planning, 3250 School of Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1656. E-mail: vmukhija@ucla.edu.

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00719.x Byline: VINIT MUKHIJA (1), PAAVO MONKKONEN (2) Keywords: Designated colonias; Demographic colonias; Low-income settlements; Border states; Housing; Chicano studies; Metaphors; Racialized places Abstract: Abstract 'Colonias' in the United States are a relatively recent phenomenon for planning practitioners and scholars. Most of the focus of policy and literature has been on the unregulated, substandard settlements in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Past studies of colonias in the three states have criticized policy efficacy and questioned whether colonias are appropriately or adequately defined. Our objective in this essay is complementary. We draw from the literature, and our research in California, to explain and share our concerns with the policy practice of naming settlements with poor infrastructure and living conditions as colonias, a Spanish-language name. We argue that the name can be misleading, prejudiced and risks being detrimental. We discuss our misgivings about federal public policy using a non-English title for labeling substandard settlements, and suggest that scholars and policymakers need to revisit the terminology. Resume Les colonias constituent un phenomene relativement recent aux Etats-Unis pour les acteurs et chercheurs en amenagement. La plupart des politiques et publications se sont interessees aux implantations sauvages de qualite deplorable apparues au Texas, au Nouveau Mexique et en Arizona. Les etudes existantes sur les colonias de ces trois Etats ont remis en cause l'efficacite de la politique publique et la pertinence de la definition donnee au terme colonias. Cet essai vise a les completer. A partir des publications et de nos recherches en Californie, il explique et expose notre inquietude de voir la pratique politique designer par colonias, un nom espagnol, des implantations aux infrastructures et conditions de vie mediocres. A notre avis, cette appellation peut etre trompeuse, porteuse de prejuges et potentiellement nefaste. L'article soumet nos interrogations vis-a-vis d'une politique publique federale qui emploie une designation en langue etrangere pour cataloguer des implantations d'habitats de qualite inferieure, et invite chercheurs et decideurs politiques a revisiter cette terminologie. Author Affiliation: (1)Department of Urban Planning, UCLA, School of Public Affairs, Los Angeles, California, USA (2)Department of City and Regional Planning, College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA Article note: Vinit Mukhija (vmukhija@ucla.edu), Department of Urban Planning, UCLA, School of Public Affairs, Los Angeles, California, USA and Paavo Monkkonen (paavo@berkeley.edu), Department of City and Regional Planning, College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA.

This paper demonstrates how institutional pluralism in the delivery of housing can evoke major disagreements and ultimately conflict between different stakeholders. The case study focuses on a case of slum redevelopment in Mumbai and shows how a major nongovernment organization (NGO) became involved in conflicts with the other stakeholders, including private market actors, government agencies and even the community group. But, these conflicts did not necessarily have only negative impacts. Under certain conditions, such as when property values were booming in Mumbai, communities can actually benefit from such conflicts. Key words -- Asia, India, housing, conflict, NGOs, slum redevelopment

Cities have a large supply of garages that could be converted into affordable housing in single-family neighborhoods, but minimum parking requirements prevent converting most of these garages into apartments. We examine how cities can relax off-street parking requirements for houses with converted garages. In Residential Parking Permit Districts, cities can limit the number of on-street parking permits allowed at any address with a second unit. This policy can remove on-street parking congestion as a reason for neighbors to oppose garage conversions, double the potential number of housing units in single-family neighborhoods, and increase the supply of safe, affordable housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenges of property readjustment in Mumbai's tenements or 'chawls' are discussed.

The focus of this essay is success in collective action. It is based on a critical review and synthesis of the literature on collective action and property rights. I make three key arguments in the essay. First, contrary to the narrow conventional wisdom, self-interested behavior can lead to successful collective action in both commonly managed resources and open-access situations. The literature documents and explains a number of examples of success. Second, and nonetheless, collective action can be problematic and may require institutional responses, but privatization is not a panacea. Paradoxically, privatism can be a key source of the problems in collective action. And third, since the conventionally postulated, simple one-to-one relationship between a private property rights regime and an efficient outcome is not true, and given planners' institutional interests, they should take a leading role in publicly advocating the potential viability of common property and collective action. Another important objective of the essay is to introduce to the readers a vast body of non-traditional literature that has relevance for urban studies and planning practice. I include the literature on private property rights, 'the tragedy of the commons', 'the inverse commons', 'the comedy of the commons', and 'the tragedy of the anticommons'.

What determines park use by minority groups, and how can park equity be increased? To answer these questions, the study reviews the literature on the equitable use of parks, and analyzes the outreach strategies of 11 exemplary open space organizations with success in increasing park use by underprivileged groups. It finds that park suppliers can increase park use by making parks more accessible and welcoming, and incorporating the preferences of underprivileged groups in park design and programming. It suggests that the tripartite framework of distribution, accessibility and fit may be employed to plan for a more equitable use of parks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The documented under-representation of ethnoracial minority population in peri-urban parks can be considered an environmental justice issue. This exploratory qualitative study examined the outreach efforts and challenges faced by a large state parks agency in attracting underserved and under-represented visitors from low-income and ethnoracial minority groups to its parks. It also explored if and under what conditions partnerships between the public agency and community-based and nonprofit organisations or their coalitions may help bring more under-represented groups to parks. Findings were based on a triangulated three-pronged set of qualitative data from a) an online survey of state park personnel that yielded 58 responses; b) semi-structured interviews with 19 park leaders; and b) semi-structured interviews with representatives of 12 nonprofit groups. Findings indicated that despite its good intentions, the State Parks agency fell short of increasing the accessibility and fit of its parks for its low-income and ethnoracial minority constituents. Further findings suggested that partnerships between the state parks agency and open space nonprofit organisations and their coalitions offer a promising strategy for increasing diversity in parks, but only under certain caveats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship suggests that the urban design profession is flourishing with many newly created urban design departments, programmes and certificates. Within this context, this paper suggests that urban design education should explore how urban designers can acquire a deeper understanding of the larger socio-economic processes which have an impact on urban form and different groups in the city. More specifically, it posits that urban designers should take notice of the informal urbanism that is burgeoning in many cities of the Global North. For this to happen, urban design pedagogy should prepare future urban designers to better understand and positively intervene in informal urban landscapes, and the urban design studio is an appropriate venue where this can happen. The paper articulates a four-tier framework of responding to informal urbanism through urban design that concentrates on the scope, context, process and practice of urban design. It details a graduate urban design studio that followed this framework to offer spatial solutions and accommodation of street vending in one Los Angeles inner city neighbourhood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

California's farmworkers are among the lowest-paid wage earners in the state. They often live in crowded or substandard housing. The Polanco Bill—state legislation enacted in the early 1990s—aimed to increase the supply of housing for farmworkers by encouraging the development of employee housing on land zoned for agriculture. This article discusses the implementation and effects of the Polanco Bill in the agricultural area of the eastern Coachella Valley. It finds, somewhat unexpectedly, that groups of farmworkers, often family members, have used the bill to collaborate and develop small, resident-owned, informal mobile home communities, called polancos, and focuses on one such case. Although the article's key contribution is to identify the informal approach and its key attributes, it also discusses whether a new housing model based on the collectively owned polancos is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]