National Center for Smart Growth Research Works

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21473

The National Center for Smart Growth (NCSG) works to advance the notion that research, collaboration, engagement and thoughtful policy development hold the key to a smarter and more sustainable approach to urban and regional development. NCSG is based at the University of Maryland, College Park, housed under the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, with support from the College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, the A. James Clark School of Engineering, the School of Public Policy, and the Office of the Provost.

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Start date: 2010Subject: search.filters.subject.Housing and Community Development

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    The Contagion Effect of Neighboring Foreclosures on Own Foreclosures
    (2010) Lawley, Chad; Towe, Charles
    In this paper, we examine a highly localized contagion effect of foreclosures and find strong evidence that social interactions influence the decision to foreclose. We utilize a hazard model and a unique spatially explicit dataset documenting parcel level residential foreclosures in Maryland for the years 2006 through 2009. We combine these data with tax and assessment data, loan data, Census, and unemployment data. These data allow us to control for important factors influencing the likelihood of foreclosure within a given community, including the prevalence of subprime loans and the distribution of socioeconomic characteristics. Additionally, we use the tax data to construct variables describing individual homes, surrounding homes, and community. These variables include structural characteristics of houses, their price history, and length of ownership.
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    Reclassification of Sustainable Neighborhoods: An Opportunity Indicator Analysis in Baltimore Metropolitan Area
    (2013) Knaap, Elijah; Knaap, Gerrit; Liu, Chao
    The “Sustainable neighborhoods” has become widely proposed objective of urban planners, scholars, and local government agencies. However, after decades of discussion, there is still no consensus on the definition of sustainable neighborhoods (Sawicki and Flynn, 1996; Dluhy and Swartz 2006; Song and Knaap,2007; Galster 2010). To gain new information on this issue, this paper develops a quantitative method for classifying neighborhood types. It starts by measuring a set of more than 100 neighborhood sustainable indicators. The initial set of indicators includes education, housing, neighborhood quality and social capital, neighborhood environment and health, employment and transportation. Data are gathered from various sources, including the National Center for Smart Growth (NCSG) data inventory, U.S. Census, Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), many government agencies and private vendors. GIS mapping is used to visualize and identify variations in neighborhood attributes at the most detailed level (e.g census tracts). Factor analysis is then used to reduce the number of indicators to a small set of dimensions that capture essential differences in neighborhood types in terms of social, economic, and environmental dimensions. These factors loadings are used as inputs to a cluster analysis to identify unique neighborhood types. Finally, different types of neighborhoods are visualized using a GIS tool for further evaluation. The proposed quantitative analysis will help illustrate variations in neighborhood types and their spatial patterns in the Baltimore metropolitan region. This framework offers new insights on what is a sustainable neighborhood.
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    Community Associations at Middle Age: A New Bankruptcy Law and Other Proposals
    (2010) Nelson, Robert
    Community associations represent a major American shift toward collective private ownership of housing, following in the path of the rise of the private business corporation 100 years ago. The laws overseeing the chartering, organizing, governing, and other aspects of business corporation workings have been significantly revised many times. It has been a case of gaining experience with corporate forms of business ownership and then responding to the problems and opportunities as they have been discovered by businessmen, researchers, and other observers. As more and more community associations now reach middle age, it is time in this area of collective property ownership as well for a full retrospective assessment and new state laws and other institutional initiatives in response to the problems and opportunities as they are identified.
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    Transit-Induced Gentrification: Who Will Stay, and Who Will Go?
    (2014) Dawkins, Casey; Moeckel, Rolf
    Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) has been promoted by planners and policy advocates as a solution to a variety of urban problems, including automobile traffic congestion, air pollution, and urban poverty. This paper addresses the question: How do TOD-based affordable housing policies influence the intra-urban location of low income households over time? This paper examined historical descriptive evidence along with land use forecasts generated by the Simple Integrated Land-Use Orchestrator (SILO) land use model to examine the impact of housing policies on patterns of sorting by income within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The historical evidence suggests that in most decades when Metro stations were opened, census tracts near transit stations saw higher increases in median household income than other census tracts. We also find evidence that income growth around stations constructed in the 1970s and 1980s persisted over time, while income growth around stations constructed during the 1990s was largest in the following decade. Consistent with other studies (Kahn 2007), we interpret these findings as evidence that some degree of transit-induced gentrification has been occurring in the Washington, D.C. region.
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    Barriers to Development Inside Maryland's Priority Funding Areas: Perspectives of Planners, Developers, and Advocates
    (2012) Dawkins, Casey; Knaap, Gerrit; Sartori, Jason
    Passed in 1997, Maryland’s Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Initiative took a novel approach to growth management, utilizing the power of the purse to encourage sustainable development. The initiative seeks to discourage suburban sprawl through a targeted spending approach, while also allowing local governments to retain their land use decision-making authority. It required local governments to designate Priority Funding Areas (PFAs) where state infrastructure funding would be focused. Through this tool, the State aimed to promote development and revitalization within Maryland’s urbanized areas, while limiting the urbanization of Maryland’s rural areas and green spaces. Data from the Maryland Department of Planning, however, suggests that PFAs are having limited impacts. The percent of single-family acres developed outside of PFAs has risen steadily over time. Development densities have declined in PFAs, with the average parcel size inside PFAs increasing from 0.25 acres in 1990 to 0.28 acres in 2004. Despite their disappointing performance, PFAs are anticipated to play key roles in future policies regarding development on septic systems and in PlanMaryland, the state development plan. Given their growing prominence but questionable efficacy, PFAs warrant further examination. That is the purpose of this study, conducted by the Housing Strategies Group of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, and funded by the Maryland State Builders Association and NAIOP Maryland chapters. The study relies upon responses to a telephone survey of forty-seven representatives from three key stakeholder groups—planners, policy advocates and consultants, and developers. HSG made every effort to obtain the perspectives of a variety of sources but it is important to note that the survey respondents could not be said to be randomly selected and the sample size is too small for rigorous statistical analysis. While not presenting new empirical analysis of the influence of PFAs on development patterns across the State, the study does produce new information on how critical stakeholders view the efficacy of PFAs and the barriers to development inside PFAs. Survey respondents identified a number of ways to improve development conditions in PFAs, ranging from limiting the length of APFO restrictions to reducing impact fees and lowering level of service requirements for certain types of infrastructure inside PFAs. Other recommendations included expediting the state agency review processes and lessening stormwater management and other environmental protection requirements for projects inside PFAs.
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    Mapping Opportunity: A Critical Assessment
    (2014) Knaap, Elijah; Knaap, Gerrit; Liu, Chao
    A renewed interest has emerged on spatial opportunity structures and their role in shaping housing policy, community development, and equity planning. To this end, many have tried to quantify the geography of opportunity and quite literally plot it in a map. In this paper we explore the conceptual foundations and analytical methods that underlie the current practice of opportunity mapping. We find that opportunity maps can inform housing policy and metropolitan planning but that greater consideration should be given to the variables included, the methods in which variables are geographically articulated and combined, and the extent to which the public is engaged in opportunity mapping exercises.