Millions of Americans, in urban and rural places alike, are grappling with housing affordability issues. Cities large and small are looking for ways to build up resilience in the face of extreme weather events—and, in some cases, to adapt for an influx of new residents fleeing the impacts of a changing climate.
Solutions to all these challenges share an essential ingredient: land.
The PLACE Campaign
Public land—physical space owned collectively by the public and administered by municipal, regional, or national government—includes not only parks and green space but also places like surface parking lots, vacant parcels, institutional land, government buildings, and large swathes of urban and already-developed areas. Repurposing underutilized public land for public benefits—such as affordable housing, nature-based solutions, conservation, and infrastructure—can improve life in communities while optimizing use of land the public already owns.
The Lincoln Institute’s Public Land for All Communities and the Environment (PLACE) campaign examines and elevates the potential for public land to address today’s critical urban and economic challenges. The PLACE campaign builds on the Lincoln Institute’s work, including research on land-based public revenues, nature-based solutions, municipal fiscal health, public land management strategies, and equitable land governance.
By spotlighting public land as a strategic instrument to solve housing crises, achieve climate adaptation, and finance infrastructure and social services, we can recommend and implement measures to overcome all-too-common financial, logistical, and policy-related barriers. We also seek to influence public discourse by collaborating with academic partners, civil society, and public leaders to promote transparent, socially oriented public land governance. Through this initiative, the Lincoln Institute reaffirms its mission to advance land policy for the public good and positions public land as an essential component of 21st-century policy solutions to society’s most serious problems.
Our Work
The PLACE campaign builds off the Lincoln Institute’s past work to inform federal policy on how best to repurpose suitable public land for the development of affordable housing. Analysis by the Center for Geospatial Solutions has found more than 276,000 acres of government-owned land in transit-accessible, urban areas with existing infrastructure—places often close to jobs and schools—that, if built upon, could add more than 6.9 million homes to our current housing stock.
Learn More About Our Work