Revitalizing Communities: Housing as a Powerful New Tool

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Course Details

As office and retail markets face stagnation for the foreseeable future, housing has emerged as a powerful tool for achieving essential community-building goals. Housing represents two-thirds of North America’s real estate market and for cities and suburbs, large and small. Shifting demographics are producing unprecedented housing market demand for mixed-use, walkable environments — a trend projected to continue past 2040.

While communities often pursue affordable housing initiatives, targeting mixed-income housing can support broader goals — transforming public housing into mixed-income neighborhoods, revitalizing rustbelt downtowns and neighborhoods, attracting significant knowledge economy jobs and investment, reclaiming outmoded malls and office parks, reviving Main Streets and reclaiming urban arterials…the list is long.

Panelists will initially focus on case studies demonstrating how diverse communities are using housing to achieve a wide variety of planning and redevelopment goals. They will then shift to resolving pragmatic issues and challenges faced by audience members: launching community conversations necessary to build support for necessary densities; structuring P3s to close initial funding gaps; identifying critical mass thresholds required to bring a nearby Main Street retail to life; creating strategies for converting office to housing; creating live/work/play/learn neighborhoods that attract and retain talent and the innovation jobs and investment that follow; and similar issues.

Learning Outcomes

  • Articulate the fiscal, economic development, equity, placemaking, and similar benefits of well-planned, mixed-income multifamily housing that responds to unprecedented demand triggered by dramatic demographic shifts.
  • Work with residents, businesses, and other stakeholders to build an understanding of the benefits of expanded housing opportunities and how to manage potential challenges (e.g. traffic, design, density, financing gaps).
  • Ensure that housing is not a standalone goal, but a powerful tool to achieve many community-based goals including enhanced equity and environmental responsibility to improve livability and economic competitiveness.
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