Stephanie Pollack, associate director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University, noticed something seriously amiss when she analyzed the results of a survey on the public transportation needs of lower-income residents in Massachusetts. The survey asked respondents to indicate their main mode of transport, and there were the traditional choices like taking the train or the bus. But there was no box to check for what turned out to be the most common means of getting around: Dozens of respondents had written in “someone else’s car.”

For Pollack, the discovery underscored the difficulties of matching transportation systems to realities on the ground as well as the need for better metrics and engagement to satisfy the true needs of those who use public transportation. As part of a project called The Toll of Transportation, the Dukakis Center sought to determine how residents get where they need to go in such cities as Lynn, Worcester, Springfield, and East Boston. But “someone else’s car” was not a category recognized in standard transportation data collection. “We measure equity in education and health care, but not in transportation,” Pollack told writers and editors gathered for the Journalists Forum on Land and the Built Environment, in Cambridge, March 28 to 29, 2014. “We have no concept of how a transportation system would be ‘fair.’”

The theme of the forum was infrastructure—who it’s for, how to plan and pay for it, and why we need smarter investments for 21st-century urban environments. It was the seventh year of the annual two-day gathering for journalists, hosted by the Lincoln Institute, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD).

Pollock also shared research on transit-oriented development (TOD)—a policy increasingly encouraged by cities through zoning reform and financial incentives. The data revealed some troubling outcomes in terms of equity and transit use: The higher-income residents who move into TOD areas, which rapidly become expensive places to live, don’t tend to use the transit; whereas residents who do use transit must move farther from the stations, to more affordable neighborhoods—a displacement that raises the costs and complexity of their commutes. In a third of TOD sites studied, ridership actually went down after new development went in.

In another presentation, Judith Grant Long, associate professor of urban planning at the GSD, looked at mega-events, such as the World Cup and the Olympics, which also inspire cities to invest billions in infrastructure. There is little evidence of a payoff in terms of permanent jobs, revenues, or even branding, she said. The International Olympic Committee could help cities plan better and deliver more compact, “right-sized” games, Long suggested. Barcelona, Rome, Tokyo, Munich, Montreal, and London all have had some success in transforming Olympic villages for long-term use that benefits a broader population after the games are over.

Public-private partnerships, private roadway building and operation, and tolling systems have marked recent innovations in the financing of infrastructure, said Jose A. Gomez-Ibanez, professor at the GSD and the Harvard Kennedy School. But, arguably, since the completion of the interstate highway system, the federal role has been unclear; the challenge is showing the public who benefits from projects, in order to justify how they are paid for, he said.

Governments are going to have to become smarter and more targeted in building future transportation and other types of infrastructure, especially as metropolitan areas seek to become more resilient in the face of the inevitable impacts of climate change, several presenters said.

Rich Cavallaro, president of Skanska USA Civil, Inc., cited the D+ grade in the latest “report card” on infrastructure issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers. That group estimates that the nation needs to spend $1.6 trillion more than currently planned to bring infrastructure across all sectors to an acceptable level. In contrast to hugely expensive projects, such as floodgates similar to those on the Thames River in the United Kingdom, Cavallaro spoke in favor of more achievable steps, such as equipping subway tunnels with giant inflatable plugs, raising up grates and power substations, and designing parking garages and similar facilities so they can be flooded and then cleaned up when the waters recede.

Several nations are better at coordinating disaster relief and recovery efforts, according to surveys by Robert B. Olshansky, professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Laurie A. Johnson, principal at Laurie Johnson Consulting|Research. Building long-term resilience as part of that process was the subject of the recent Lincoln Institute report, Lessons from Sandy.

Susannah C. Drake, principal at dlandstudio pllc, detailed creative approaches such as retooling the waterfront apron of lower Manhattan and capping sunken highway trenches through urban neighborhoods. The nation cannot simply seek to rebuild what existed before a disaster—especially now that advances in technology make infrastructure less expensive, compared to the massive investments of the New Deal. Marcus M. Quigley, principal at Geosyntec Consultants, explored how smart technology and dynamic, intelligent controls can transform major facilities. “We can change the way our infrastructure acts on our behalf,” he said. “Every time we repave a street or a sidewalk, we’re burning an opportunity.”

The dark side of smart infrastructure was also discussed. Ryan Ellis, postdoctoral research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, addressed the complex challenge of security and infrastructure, revealing the cloak-and-dagger world of cyber attacks, vulnerabilities, and zero days. Hackers routinely hijack emails and can sabotage our power grid, air traffic control, and financial systems. The key, Ellis said, is to “design for security now,” because “it’s hard to bolt on after the fact.” For planners engaged in building smart cities, he said, security must be part of the conversation.

The interconnected impacts of global urbanization require a broader framework for urban infrastructure, outside the “box” of individual metropolitan areas, said Neil Brenner, professor of urban theory at the GSD. “We need to update our cognitive map of urbanization,” he said. Pierre Bélanger, associate professor of landscape architecture at the GSD, predicted that working with nature—and even allowing certain abandoned areas to return to a wild state—would eclipse the traditional approach of controlling water and putting streams in pipes.

Political leadership is the key to reinventing and designing new infrastructure in the urban environment, said landscape architect Margie Ruddick. Fortunately, mayors have become some of the most innovative leaders to take on these kinds of challenges, said David Gergen, senior analyst at CNN and director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. Mayors may not routinely become president, but they are practical problem solvers at center stage, said Gergen, who was the guest speaker at the forum’s traditional evening gathering at the Nieman Foundation’s Walter Lippmann House. “Cities are where the experimentation is taking place,” he said.

The political difficulties of transforming the urban landscape were also noted by Janette Sadik-Khan, former transportation commissioner of New York City and now at Bloomberg Associates. She noted that bike lanes, a bike-share program, and car-free spaces in Times Square had prompted opposition from drivers, business owners, and others who viewed the initiative as impractical and “vaguely French.” But many shopkeepers have since reported a big uptick in business because of increased foot traffic, and the moveable chairs in the car-free areas are continually occupied.

“When you expand options, people vote with their feet, their seats, and their bike share key fobs,” she said. “New Yorkers have changed in what they expect from their streets.”

The forum traditionally includes two sessions devoted to “practicing the craft.” Brian McGrory, editor of The Boston Globe, detailed efforts to integrate “searingly relevant” journalism in a digital business model that is sustainable. The Globe has more readers than ever, he said. Inga Saffron, architecture critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, who won the Pulitzer Prize shortly after the forum, joined Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin, Jerold Kayden from the GSD, and Gregory K. Ingram and Armando Carbonell from the Lincoln Institute in a conversation on the interaction between journalists and expert sources. Several participants among the 40 journalists and Nieman fellows filed dispatches, including Roger K. Lewis at The Washington Post, Tim Bryant at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Christopher Swope at Citiscope, and Josh Stephens writing for Planetizen.

Anthony Flint is a fellow and director of public affairs at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and author of Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City (Random House, 2011). He was a Loeb Fellow in 2000–2001.

Liz Wood quería comprar una casa. Corría el año 2006, había estado alquilando por una década y sus pagos mensuales le estaban resultando muy altos. Tenía 43 años de edad y un empleo estable como educadora familiar en el que ganaba US$34.000 al año más beneficios. No quería nada lujoso; simplemente un lugar donde pudiera “crear amor y tener estabilidad”. No quería vivir más allá de sus recursos.

De todas maneras, las cuentas no le cuadraban. Wood vive en Duvall, Washington, un pueblo de aproximadamente 7.500 habitantes al pie de las Montañas Cascade. Duvall, inmerso en un bosque frondoso, se encuentra a alrededor de 48 kilómetros de Seattle y apenas 13 kilómetros de la ciudad de Redmond, sede de Microsoft. La mediana de ingresos en Duvall es casi el doble de la del estado de Washington en general, y las viviendas de la zona son caras. En 2010, la mediana del valor de las viviendas ocupadas en Duvall era de US$373.500, en comparación con US$262.100 del estado, según la Oficina del Censo de los EE.UU.

Entre las pocas opciones que tenía, Wood se decidió finalmente por una casa prefabricada de segunda mano de US$55.000 en Duvall Riverside Village, una comunidad de dos hectáreas con 25 viviendas prefabricadas, ubicada en el centro de Duvall. “Vivir aquí es increíble”, declaró. “Mi propiedad da sobre el río, así que cuando salgo de mi casa veo agua, pinos y un sendero por el cual puedo caminar hasta el pueblo vecino. Me despierto por la mañana escuchando a los pájaros. Conozco a todos mis vecinos; estoy conectada con mi comunidad. Estoy a una cuadra de la comisaría. Me siento segura”.

Pero aun así, su situación era complicada. Wood era dueña de su casa, pero no del terreno donde estaba ubicada. Alquilaba el terreno por US$450 mensuales, más el pago del agua y los demás servicios públicos, como el resto de los residentes de Duvall Riverside Village. Por lo tanto, Wood y sus vecinos estaban básicamente a merced del dueño de la propiedad, y no gozaban de la autonomía y seguridad legal asociadas con los modelos de propiedad de vivienda más tradicionales.

El propietario prohibía la construcción de garajes, limitando las opciones de almacenamiento de los residentes. Cobraba US$25 al mes por cada automóvil o persona adulta adicional que no se hubiera registrado en el momento de la mudanza. Cobraba US$5 al mes por cada mascota y los perros no podían quedar sueltos en ningún momento. Había que pagar una cuota mensual de US$5 por cada dos metros cúbicos de leña extra, que Wood necesitaba para alimentar su estufa. Aunque el propietario había contratado un empleado de mantenimiento, no había instalado alumbrado exterior ni mantenía las calles de la comunidad, que estaban llenas de baches y grietas.

En 2012, Wood y sus vecinos recibieron un aviso por escrito de que el propietario estaba vendiendo el suelo. A diferencia de otros propietarios, que preferían vender su terreno a un emprendedor inmobiliario, este propietario estaba dispuesto a vendérselo a los residentes. Había aceptado organizar una reunión entre los inquilinos, un corredor de bienes raíces y el Centro de Desarrollo Cooperativo del Noroeste (Northwest Cooperative Development Center), una organización sin fines de lucro que apoya a las cooperativas. Las partes consideraron la posibilidad de establecer una cooperativa de residentes sin fines de lucro para comprar la propiedad. De esa manera podrían conservar el suelo para las casas prefabricadas, seguir viviendo en comunidad y administrar colectivamente un lugar seguro, económico y de alta calidad.

Los residentes votaron a favor de esta propuesta. El propietario tenía dos demandas. Quería vender su propiedad a un valor justo de mercado, y quería completar la venta antes del fin del año. Estaban ya en agosto. Tenían cinco meses.

Además de colaborar con el Centro de Desarrollo Cooperativo del Noroeste, los residentes también comenzaron a trabajar con ROC USA, una organización sin fines de lucro de Nueva Hampshire que ofrece a los residentes de comunidades de casas prefabricadas una combinación de asistencia técnica y financiamiento asequible para comprar su suelo alquilado cuando se pone a la venta. Desde su fundación en 2008, ROC USA ha facilitado con éxito 80 transacciones de este tipo en todo el país y consiguió préstamos de financiamiento por más de 175 millones de dólares.

ROC USA trabaja con una red de ocho filiales regionales, una de las cuales es el Centro de Desarrollo Cooperativo del Noroeste. En Duvall, las organizaciones sin fines de lucro trabajaron con los residentes para hacer un análisis económico de la oferta y confirmar que era una buena oportunidad para que los residentes fueran propietarios de la comunidad. A continuación, las organizaciones ayudaron a los residentes a contratar a un abogado independiente y establecer su cooperativa, que funcionaría como una democracia, en la que los residentes elegirían a sus propios dirigentes. ROC USA ayudó a los residentes a contratar a un ingeniero independiente para realizar la diligencia debida de la propiedad; a conseguir financiamiento a través de la subsidiaria de préstamo de ROC USA, llamada ROC USA Capital; a comprar la propiedad y realizar las reparaciones indispensables; y a organizar la transferencia inmobiliaria.

El 27 de diciembre de ese año, la nueva cooperativa compró Duvall Riverside Village con US$1,3 millones en financiamiento de ROC USA Capital, y Wood y los demás propietarios pasaron a controlar sus propias viviendas y a preservar de forma permanente 25 viviendas económicas en un pueblo donde la oferta de este tipo de viviendas es escasa.

Los residentes continuaron pagando US$450 mensuales para alquilar el terreno, pero ahora votan para establecer las reglas de la comunidad, y usan el pago del alquiler para realizar mejoras y pagar la hipoteca, los impuestos y los gastos de comunidad.

“Ahora puedes tener un garaje si quieres”, explica Wood, que es la presidente de la cooperativa de residentes de Duvall y miembro de la junta directiva de ROC USA. “E invertimos US$35.000 para arreglar las calles. Ya no tenemos que vivir con temor, así que la gente está dispuesta a invertir en sus casas. Tenemos reuniones anuales para votar sobre proyectos. Si en el presupuesto hay cosas que no necesitamos, podemos reducir nuestro alquiler mensual. En última instancia, controlamos nuestro propio destino”.

Después de completar la venta, ROC USA y el Centro de Desarrollo Cooperativo del Noroeste han seguido proporcionando a los residentes asistencia técnica para garantizar el buen funcionamiento de la comunidad.

“Si simplemente nos hubieran prestado dinero y nos hubieran dicho: ‘Estas son las pautas, y esto es lo que tienen que hacer’, hubiéramos fracasado”, explica Wood. “Pero son un recurso constante. Nos ayudan en situaciones difíciles o cuando no sabemos hacer algo de forma legal. Nuestra meta es independizarnos y poder administrar nuestra comunidad como un negocio. Pague sus cuentas y su casa puede quedarse donde está. Punto. Para siempre”.

Beneficios

Más de 18 millones de estadounidenses viven en casas prefabricadas, lo cual representa el 5 por ciento del inventario de viviendas en las áreas metropolitanas de los Estados Unidos, y un 15 por ciento en las comunidades rurales. Su calidad tiene variaciones significativas. Aproximadamente el 25 por ciento de las casas prefabricadas son las casas rodantes frágiles desvencijadas de la década de 1960 y comienzos de la de 1970, fabricadas antes de que el gobierno federal introdujera controles de calidad en 1976. El 75 por ciento restante cumple con las normas federales, y muchas son viviendas agradables y térmicamente eficientes, que a simple vista no se pueden distinguir de las viviendas tradicionales construidas sobre el terreno. Si bien las casas prefabricadas han sido despreciadas durante mucho tiempo como el último recurso para vivienda, los modelos actuales son robustos, eficientes y atractivos, con el potencial de aliviar la carencia de viviendas seguras y económicas en el país.

Las casas prefabricadas modernas cuestan aproximadamente la mitad que las construidas sobre el terreno, y se pueden construir cinco veces más rápido, convirtiéndose en una opción realmente viable para los consumidores de bajos ingresos. El proceso de producción es menos costoso y los modelos que cumplen con las normas Energy Star del gobierno federal ofrecen a los propietarios un importante ahorro de energía. Y son duraderas. Mientras que las casas prefabricadas construidas antes de las regulaciones de 1976 fueron diseñadas para ser portátiles, como vehículos recreativos, los modelos modernos están construidos con materiales más fuertes y diseñados para ser permanentes. Las casas prefabricadas de hoy pueden sustentarse en los mismos tipos de cimientos que se usarían para una estructura construida sobre el terreno, ofreciendo flexibilidad para usarlas en una amplia gama de geografías y ambientes.

“El inventario de casas prefabricadas es un componente fundamental de las viviendas económicas del país”, dice George McCarthy, presidente y Director Ejecutivo del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo. “Supera fácilmente dos o tres veces el inventario de viviendas subsidiadas en casi todos los mercados”.

Las casas prefabricadas son más baratas de producir que las casas construidas sobre el terreno, debido a su proceso de manufactura. Andrea Levere, presidente de Corporation for Enterprise Development, ha escrito en The Huffington Post que “el término ‘casa prefabricada’ tiene menos que ver con la calidad que con el proceso de producción, que deriva de las cadenas de montaje creadas por Henry Ford. Este modelo permite construir las casas prefabricadas en un ambiente de trabajo más controlado, con costos más predecibles, mayor eficiencia y menos residuos” (Levere 2013).

En 2013, el costo de una nueva casa prefabricada térmicamente eficiente era de US$64.000, en comparación con los US$324.500 de una nueva casa construida sobre el terreno, según el Censo de los Estados Unidos, si bien el precio de la segunda incluye el suelo. Pero incluso cuando se descuenta el costo del suelo, las casas prefabricadas siguen siendo significativamente más baratas, con un promedio de US$4 por metro cuadrado, en comparación con US$8,7 por metro cuadrado para las casas construidas sobre el terreno. Y no son viviendas subsidiadas, lo cual es una ventaja cuando se tiene en cuenta la oferta extremadamente escasa de viviendas subsidiadas en comparación con la demanda. En la actualidad, sólo una de cuatro familias que reúne los requisitos debido a sus bajos ingresos recibe una vivienda subsidiada, de acuerdo a la Comisión Bipartidista de Políticas, dejando al 75 por ciento restante en necesidad de una alternativa económica sin subsidiar. Al ayudar a cubrir ese vacío, las casas prefabricadas pueden aliviar algo esta demanda de casas subsidiadas que los gobiernos estatales y el gobierno federal tienen tanta dificultad para ofrecer debido a la reducción de sus presupuestos. “La mayoría de las familias que viven en casas prefabricadas serían elegibles para viviendas subsidiadas, pero en su lugar eligen esta opción más barata y sin subsidio”, dice McCarthy.

El inventario es también muy versátil, señala McCarthy, citando el papel que las casas prefabricadas cumplieron en el periodo inmediatamente posterior al Huracán Sandy. “Los trabajadores de emergencia instalaron 17 casas prefabricadas en Nueva Jersey a pocas semanas del huracán. Estas eran casas permanentes para inquilinos desplazados, no los problemáticos ‘tráileres Katrina’. Y lo hicieron antes de que la mayoría de las organizaciones elaborara siquiera un plan de vivienda. Esto es una muestra de la eficiencia y flexibilidad de las casas prefabricadas. Los plazos de producción son aproximadamente 80 por ciento más cortos que los de las casas construidas sobre el terreno, convirtiéndolas en la mejor opción de vivienda como respuesta a las catástrofes”.

De todas maneras, las casas prefabricadas con frecuencia tienen mala reputación, debido en gran medida a la percepción equivocada de que los modelos de hoy en día son los mismos que los de las primeras generaciones de casas móviles, antes de la introducción de normas de control de calidad por el Departamento de Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano en 1976. Hoy en día hay aproximadamente 2 millones de casas construidas antes de 1976; muchas de ellas apenas se sostienen erguidas, y alojan a la población más vulnerable, como los ancianos y discapacitados. Si bien el inventario de viviendas anteriores a 1976 no tiene casi relación con sus contrapartes de la actualidad, estas viviendas más viejas y deterioradas dominan la percepción pública de las casas prefabricadas en los Estados Unidos.

La reputación del inventario de estas viviendas es aún menor por las vulnerabilidades que tienen los residentes que no son dueños del terreno donde viven. Aproximadamente 3 millones de personas viven en una de las 50.000 comunidades de viviendas prefabricadas del país, mientras que otros 3 millones alquilan una casa prefabricada en terrenos privados. Hay comunidades de casas prefabricadas en todos los estados del país. Como en el caso de Duvall Riverside Village, muchas se encuentran en terrenos privilegiados, y los propietarios de esos terrenos reciben habitualmente ofertas de emprendedores inmobiliarios.

Los promotores de casas prefabricadas y de su viabilidad como alternativa de vivienda económica se han enfocado en tres áreas fundamentales de innovación: conservar los parques de casas móviles; reemplazar las unidades anteriores a 1976 por casas térmicamente eficientes; y aumentar el acceso a financiamiento asequible para los compradores potenciales, ya que es prácticamente inaccesible en el mercado actual, y es imperativo para acumular un patrimonio neto y preservar el valor de reventa de la casa.

Conservación de las comunidades de casas prefabricadas

La conversión de una comunidad de casas prefabricadas de propiedad privada a una cooperativa de residentes, como se hizo en Duvall Riverside Village, no es frecuente. Por cada comunidad que se ofrece a la venta y se preserva satisfactoriamente como vivienda económica, hay muchas más que se terminan vendiendo para realizar emprendimientos inmobiliarios, desplazando a los residentes, quienes quizás no tengan ninguna otra buena alternativa.

“No es tan sencillo como sólo mover la casa”, dice Ishbel Dickens, presidente de la Asociación Nacional de Propietarios de Casas Prefabricadas. “Primero está la cuestión de si la casa se puede mover. Puede ser demasiado vieja o inestable para moverse. Y aunque se pueda mover, esta operación es cara, y es muy difícil encontrar un espacio en otra comunidad. En la mayoría de los casos, cuando un parque de casas cierra, los residentes probablemente van a perder la casa y todos sus recursos. Lo más probable es que nunca puedan ser propietarios de una vivienda. Probablemente terminarán en una lista de viviendas subsidiadas, o acabarán viviendo en la calle”.

Hasta cierto punto, es un accidente histórico que tantos parques de casas móviles ocupen terrenos valiosos, dice Paul Bradley, presidente de ROC USA. En las décadas de 1950 y 1960, los estadounidenses comenzaron a comprar casas rodantes, en parte debido al surgimiento de una cultura de recreación al aire libre, y en parte debido a que las fábricas comenzaron a producirlas para utilizar la capacidad de manufactura excedente después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, haciéndolas atractivas y asequibles. A medida que las unidades se fueron haciendo más populares, pasaron de ser estructuras transitorias a permanentes, y la gente comenzó a agregar garajes provisionales para sus automóviles y solarios. En ese momento, los planificadores urbanos aceptaron la evolución hacia la permanencia. Desde su punto de vista, la mayoría de las casa rodantes se encontraban en terrenos periféricos que no se usaban para emprendimientos inmobiliarios. ¿Qué tenía de malo dejar estas casas móviles por un tiempo hasta que las ciudades se expandieran hasta llegar allí, y en ese momento desarrollar el suelo?

“Estas comunidades originales se construyeron con un plan en mente para eliminarlas”, dice Bradley. “En ese entonces, nadie contempló las consecuencias de crear un inventario de viviendas donde los propietarios no podían controlar el suelo donde se encontraban. Nadie anticipó que estas comunidades se llenarían de propietarios de bajos y moderados ingresos, quienes invertían su dinero para comprar estas casas y tenían muy pocas alternativas viables. Y hoy en día todavía estamos tratando de resolver este problema. Esta falta de control del suelo significa que los propietarios de las viviendas viven con una profunda sensación de inseguridad, y de que es absurdo efectuar inversiones en su vivienda, porque nunca las van a poder recuperar. ¿Cuál es la consecuencia para un propietario que no puede invertir racionalmente en su casa? ¿Qué significa esto para el inventario de viviendas? ¿Para los barrios?”

Las políticas de corto plazo para el uso del suelo no son el único problema para preservar las comunidades de casas prefabricadas. Otro obstáculo igualmente oneroso es la falta de protección legal para los residentes. En 34 estados y el Distrito de Columbia, el propietario puede vender el terreno sin dar a los residentes la oportunidad de comprarlo. De hecho, en la mayoría de los estados el propietario no tiene siquiera que notificar a los residentes que la comunidad está a la venta; puede esperar hasta que la propiedad se haya vendido antes de informar a los residentes de la transacción, dejándolos de golpe en una situación muy frágil. Incluso los 16 estados que exigen al propietario la notificación previa a la comunidad de la venta de viviendas prefabricadas no brindan necesariamente las protecciones que requieren los inquilinos. “En la mayoría de los estados con notificación previa, hay tantas limitaciones en los requerimientos de la notificación que pocas veces sirve de algo a los residentes”, dice Carolyn Carter, directora de promoción en el Centro Nacional de Derecho del Consumidor (National Consumer Law Center).

Para proteger mejor a los promotores respaldan reformas legislativas a las leyes estatales e incentivos tributarios para que los propietarios vendan el suelo a los residentes. La estrategia más efectiva consiste en promulgar leyes estatales que requieren al dueño que dé un aviso anticipado de la venta a los residentes (idealmente de 60 días) junto con la oportunidad de comprar la propiedad, señala Carter. Según ella, hay seis estados que tienen leyes que “funcionan en la práctica, y brindan oportunidades reales para que los residentes compren sus comunidades”: Nueva Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida, Vermont y Delaware. Dice también que Oregón promulgó una legislación prometedora en enero de 2015. “En estos estados con avisos efectivos y leyes que brindan la oportunidad de comprar, está tomando fuerza el que los residentes se conviertan en propietarios”, explica Carter.

Aproximadamente el 46 por ciento de las 80 comunidades respaldadas por ROC USA se encuentra en Nueva Hampshire o Massachusetts, dos estados pequeños con algunas de las protecciones más efectivas del país para los residentes. Hay 89 cooperativas de residentes adicionales en Nueva Hampshire anteriores al lanzamiento de ROC USA.

Para comprender el valor de las leyes de protección firmes para los residentes, basta con contar la historia de Ryder Woods, un parque de 174 casas móviles en Milford, Connecticut, a 18 kilómetros al sur de New Haven, pegado a una carretera principal. Connecticut es uno de 19 estados que ofrecen incentivos tributarios o brindan a los residentes “algunas” protecciones cuando se vende la comunidad, aunque también presenta “importantes vacíos”, según Carter. En 1998, el dueño de Ryder Woods vendió su propiedad a emprendedores inmobiliarios. Informó a los residentes por medio de avisos de desalojo, en contravención de las leyes estatales, que le exigían no sólo dar un aviso por adelantado de la venta pendiente sino también ofrecerles la oportunidad de ser los primeros en comprar el suelo. Ryder Woods tenía una asociación de propietarios activa y rápidamente se organizaron protestas, peticiones y campañas ante la legislatura estatal para cancelar la venta. Finalmente, los medios de comunicación se hicieron cargo de la historia, y una abogada de Milford ofreció sus servicios de forma voluntaria para ayudarlos. A medida que profundizaba en el caso, se dio cuenta de que la ley estaba del lado de los residentes, y que la comunidad necesitaba más respaldo legal que el que ella podía ofrecer por sí sola. Pidió ayuda a un amigo y colega, socio de una importante compañía de Hartford, que aceptó tomar el caso pro bono y asignó la tarea a un equipo de abogados. El caso finalizó en un juicio y en última instancia llegó hasta la corte suprema estatal. El comprador original, que no estaba interesado en este embrollo legal, vendió la propiedad a un segundo emprendedor.

Cuatro años después de la venta original, el tribunal falló a favor de los residentes. En un pacto sin precedentes, y como parte del acuerdo, el segundo emprendedor compró un nuevo terreno a un kilómetro y medio de la parcela original y reconstruyó completamente allí la comunidad. El emprendedor compró 174 casas móviles nuevas y se las vendió a los residentes a un precio significativamente reducido, con hipotecas más favorables que cualquier otro financiamiento convencional del mercado. Construyó un centro comunitario y un estanque que completó con cisnes. Y como parte del acuerdo dio a los residentes la oportunidad de formar una cooperativa y comprar el terreno, lo cual hicieron en 2009 con un financiamiento de compra de US$5,4 millones de ROC USA Capital. La escritura de compra se firmó en las oficinas de la mencionada compañía de Hartford, la cual siguió prestando sus servicios de forma voluntaria a los residentes hasta que se completó la venta. Hoy, en el suelo que ocupaba la comunidad original de Ryder Woods, hay una tienda de Walmart.

“A veces, cuando recordamos lo que pasó, pensamos que fue una locura. Contratamos un autobús, fuimos a Hartford, hablamos con la legislatura, y luchamos. Nos juntamos y ganamos contra dos emprendedores multimillonarios”, explica Lynn Nugent, de 68 años de edad, vendedora a tiempo parcial en una tienda de Sears, y una de los residentes que ayudó a organizar la campaña junto con su marido, cerrajero jubilado. “Yo siempre digo: Antes pertenecíamos a otra persona; ahora nos pertenecemos a nosotros mismos”.

Mejor acceso a casas prefabricadas económicas y de calidad

A diferencia de los residentes de Ryder Woods, muchos propietarios de casas prefabricadas tienen problemas para conseguir una unidad de calidad con un financiamiento asequible. De nuevo, el principal responsable es la legislación. Según la ley federal, las casas prefabricadas se consideran una propiedad personal, como un automóvil o una embarcación, y no una propiedad inmueble como las casas tradicionales. Por lo tanto, los compradores no pueden acceder a préstamos hipotecarios. En cambio, el financiamiento se realiza por medio de préstamos personales. Estos préstamos son más caros que las hipotecas, con un promedio de tasas de interés 50 a 500 puntos básicos mayor, y con menores protecciones al consumidor. Más del 70 por ciento de los préstamos para la compra de casas prefabricadas es de este tipo, considerado un sustituto de productos subprime.

“Esta situación de pertenecer a un segundo nivel es una de las mayores limitaciones para aumentar el inventario de casas prefabricadas permanentemente asequibles”, dice McCarthy. “Es un obstáculo al financiamiento de las casas, incrementando su costo y reduciendo el potencial de acumulación de patrimonio neto, porque reduce la demanda efectiva de unidades existentes”.

Si bien la solución ideal sería cambiar las leyes federales de la titulación, no es probable que ocurra. En cambio, Next Step, una organización sin fines de lucro de Kentucky, ha establecido el concepto de “Viviendas Prefabricadas Hechas Correctamente” (Manufactured Housing Done Right o MHDR)”. Esta estrategia innovadora pone casas prefabricadas asequibles de alta calidad —junto con el financiamiento correspondiente— a disposición de consumidores de ingresos bajos a moderados, por medio de una combinación de casas térmicamente eficientes, educación a los compradores y financiamiento barato. Funciona de la siguiente manera.

Primero, Next Step brinda a los compradores de bajos ingresos acceso a casas prefabricadas de alta calidad. La organización creó una cartera de modelos sólidos y asequibles. Cada casa de Next Step cumple o excede las normas Energy Star, reduciendo tanto los costos de los servicios públicos para el propietario como la huella medioambiental. De acuerdo a Next Step, las pruebas han demostrado que estas casas son un 30 por ciento más eficientes que una casa básica que cumple con el código de edificación, y 10 a 15 por ciento más eficiente que una casa Energy Star básica. En promedio, esto genera un ahorro de energía de US$1.800 al año por cada casa móvil anterior a 1976 reemplazada, y US$360 al año por cada casa nueva establecida.

Además, las casas de Next Step están “diseñadas para garantizar que sean económicas al tiempo que cumplen con las normas de calidad”. Se instalan sobre cimientos permanentes, proporcionando un mayor soporte estructural contra el viento y reduciendo los problemas de asentamiento. Las casas tienen pisos y aislamiento de alta calidad, lo cual ayuda a aumentar su durabilidad y reducir los gastos de energía. Y como el problema principal de los cimientos es el agua, las casas de Next Step tienen protecciones adicionales contra la humedad.

Mejor acceso a financiamiento sostenible

Next Step también asegura a los compradores de vivienda un financiamiento seguro, sostenible y económico. “Uno de los problemas de esta industria es que los mercados de capital no participan de forma importante”, explica Stacey Epperson, Directora Ejecutiva de Next Step. “No hay un mercado secundario significativo, de manera que hay muy pocos prestamistas en el mercado y muy pocas opciones para los compradores. Nuestra solución es preparar a nuestros prestatarios para que sean propietarios, y después conseguirles buenos préstamos”.

Next Step trabaja con una combinación de prestamistas con y sin fines de lucro, aprobados por la organización, que proporcionan un financiamiento seguro a precios razonables. Como contrapartida, Next Step reduce el riesgo de los prestamistas. Las casas están diseñadas para cumplir con los requisitos de los prestamistas, y los compradores reciben capacitación financiera integral para que puedan tener éxito como compradores. Por lo tanto, los compradores de casas de Next Step no sólo obtienen una mejor hipoteca inicial, sino que tienen la capacidad para acumular patrimonio neto y obtener un buen precio de reventa cuando decidan vender su casa.

Además, cada casa de Next Step se instala sobre un cimiento permanente para que el propietario pueda cumplir con los requisitos de ciertos programas hipotecarios con garantía gubernamental, que son menos onerosos que un préstamo personal. Next Step estima que ha ahorrado a sus 173 propietarios aproximadamente US$16,1 millones en pagos de interés.

“En estos momentos, cerca del 75 por ciento del financiamiento de casas prefabricadas se hace con préstamos personales. Pero el 70 por ciento de casas nuevas prefabricadas se instala en suelos privados donde, en muchos casos, la casa se podría colocar sobre un cimiento permanente, y el dueño podría obtener una hipoteca de largo plazo con una baja tasa de interés”, dice Epperson.

El modelo de MHDR es innovador en parte porque es escalable. Next Step capacita y depende de una red de organizaciones miembros sin fines de lucro para implementar el modelo en sus comunidades respectivas. Next Step vende casas a sus miembros a precios competitivos, y después las organizaciones miembros supervisan el proceso de identificar y educar a los compradores, ayudando a conseguir el préstamo y administrando la instalación.

“En el modelo tradicional de la industria, no había manera de que una organización sin fines de lucro pudiera comprar una casa prefabricada a precios de mayorista. Esto es lo que hemos diseñado, y como resultado podemos ofrecer una vivienda mucho más económica que si la organización sin fines de lucro o el propietario tratara de comprarlas por sí mismos”, explica Kevin Clayton, presidente y Director Ejecutivo de Clayton Homes, uno de los productores más grandes de casas prefabricadas del país, y uno de los proveedores de largo plazo de Next Step.

“El programa Next Step funciona porque prepara a la gente para tener éxito”, dice Clayton. “Next Step les ofrece asesoramiento para ser propietarios y les brinda apoyo si tienen problemas económicos en el futuro. Pueden comprar su casa por mucho menos dinero, acumular patrimonio neto y pagar una cuota mensual baja por su préstamo y sus costos de energía”.

Cyndee Curtis, una propietaria de Next Step, está de acuerdo. Curtis tenía 27 años de edad, era soltera y estaba embarazada cuando compró una casa móvil usada modelo Fleetwood de 1971 por US$5.000 en 2001. La colocó en un lote de su propiedad en las afueras de Great Falls, Montana.

“No tenía dinero, no tenía un título universitario, y no tenía opciones”, dice Curtis. “El viejo tanque séptico de acero tenía agujeros por el óxido, era como una bomba de tiempo. La alfombra estaba completamente gastada, el linóleo debajo de la alfombra tenía agujeros de quemaduras, y el cielorraso tenía fugas donde se había colocado una extensión de la casa. Todos los años compraba libros de construcción, iba a Home Depot y preguntaba cómo arreglar esa fuga. Y todos los años me encontraba en la situación de arreglarla sola. Había moho en el umbral de la puerta debido a esa fuga, y tenía un recién nacido viviendo en la casa”.

En 2005, Curtis volvió a la universidad por dos años, obtuvo su título de enfermera y comenzó a trabajar como enfermera práctica registrada, ganando US$28.500 por año. “Ahora que estaba ganando un sueldo decente, podía explorar mis opciones”, dijo Curtis, madre soltera de dos hijos. “Quería conseguir un lugar donde mis hijos pudieran crecer con orgullo, y aprovechar el lote al máximo”.

Pero su historial de crédito no era bueno, y finalmente recaló en NeighborWorks Montana, un miembro sin fines de lucro de Next Step, que le informó sobre el programa de Next Step. En los dos años y medio siguientes, Curtis trabajó con el personal de NeighborWorks Montana para reparar su historial de crédito. Con su ayuda, consiguió una hipoteca y compró una casa de Next Step por US$102.000, que incluía no sólo la casa sino también la extracción, eliminación y recambio de su viejo sistema séptico. Como la casa de Next Step está instalada sobre un cimiento permanente que reúne ciertas calificaciones, y debido a haberse mejorado el historial de crédito, los ingresos y las condiciones de vivienda de Curtis, pudo conseguir una hipoteca del programa de Desarrollo Rural del Departamento de Agricultura de los EE.UU., mucho menos onerosa que los préstamos personales comunes. Además, mientras que la casa móvil anterior de Curtis tenía un título equivalente a un automóvil, su casa de Next Step tiene una escritura similar a la de una casa construida sobre el terreno. Por lo tanto, un futuro comprador también estará en condiciones de solicitar una hipoteca tradicional.

Curtis dice que su casa de Next Step le ha proporcionado ahorros de energía significativos. “Tengo 40 metros cuadrados más que antes. Antes tenía un baño; ahora tengo dos. Y sin embargo, mis gastos de gas y electricidad se han reducido en dos tercios”.

Dice además: “Mi casa es mil por ciento mejor que donde vivía antes. Si una persona entra a mi casa, no se da cuenta de que es prefabricada. Tiene lindas puertas, con paredes texturizadas. Se parece a cualquier otra casa nueva donde uno quisiera vivir. A veces la gente cree que tiene que sufrir con una vivienda en malas condiciones. Yo sé lo que es vivir así, y les quiero decir que si trabajan con dedicación pueden mejorar su vida y la de su familia”

Loren Berlin es escritora y consultora de comunicaciones del área metropolitana de Chicago.

Referencias

Levere, Andrea. 2013. “Hurricane Sandy and the Merits of Manufactured Housing.” Huffington Post. 8 de enero. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrea-levere/hurricane-sandy-manufactured-housing_b_2426797.html

The largest of the post-World War II suburbs were the size of cities, with populations between 50,000 and 80,000, but they looked like overgrown subdivisions. In Levittown, Lakewood and Park Forest, model houses on curving streets held families similar in age, race and income whose suburban lifestyles were reflected in the nationally popular television sitcoms of the 1950s. The planning of these suburbs was often presented in the popular press as hasty, driven by the need to house war heroes returned from the Battle of the Bulge or Bataan; any problems could be excused by the rush. But, haste was not the case. Political lobbying during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s shaped postwar housing and urban design. The postwar suburbs were constructed at great speed, but that is a different part of their story.

Postwar suburbs represented the deliberate intervention of the federal government into the financing of single-family housing across the nation. For the first time, the federal government provided massive aid directed to developers (whose loans were insured by the Federal Housing Administration, FHA) and white male homeowners (who could get Veterans’ Administration guarantees for mortgages at four percent, with little or nothing down, and then deduct their mortgage interest payments from their taxable income for 30 years). The federal government came to this policy after fierce debates involving architects, planners, politicians, and business and real estate interests.

Herbert Hoover, as secretary of commerce (1921-1928) and then as president (1929-1933), drew the federal government toward housing policy to promote home building as a business strategy for economic recovery from the Depression. Working closely with the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB), Hoover’s Commerce Department had established a Division of Building and Housing in 1921, and went on to establish and support Better Homes in America, Inc. By 1930, this coalition had over 7,000 local chapters composed of bankers, real estate brokers, builders, and manufacturers who lobbied for government support for private development of small homes to boost consumption.

In 1931, Hoover ran a National Conference on Homebuilding and Home Ownership that explored federal investment, discussing not only financing and construction of houses, but also building codes, zoning codes, subdivision layout, and the location of industry and commerce. President Franklin D. Roosevelt followed Hoover and launched numerous New Deal programs in planning and housing. The National Housing Act created the FHA in 1934; the Resettlement Administration, created by Executive Order in 1935, sponsored the Greenbelt Towns; the U.S. Housing Act (Wagner Act) created the U.S. Housing Authority to sponsor public housing in 1937. Which of these programs would be the most influential?

The RPAA and the Labor Housing Conference

Housing activists such as Catherine Bauer and Edith Elmer Wood were members of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA), along with planners Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein, and Benton MacKaye. They advocated federal support for public housing through the Wagner Act. Bauer, an architectural critic and author of Modern Housing, was also executive secretary of the Labor Housing Conference, which campaigned for the design of multi-family housing with child care centers and recreational amenities. Projects such as the Hosiery Workers Housing in Philadelphia and the Harlem River Houses for African Americans in New York, designed by teams of noted architects in the 1930s, demonstrated the excellence possible for multi-family urban projects. Nevertheless, conservative Republicans refused to vote for the Wagner Act in 1935 and 1936, passing it in 1937 with severe cost restrictions, means testing for tenants, and slum clearance provisions to protect private landlords. These provisions meant that design would be minimal and residents would be poor. The Labor Housing Conference members bemoaned the final result as the “Anti-Housing Act.”

The Realtors’ Washington Committee

Many of NAREB’s members, large-scale land subdividers of the 1920s, were originally real estate brokerage firms, not homebuilders. (They left the home building to small contractors or mail order house companies.) By the 1930s, many of these subdividers realized they could enhance profits by erecting houses on some of their lots to enhance the image of community and stability they were selling. They renamed themselves “community builders.” Herbert U. Nelson, NAREB’s chief lobbyist, became executive director of the Realtors’ Washington Committee, which lobbied hard for the FHA, so that federal sources of capital and guarantees of mortgages would provide a safety net for the subdividers’ building operations. Both the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) formed in the early 1940s as spin-offs from NAREB.

Beginning in 1934, the FHA insured bank loans to developers so they could purchase land, subdivide it, and construct houses on it with very little of their own capital involved. These loans of 80 or 90 percent of project cost eliminated risk and were made long before the developers had buyers. In return, the developers had to agree to submit site plans and housing plans for review by the FHA, which issued booklets offering conservative advice about architecture and site design. Meant to correct the worst abuses of corrupt builders, these manuals on small houses and on “planning profitable neighborhoods” rejected regional styles, scorned modern architecture and, according to architect Keller Easterling, instituted mediocre “subdivision products.” Kenneth Jackson has documented that the FHA’s concern for resale value also led it to refuse loans for racially mixed neighborhoods. Only all-white subdivisions, enforced by deed restrictions, would qualify.

The Realtors’ Washington Committee supported the FHA. It also lobbied against federal government funding for any other approaches to housing, including complete towns planned by the Resettlement Administration, wartime housing for workers constructed by the government that might provide competition for private efforts, and public housing in the cities. Allied with NAREB were the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. League of Savings and Loans, the National Retail Lumber Dealers Association, and others.

Housing Hearings of 1947-1948

After the war ended, demand for housing was intense. People were doubled up with relatives, friends and strangers. Veterans lived in converted chicken coops and camped out in cars. The need for shelter was only expected to grow as waves of demobilized veterans, wartime savings at the ready, married and formed new households.

Although they were deeply disappointed by some aspects of the 1937 housing legislation, Catherine Bauer and other advocates of multi-family housing in urban residential neighborhoods did not retreat. They campaigned for expanded public housing through better legislation in the form of the bipartisan Taft Ellender Wagner housing bill first introduced in 1945 and supported by such groups as the AFL, the CIO and the Conference of Mayors.

These advocates found themselves in a shouting match with NAREB lobbyists who were busy discrediting public construction of shelter as “un-American” and promoting government subsidies for private housing development. Historians Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, in their book Picture Windows, document the hearings on housing dominated by Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1947 and 1948. McCarthy hassled proponents of public housing and planned towns. Attacking one federally funded multi-family project for veterans, he claimed the government had paid for “a breeding ground for communists.” NAREB’s Herbert U. Nelson also believed public housing was communistic, whereas public support for private businesses was fine. He argued that “public credit can properly be used to help sustain home ownership and private enterprise,” and he railed against the women housing activists trying to promote affordable housing for workers. McCarthy’s committee also attacked building workers in the AFL’s traditional craft unions as incompetents who produced “slack” work and would impede the postwar housing process.

McCarthy found in developer William Levitt an ally who testified that only federal aid to large private builders, coupled with abolition of zoning codes, building codes and union restrictions, could solve the postwar housing shortage. Levitt and Sons, of Long Island, became the nation’s largest home building firm by 1952, creating its first postwar suburb of over 70,000 inexpensive houses on small lots. Levitt followed FHA restrictions on race, refusing to sell to African Americans, so Levittown became the largest all-white community in the nation. There was never an overall town plan for Levittown, which spanned two existing Long Island towns, Hempstead and Oyster Bay, in Nassau County. Levitt and Sons provided no sewers, relying instead on individual septic tanks, and built residential streets that failed to connect with county and state highways. The project was all about selling houses, not about the basics of sheltering tens of thousands of people according to professional standards of housing or urban design.

By October 1952, Fortune magazine gushed over “The Most House for the Money” and praised “Levitt’s Progress,” publishing his complaints about government interference through too-strict FHA and VA inspections and standards. With a straight face, and despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars of FHA financing, Levitt said, “Utopia in this business would be to get rid of the government, except in its proper function of an insurance agency.”

Meanwhile, Catherine Bauer and her allies faced the same kind of opposition they had confronted on the earlier housing bill. The 1949 Housing Act did not meet their expectations, and its provisions for demolition began the neighborhood destruction pattern that would later become “urban renewal.” With each succeeding year, fewer units of new public housing construction were authorized.

The Two-Tier Legacy

In Modern Housing in America, historian Gail Radford defines the 1930s and 1940s as the time when Americans developed a “two-tier” policy to subsidize housing. Cramped multi-family housing for the poor would be constructed by public authorities, while more generous single-family housing for white, male-headed families would be constructed by private developers with government support. This policy disadvantaged women and people of color, as well as the elderly and people of low incomes. It also had profound implications for urban design. Inadequate financial resources hampered multi-family housing complexes, while material resources were wasted in single-family housing production without proper urban planning. Worst of all, federal policy mystified many working-class and middle-class Americans, who saw minimal visible subsidies helping the poor but never understood that their own housing was being subsidized in a far more generous way through income-tax deductions that grew with the size of their mortgages.

Despite the greater scope for urban public amenities suggested by New Deal legislation enabling federal involvement in town building and public housing, it was the FHA’s mortgage insurance for private subdivisions that proved to have the greatest long-term effect on American urbanization patterns. As real estate historian Marc A. Weiss has stated: “This new federal agency, run to a large extent both by and for bankers, builders, and brokers, exercised great political power in pressuring local planners and government officials to conform to its requirements.” Between 1934 and 1940, Weiss concludes that “FHA had fully established the land planning and development process and pattern that a decade later captured media attention as ‘postwar suburbanization.'” Barry Checkoway notes that accounts of subdivisions “exploding” often attributed their growth to consumer choice, but in fact consumers had little choice. The well-designed urban multi-family projects Bauer and others had envisioned were not available as alternatives to the large subdivisions of inexpensive houses constructed by the big builders who now controlled the housing market.

The distrust and anger generated by the two-tier housing solution endure today. Public policy has separated affluent and poor, white and black, male-headed households and female-headed households, young families and the elderly. Advocates of affordable housing and urban amenities often see white suburbs and their residents as the enemy, while many affluent white suburban homeowners and successful builders don’t want to deal with city problems. The two-tier solution also dampened idealism in the planning and design professions. Architects lost the chance to build large amounts of affordable multi-family housing with sophisticated designs. Regional planners lost the chance to direct the location and site design of massive postwar construction. Sixty years later, metropolitan regions are still shaped by the outcome of these old debates.

Dolores Hayden is professor of architecture, urbanism and American studies at Yale University. With support from the Lincoln Institute, she is working on a new history of American suburbia, Model Houses for the Millions: Making the American Suburban Landscape, 1820-2000.

Her new working paper, Model Houses for the Millions: Making the American Suburban Landscape, 1820-2000, is currently available from the Lincoln Institute.

References

Catherine Bauer. 1934. Modern Housing. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen. 2000. Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Barry Checkoway. 1986. “Large Builders, Federal Housing Programs, and Postwar Suburbanization,” in Rachel G. Bratt, Chester Hartman, and Ann Meyerson, Critical Perspectives on Housing. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. 119-138.

Keller Easterling. 1999. Organization Space. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Dolores Hayden. 1984. Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work, and Family Life. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

Kenneth T. Jackson. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Gail Radford. 1996. Modern Housing in America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Marc A. Weiss. 1987. The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry and Urban Land Use Planning. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

June 22, 1998, saw an event that would have been improbable only a short while ago-developers, public officials and environmentalists gathered in Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood to announce the opening of a new $4.5 million state-of-the-art compressed gas packaging facility on an old brownfield site. The facility, owned by Welco Gases Corp., will provide industrial and specialty gases to the welding, medical and research markets in New York and New Jersey. It demonstrates how redevelopment of brownfield sites has been revolutionized, at least in some places.

With legislation passed last January, New Jersey is one of the latest states to enact environmental laws intended to bring companies and investors into the redevelopment arena by offering them new assurances, incentives and assistance. While the site on Newark’s Avenue P may seem an obvious choice for redevelopment-close to rail, air and sea facilities and in the middle of a burgeoning metropolitan region with almost 20 million inhabitants and a half trillion dollar economy-its history of abandonment demonstrates how complicated redevelopment of contaminated sites has become.

The Welco project was one of four sites highlighted during a conference on Land, Capital and Community: Elements of Brownfield and Vacant Land Redevelopment cosponsored by the Lincoln Institute and the Regional Plan Association (RPA) last May. The conference goal, to identify the critical elements to successful brownfield and vacant land redevelopment, was achieved by visiting projects in various stages of redevelopment in Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey. By examining different strategies for attracting private investment and public involvement, the conference focused attention on the basic components needed for any state or local redevelopment initiative.

In keynote remarks New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman discussed RPA’s Third Regional Plan (1) and how many aspects of its vision are incorporated in the New Jersey State Development and Redevelopment Plan, a central piece of her current legislative agenda. In particular, she mentioned the state’s role in promoting the redevelopment of brownfield and vacant urban sites through planning and expedited permitting.

Governor Whitman cited the City of Long Branch, where a private organization prepared a master plan that was pre-approved by the Department of Environmental Protection (NJ DEP) as meeting the requirements of the Coastal Areas Facility Review Act (CAFRA). This pre-approval (which took three years of negotiation with NJ DEP) ensures that any development project approved by the city automatically receives coastal area regulation approval as well. In an urban community that had seen a decade without a single real estate transaction in its downtown, developer interest in Long Branch has surged due to the promise of streamlined CAFRA applications. While other issues also contributed to the city’s success, such as the active involvement of the private sector and the quality of the master plan devised by Thompson Design Group, this example demonstrates that predictability is a vital component to any urban economic development strategy.

Another perspective was presented by Dr. Tomas Grohé who spoke about the Emscher Park International Building Exhibition, a redevelopment of brownfield and vacant sites in the heavily settled North Rhine/Westfalia region of Germany. The Emscher project is using a regional approach to identify remedies for communities and ecosystems damaged by decades of industrial activity. Through jury selection processes and extensive community involvement, the program is implementing restorative projects including housing, new industrial and commercial business parks, and river and forest restoration. This approach is different in many respects from the United States model of market-driven projects, but it also manages to include public/private partnerships, infrastructure investments, and other familiar components.

Tiers of Redevelopment Potential

For the purposes of the public policy discussions at the conference, brownfield and vacant sites were categorized into three categories:

• tier one: sites that pose some contamination issues, but are economically viable development projects.
• tier two: sites that would be attractive but have higher contamination risks or less marketability, thus requiring some incentives for redevelopment.
• tier three: sites with high environmental risks that do not hold economic potential even if cleaned, due to poor location, lack of access or unclear reuse potential.

Many of the tier one sites in the region are being developed and do not require strategic planning. However, an important policy issue regarding these sites is that since their redevelopment does not require public incentives any available subsidies should be focused on other sites. Furthermore, their remediation and redevelopment should be consistent with the surrounding community’s zoning and planning.

The tier two sites hold the potential to move forward under market conditions, if the right level of incentives-tax abatements, remediation reimbursement, public assistance-can be provided. Making these sites attractive for private investment should be the primary objective of financial incentives, essentially bringing them into the tier one category. Once in that category, remediation and redevelopment plans should again be consistent with the surrounding community’s zoning and planning.

The tier three sites require substantial public investment. To create a regional strategy for brownfield redevelopment, it is not sufficient to focus solely on sites with significant economic return. Tier three sites may, by their location in less-advantaged neighborhoods, their lack of access or other circumstances, justify considerable public or philanthropic involvement. Public policy and the majority of public investment dollars must concentrate on remediation and redevelopment of sites that pose health risks and deter economic development in lower-income communities.

Two panel discussions explored incentives to encourage redevelopment projects. The first focused on incentives that can make tier two sites attractive for private investment, such as tax abatements, infrastructure investments or remediation reimbursement. These techniques are essential to bring private market forces into the brownfield redevelopment arena. Panelists talked about the kinds of regulatory and financial mechanisms required to make marginal sites attractive to private investors who would be willing to remediate and redevelop contaminated or vacant land.

The second panel discussed tier three sites that would require greater public or community involvement. Just because some brownfield or vacant land sites may be risky investments does not mean they should be left out of regional redevelopment strategies. Techniques to focus on these sites include involvement of a community development corporation, a broader regional approach, environmental justice advocacy, and public investment on a federal, state or local level. Panelists shared examples of successful brownfield redevelopment as a community revitalization technique and outlined the actions necessary to spur these transformations.

Incentives and Planning Strategies

Tax Abatements. Tax abatements can be an important technique to help cover the cost of redeveloping a vacant site, but their implementation raises issues of planning and prioritization. New Jersey has a recently amended tax abatement law that creates Environmental Opportunity Zones (EOZs) where developers pay a reduced property tax rate for 10 to 15 years to help them recover the costs of remediation. While no communities are yet implementing the EOZ, participants discussed the particular types of projects that would most benefit from the incentive, and how municipalities should focus the program only to projects that really need such significant advantages.

Tax Increment Financing. Infrastructure may pose significant impediments to redevelopment projects, particularly when an entire neighborhood has been in decline for many years. For example, the Chicago metropolitan area has successfully implemented tax increment financing mechanisms to provide infrastructure for brownfield and vacant land redevelopment sites.

Site Valuation. Many brownfield sites become public property through involuntary tax foreclosure or other processes. To return these sites to productive use, municipalities often try to encourage private investment and economic development. However, real estate appraisers have difficulty quantifying the value of property where the cost of cleanup remains unknown, thus complicating the process of returning land to private hands.

Insurance Policies. Insurance packages can provide broad benefits to encourage the redevelopment of brownfield sites, but they need to become better understood and more widely used. Provided by the private sector, these tools are readily available to sellers, buyers and lenders involved in the redevelopment of brownfields. Participants discussed the new products now available for indemnification and cited examples where these products could reduce the need for public assistance.

Community Participation. In many instances, a community-based organization can play an important role in identifying sites and implementing a community-driven remediation and redevelopment proposal. A case example in Trenton, New Jersey, showed how community advocacy and working with local government helped identify funding and develop innovative techniques to remediate a vacant lot in a residential neighborhood.

Advocacy Planning. Issues of advocacy planning such as environmental justice can change the entire dynamic of a site redevelopment program. In the case of brownfield sites, a community may feel it has been taken advantage of once already, by the polluter, and may approach new proposals with some hesitancy. How can environmental justice advocacy be targeted to promote redevelopment projects that are beneficial to communities? What types of projects can combine the effectiveness of community development corporation models, and yet emulate the scope and ambition of the European example?

Conclusions

Following the panel discussions, participants debated the merits of different approaches to brownfield redevelopment and identified five critical components: sureness of the process; flexibility of public agencies; effective local planning; political leadership and support; and involvement of the entire community.

Some participants felt that many of the case examples did not take advantage of the full range of state or local assistance packages. They suggested that public policy analysis should consider ways to incorporate environmental laws, community development and business interests into an understanding of why brownfield redevelopment leaders do not seem to be more aware of existing programs and incentives.

What is the final or crucial element that pushes a redevelopment project such as the Welco Gases site over apparent obstacles to success? While the participants, representing real estate interests, community organizations and local governments, surely benefited from discussing and learning about the programs and incentives used in various case examples, in the end no one could identify a magic bullet to brownfield redevelopment.

Thomas K. Wright, director of the New Jersey office of the Regional Plan Association, organized the conference described above and heads up RPA’s brownfield redevelopment programs. Ann M. Davlin, RPA program analyst, provided research assistance.

1. In February 1996 Regional Plan Association released A REGION AT RISK, RPA’s Third Regional Plan for the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut Metropolitan Region. The plan, its policy and investment recommendations are based on an in-depth analysis of the rapid changes affecting the region’s economy, environmental systems and social equity: the 3 E’s.

Lincoln Institute Publications on Brownfields and Vacant Land

J. Thomas Black, Model Solutions to Revitalize Urban Industrial Areas, Land Lines, September 1997.

Donald T. Iannone, Redeveloping Urban Brownfields, Land Lines, November 1995.

Barry Wood, Vacant Land in Europe, 1998. Working Paper.

James G. Wright, Risks and Rewards of Brownfield Redevelopment, 1997. Policy Focus Report.

Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 5 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

El Instituto Lincoln está colaborando en Argentina con la ciudad de Córdoba en un proyecto de gran importancia para cambiar las formas de abordar la planificación física de la ciudad, así como los instrumentos que se usan para lograrla. Córdoba representa un caso particularmente interesante por su ubicación estratégica en el centro del área de desarrollo del Mercosur.

La primera fase del proyecto fue un seminario llevado a cabo el pasado abril titulado “Hacia una gestión urbana integrada: Implementación de un plan estratégico para la ciudad de Córdoba”, cuyo objetivo principal fue congregar a los “actores” principales en Córdoba para analizar y debatir las metas de planificación y los instrumentos en el contexto de desarrollos nuevos en la gestión urbana.

El seminario contó con las ponencias de expertos internacionales y discusiones entre funcionarios municipales, promotores inmobiliarios, intereses comerciales y de negocios, organizaciones no gubernamentales y profesionales del urbanismo. El papel del Instituto Lincoln fue de gran importancia ya que facilitó un foro para que los participantes locales se reunieran por primera vez para hablar de dificultades urbanísticas y problemas de desarrollo, y para dar inicio al proceso de establecer políticas de administración y procedimientos nuevos.

De las discusiones surgieron tres temas principales. El primero, tuvo que ver con decidir el orden de prioridad de la tierra a ser urbanizada, con un interés particular en el acceso equitativo a la tierra, infraestructura y vivienda para los sectores populares, así como mecanismos apropiados para llevar a cabo una planificación urbana integrada a nivel regional. El segundo tema, estuvo enfocado en el impacto ambiental y fiscal de los grandes establecimientos comerciales en estructuras urbanas existentes, distritos históricos y barrios residenciales. El tercer tema se concentró en varios actores y sectores involucrados en el desarrollo industrial de Córdoba, prestando atención a la distribución de la industria, las limitaciones de infraestructura y los costos sociales y ambientales.

Además de dar a los participantes cordobeses una perspectiva amplia sobre problemas de gestión urbana en otras ciudades, el seminario generó dos puntos de importancia: 1) que la planificación para el desarrollo no sólo se trata de regulación o de control del uso de la tierra, sino que las políticas tributarias y fiscales afectan con igual importancia los valores de la tierra; y 2) que los funcionarios locales deben aprender a evaluar los costos y beneficios de los proyectos urbanísticos para poder tener relaciones comerciales efectivas con promotores inmobiliarios del sector privado.

El seminario ya ha tenido impactos específicos en actividades comerciales de trabajo conjunto en el centro histórico y en programas de gestión mejorados para proporcionar una infraestructura y servicios nuevos al mismo tiempo que se reducen los déficits. Además, el programa animó a los participantes a reconocer la importancia de la planificación estratégica a largo plazo para trazar las indicaciones generales sobre cambios de política y para comprender los efectos de tipos particulares de desarrollo en el medio físico y social.

El Instituto Lincoln continúa trabajando con funcionarios municipales para ayudar a desarrollar nuevos paradigmas de gestión que puedan sostener alianzas público-privadas, así como mejores técnicas de análisis y planificación. Los programas de seguimiento ayudarán a gestores de políticas y promotores inmobiliarios privados (que operan tanto en mercados formales como informales) a comprender mejor el funcionamiento de los mercados de tierra urbanos y las consecuencias de cambios de políticas para el desarrollo urbano.

El próximo curso sobre “Comportamiento del mercado inmobiliario en Cordoba: Implicaciones para la estructura urbana” explorará investigaciones sobre los mercados formales en Córdoba, haciendo énfasis en los efectos de las políticas económicas y las intervenciones del gobierno. A este curso lo seguirá un seminario regional donde la experiencia se compartirá con los participantes de por lo menos otros tres países. Simultáneamente, el Instituto Lincoln está desarrollando junto con funcionarios de la ciudad de Córdoba un programa de entrenamiento dirigido a un amplio espectro de funcionarios locales, regionales y promotores inmobiliarios, que se concentra en la administración general, la planificación urbana y la preparación e implementación de proyectos.

Douglas Keare es docente visitante del Instituto Lincoln. Tiene una amplia experiencia en planificación estratégica para ciudades grandes en países en desarrollo a través de investigaciones previas y dirección de proyectos en el Banco Mundial y el Instituto para el Desarrollo Internacional de la Universidad de Harvard. Ricardo Vanella es director del Departamento Desarrollo Económico de la ciudad de Córdoba.

If cynics know the price of everything but the value of nothing, then they may have something in common with contemporary American planners. Constrained by the courts, the planning fraternity sometimes appears to have spent the last decade rationalizing nexuses and quantifying costs without really addressing the social and environmental values that should underpin the planning process. Under assault from those criticizing government, as well as from the property rights movement, the profession seems to have retreated into the land of that dismal science, economics. This allegation has been made in a number of ways over the past few years by critics as diverse as New Urbanist architects and, in England, the Royal Family. Is it really justified?

This article is written from an English perspective and is based on research into the types of planning tools used in the United States to minimize the adverse effects and costs of development or to maximize public benefits. The intention is to adapt the best American practices for future use in the United Kingdom.

A broad analysis of the types of policy processes presently being used highlights an amazing breadth and depth of local policy innovation. The accompanying table outlines the range of policies found, broken down either by the way they have been justified or the process that has been used. This “family” grouping may help in suggesting other types of policies that can be used to achieve similar goals. It may also provide a useful reminder that the policies are always supposed to achieve aims, and that those aims should always be in a constant state of review.

The policies span a wide range. Some are not traditionally thought of as land use or planning policies. Indeed, in many cases the policies are not promoted with any explicit intention of achieving specific land use goals. They are, however, all capable of directly affecting land use patterns and, properly used, can all realize benefits to the community.

Purpose Policies

Harm, quality of life and control policies are all well-accepted planning tools. They work to prevent development in inappropriate areas–on wetlands or in congested districts, for example–or to require development in certain places. For the most part these policies do not offer any new lessons to UK planners. However, their scope is widening. New harms are being defined, such as air quality, lack of public transit accessibility and effects on the water table.

In addition, new, more limited types of land interests, such as easements and deed restrictions, are being used as controls, and new actors are becoming involved. For example, in South Florida the Water Management District is now a major purchaser of land and development rights, working in loose alliance with planning authorities. School boards, forest preserve districts and private utility companies have also become more interventionist.

Nevertheless, the main areas of experimentation are in other family groups. Cost policies are being used more proactively and are being expanded in scope. Fees are being used to either encourage or discourage development in particular locations. In San Diego impact fees in outlying zones have been set at economically prohibitive levels to deter development. In Dade County, Florida, road impact fees are banded and fees increase towards the urban fringe. In Montgomery County, Maryland, certain fees are waived when affordable housing is provided.

Cost policies can also be used to raise revenue to meet off-site costs for nontraditional “infrastructure.” In Boston and San Francisco linkages have been identified between the construction of new offices and the need for housing, justifying the extraction of money sums. In principle the range of these fees could be expanded. The City of San Diego already charges developers for new libraries, fire stations and other community facilities, and includes some future maintenance costs. In rapidly growing areas, the public costs of new health infrastructure, hospitals and clinics might also be considered.

Some municipalities have considered the possibility of charging “disassociation fees” that recognize the cost to the community of development away from central cities. “Historic investment” or “recoupment” fees could account for the cost of past provision of infrastructure. In the case of schools or hospitals, a charge could also be made to reflect the cost of wasted desk and bed capacity in the area from which migration has occurred. Alternatively, fees could be charged for the “softer” social costs of increasing the distance that citizens need to travel to reach open space or to reflect the additional stress that occurs from lengthy journeys through strip development.

Process Policies

Market policies have been described as creating “a currency in the public domain that [can] then be traded.” Unsurprisingly, new markets have developed swiftly, responding to local conditions. These policies generally require zoning that sets limits on development at lower levels than the market would otherwise build. A release from that limitation can then be “sold” or transferred for use either on or off site. Seattle, New York state, Maryland and New Jersey lead the way with policies of this type, creating the necessary currency in the form of bonus floor areas and transferable rights. They also provide “market” infrastructure such as credit banks in some cases. In Florida the private sector has set up profitable “mitigation banks” that reclaim damaged land to create mitigation credits for future use by developers whose projects would threaten wetlands. Private sector sales of “utility credits” also occur.

Fiscal policies are all too often seen as intended simply to raise revenue. Yet they can also guide land uses and capture public benefits from increases in the development value of private land. In some Business Improvement Districts, such as those in Miami Beach and Chicago, increased tax assessment streams have been bonded and the proceeds spent on capital works achieving planning aims. In San Diego’s special assessment areas the cost of new social infrastructure, such as parks and libraries, is borne in this way.

In some areas it is possible to secure contributions towards public works that lead to private benefits, for example when major new transport links or services are provided. In downtown Miami, businesses that benefit from a transit system pay a property assessment that meets the county’s share of the original infrastructure cost.

The final two categories of policies are important for different reasons. Adequate transitionary policies are essential. Politically and legally it is difficult to introduce new policies unless careful attention is paid to minimizing or mitigating the immediate costs. Providing for a lengthy period of introduction, or providing compensating credits, as in Montgomery County, may offer some comfort. In some areas “reversionary” permits have been proposed, where development rights revert back to an earlier or less valuable use if they remain unimplemented for a period of time. The miscellaneous policies provide clear means for enforcement. All too often well-intentioned policies are not rigorously applied. Agreements may allow easier control and greater certainty.

Conclusion

It is clear that a large number of policy tools are available to and used by American planners. The opening criticism questioned their fixation with economics. While economic issues are and always should be part of the planning process, the scope of planning policies itself shows that planning is about more than economics. However, it has also become apparent that planners tend to use only a limited range of instruments, even when alternative approaches might better achieve their policy goals.

For a variety of legal and institutional reasons, municipalities understandably concentrate on those policies that they have already used and that have worked. Notwithstanding that, to an English planner the American system as a whole offers a mouthwatering array of policy feasts. It is a shame that so many planners operating within the system only nibble at the corners of a table that is groaning with the weight of possible delights.

Stephen Ashworth is a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute and a Harkness Fellow in a program sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund of New York. In the United Kingdom he is a partner in the firm of Denton Hall, Lawyers. This article is drawn from his research on “Harnessing Land and Development Values for Public Benefit.”

As delegates to the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2003, the authors examined alternatives to the neoliberal approach to urban development, to escape the negative results that are too often ignored by the media and even academia. Broad-scale, national-level alternatives to neoliberalism have been rare, but alternatives at the municipal level are more common. The authors draw from lessons in Brazil and from their home countries of Mexico, South Africa and the United States. Their lectures and seminars at the World Social Forum, and related programs at the University of São Paulo and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, have been supported in part by the Lincoln Institute.

Residents of enormous districts in some of the world’s largest cities suffer with miserable housing, difficult access to work, inadequate water supplies and sewerage, poor public services and exposure to violence. In many cases, conditions grew worse during the “lost decades” of the 1980s and 1990s, due to recession and cutbacks in planning and public investment. Those with faith in trickle-down improvements waited in vain for private markets to increase household incomes. Instead, in many countries the poorest three-quarters of the population suffered absolute losses.

Forced to respond to these kinds of problems, city governments contemplate new approaches to such questions as local versus national authority, productive efficiency versus neighborhood-based redistribution of services, and conflicts between plans and markets. At the municipal level the complications become painfully clear. Popular advocates of redistributive reforms struggle to survive in a hostile environment, often against strong private business interests, a privileged middle class, and conservative provincial and central governments. The problems in cities are immediate and concrete, requiring negotiation, concessions, compliance with an often-biased legal framework, and high degree of professional competence and leadership. Municipal planners and activists cannot overturn the whole system, but for success they must look to exploit cracks and find institutional openings. In spite of the manifest failures of the neoliberal regimes, reformers will find no simple return to an earlier age.

This brief discussion highlights complex issues, perhaps raising questions more than answering them. How does one deal with land issues underlying most urban problems: ownership, regulation, taxation and value? How much scope is available to municipal governments to pursue economic development or to redistribute basic needs, including household income and access to land? How much difference does it make at the municipal level whether or not the national regime is moving in progressive, redistributive directions? Complicating these issues, globalization may be intensifying, challenging cities with low-cost competition, increased transnational corporate reach, and ever-broader powers concentrated in multilateral institutions.

Land Values and Markets

The benefits of urbanization require public and private access to land, yet urban land values reflect differing degrees of access to a city’s benefits. Low bidders are excluded from more desirable land in most land markets, whether formal or irregular. The poor are pushed to the city margins or crammed into the deteriorated inner core. Weakly regulated land markets do not even guarantee economically efficient use of urban land, let alone ensure land use patterns vital to environmental survival. Local governments intervene with land use controls and taxation, or facilitate access to cheap urbanized land, in the best of cases pursuing equity, fiscal efficiency and environmental viability. Performance on all these counts is highly variable.

In Mexico, at least 60 percent of the urban population lives in areas developed by the illegal occupation of land that subsequently receives services and supports self-built (or rather, self-financed) housing. Thanks to historically ingrained traditions about the people’s right to land, informal settlements have been supported by infrastructure and service provision, regularization programs, and even credits for home improvements. Otherwise, the urban housing situation in Mexico would be much worse. During the 1980s, public institutions accrued significant land reserves, which were applied successfully in low-cost sites and services, core housing and mutual aid projects as alternatives to irregular development. But Mexico eliminated land banking, under World Bank influence, hampering the scope of planning to ensure equitable and sustainable urban development.

In recent years, mass-produced formal housing in cities has increased. In line with World Bank advice, the subsidized finance system for the salaried working classes and middle-income sectors has been restructured, enabling commercial developers to operate on a very large scale, acquiring vast tracts of cheap greenfield sites (and some inner-city sites), and then designing, constructing and marketing industrialized housing. The initial advantages are the provision of services and the seemingly spacious suburban atmosphere. The disadvantages are inaccessibility, lack of urban amenities, reduced space standards, and lack of space for future growth. The gigantic scale of this type of development may deplete irregular settlements of middle-income residents, thus increasing social segregation.

In Brazil, municipal governments have begun to experiment with ways to regulate land use, such as property tax increases linked with progressive taxation, including broad-scale exemptions for as many as half the property owners, and popular participation in decision making for regulatory changes (planning and zoning) and for investments in urban infrastructure. Many changes were first implemented by Workers Party (PT) mayors, operating in opposition to the federal and state governments, with the aid of fiscal and regulatory changes introduced in the 1988 Constitution. Now, with the PT government holding national power under President Luis Inacio (Lula) da Silva, left or center-left municipal governments may find themselves able to experiment more. Nevertheless, the obstacles are very great. Even in the relatively rich city of Porto Alegre a third of the population lives in irregular settlements.

The South African experience since democracy was won in 1994 shows that tremendous difficulties confront those who would use public agencies to assist the poor to gain access to land. The government did succeed in subsidizing over a million families previously living in shacks and shared rooms, but almost all new houses were located at the extreme peripheries of the cities. A key progressive gain is that many large metropolitan areas are now consolidated in single municipal governments. But economic growth concerns and fiscal crises have limited the ability of the new jurisdictions to redistribute resources in favor of the poor. Planners intended to raise ample funds through taxation of high-value central land, to pay for subsidies for developments in poorer districts, but values did not follow predictions, and receipts were grossly inadequate. Land markets continue, by and large, to exclude the disadvantaged, and they haven’t yielded sufficient tax revenue. A continuing lack of coordination in the formulation of policy has seen programs in land, housing, services, public works and employment working against each other in some cases.

In the United States, nearly all land and housing development is “regular,” market-driven and dominated by private banking, real estate and development firms, and better-off households. The results are starkly unequal, pitting suburbs against much poorer central cities. Efforts to right the imbalance have generally been frustrated, because land markets do not deliver great efficiencies or fairness. The process is highly regulated, so that inequalities are generated not only by (land) markets themselves, but also by political groups such as “growth coalitions” and by fierce regulatory manipulation on behalf of privileged middle-class and wealthy districts.

The regulation of land markets through planning, land banking and taxation constitutes a broad arena for municipal intervention in land policy. Local governments have extensive potential authority, and they typically have constitutional prerogatives for planning and taxation (although in practice they are still constrained by powerful national forces). They may act to support economic growth or to redistribute it, even in a conservative provincial or national climate. Local planning does constrain land markets, but often without redistributive effects, since city governments must contend with strong financial interests, patterns of privilege, and entrenched power. Professional competency and consistency are required to exploit the full potential of property registration and taxation systems, and financial decentralization limits the possibility of cross subsidies and redistributive measures.

Progressive Local Government

In spite of claims about the conservative nature of powerful constraints on the redistributive capacity of local governments, evidence from the four countries cited here suggests that municipalities may indeed find ways to redistribute public goods and services on behalf of their less well-off residents. Municipalities also may serve as laboratories for social experimentation and as sources of progressive ideological change.

In Mexico, the role of municipal and state governments in achieving more equitable cities is undisputed and constitutionally sanctioned, yet fraught with obstacles. In the 1990s, the first electoral defeats of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (the PRI, which dominated the political arena from the 1920s) were at municipal and then state levels. Throughout the country there are genuine examples of successful innovative and socially redistributive programs run by municipal governments, such as participatory budgeting and planning, and community recycling. Mexico City’s Federal District is now governed by the left-of-center Democratic Revolution Party, which also controls most of the poorer and more populous jurisdictions of the metropolitan area. In 2001, this government introduced a social investment program targeting the poorer districts, providing monthly cash payments of US $70 in 2002 to people over seventy years, interest-free loans for home improvements in irregular settlements, and traditional public services and social assistance. Criticized from the left and right as populist and electioneering, this program is now emulated on a smaller scale by the center-right federal government and in local electoral platforms by the PRI. Despite initial positive evaluations, however, questions remain about costs for universal coverage and viability in poorer municipalities, and about reinforcing clientilism.

Brazilian experience with redistribution by municipal government has been documented in many notable cases, from giant cities such as São Paulo, to large cities such as Porto Alegre, Santo Andre and Belem, to the hundreds of smaller municipalities that have elected left-of-center administrations over the past 15 years. The case most often discussed is participatory budgeting, the innovation that has involved more than 10 percent of Porto Alegre’s residents in decisions to allocate more than one billion dollars of public expenditures on infrastructure and services. Other innovations include improvements in transit services and expansion of bus lanes to challenge the hegemony of the automobile, which serves a privileged minority. Some progress has been made in housing, but local government capacity is limited.

South African municipal government has emerged only in the last two years from its long history of apartheid division and the turmoil of reform since 1994. But, new trends demonstrate innovation at the municipal scale. Although many aspects of municipal government have been “corporatized” in Johannesburg, the city is beginning to make substantial progress on the regeneration of decayed inner city areas, using a wholly owned company (the Johannesburg Development Agency) as the instrument of change. Agencies of this kind seem to be able to solve some of the problems of intricate relationships between different spheres of government—local, provincial (or state) and national—and to attract greater private interest in supporting municipal initiative.

New approaches to planning in South Africa are also starting to show signs of success. These participatory approaches bring public utility agencies and big-budget government departments, as well as citizens, into framing municipal action over the short- to medium-term. Such developments indicate that working on the linkages between different agencies is crucial for increasing effectiveness and reducing frustration during the early democratic period. Some municipalities are beginning to find ways of sharing experiences and shaping new forms of cooperation. An example is the new national Cities Network, which brings together nine of the largest municipalities in the country as a means of stimulating innovation and expanding impact.

Social and political innovation has also been documented at the municipal level in cities of various sizes throughout the U.S., often in situations that require resisting politically conservative national trends. Very large cities such as Cleveland and Chicago developed city plans aimed explicitly at redistribution to provide assistance to needy households and deprived neighborhoods. Chicago also developed solid programs to support smaller and more local business enterprises, versus the usual beneficiaries among large firms and downtown interests. Smaller cities such as Burlington, Vermont, and Santa Monica, California, developed aggressive programs in housing and rent control aimed at helping needy constituents. As in the heralded examples of participatory budgeting in Brazil, these progressive municipal programs typically have strict limitations, because they can do little to improve the labor market and thus can offer only small improvements to household cash incomes.

Municipal efforts on land use and housing in the U.S. are often constrained by local control or “home rule,” which isolates the more numerous, wealthier suburbs that literally surround poorer central cities. The wealth and significant taxing power of these separate jurisdictions combines with a U.S. peculiarity—local financing of public schools—to burden city residents with powerful disadvantages. Since about 90 percent of U.S. children attend public schools, local control of schools is a hot-button issue in U.S. politics. Scholars construe de jure public suburban control as de facto privatization: by purchasing homes in suburbs, households are purchasing control of local schools, thereby excluding others, such as new immigrants and ethnic groups, especially African Americans.

One hears echoes of such U.S. suburban privatization and division in the rigidly separated districts and gated communities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and other Brazilian cities; in the huge separations of privileged central districts and the unserviced periphery in Mexico City; and in the surviving apartheid spatial structure of Johannesburg. We find that municipal governments do act against these inequities, at least in part because of an ideological commitment and because the resulting problems threaten their capacity to govern. Some localities may turn their limited victories into building blocks for larger progressive structures at the national scale, as evidenced in Brazil.

National-level Urban Reform

Urban affairs is a hot issue in Brazil, and various laws, administrative practices, budgets and regulations have been brewing since the new Constitution of 1988 promised an improved status for cities. After more than a decade of extensive public debate, new legislation was enacted in the 2001 City Statute, a federal law on urban policy. The new left-of-center government led by President da Silva is betting on a new national ministry to integrate different activities and to find more effective approaches to persistent urban problems. This Ministry of Cities (Ministerio das Cidades) was established in early 2003 to improve housing, transit and neighborhood services for poor majorities, preserve and renovate historic centers, promote economic development, and drastically increase participation. National leaders aim to emphasize the concerns of mayors, city councils and the neediest citizens in the federal agenda. Other countries are generally a long way from such an urban policy, and the Brazilian experiment will be closely watched.

Mexico is a clear example of how constitutional rights to such things as decent housing, health and education may be considered important, but are not valued enough to guarantee their fulfillment; nor are all those good intentions laid out in the highly complex planning legislation. Even municipal-friendly constitutional amendments of the 1980s have not fully undermined the high degree of centralization of all public policy, including social spending and virtually all environmental regulation. As a result, the urban and social agendas of different levels of government are often competing rather than complementary, and are always insufficient to meet demand.

South Africa has tried to develop a new national policy in the urban field, starting with a national Urban Development Strategy after the 1994 democratic elections. But relatively little has been accomplished since the strategy has tended to remain a paper commitment to good outcomes rather than a concrete program or a real obligation on different departments and levels of government to work together toward common goals. Part of the problem has been competition between different agencies over who should set the agenda. Diverse centers of power, from the president’s office to the finance ministry, the local government department of the national government, some of the provincial governments, and the national municipal association, are vying for position in shaping urban policy.

The lack of coherent urban policy in South Africa also must be placed in the context of the central agenda of government, which stresses not only economic growth but also the continuing empowerment of the previously disadvantaged black majority. There is by no means consensus over the roles of the cities in accomplishing either of these objectives. A single ministry addressing urban issues would seem like a dream to many observers, but other ways of achieving similar objectives by reorganizing relationships between parts of government suggest that progress can be made.

In the United States, the federal agenda for urban policy has been weak since the late 1970s, and general fiscal constraints have combined with suburban voters’ indifference to cities. These problems have been greatly exacerbated by the consequences of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, by demands of the U.S. war economy, and by the conservative nature of redistribution pursued by the Bush Administration.

This range of international experience suggests that profound national changes and legislation can have immense local effects. A national government can provide fiscal, regulatory and administrative support for a whole series of municipal improvements, many of which would be eagerly implemented by local governments. National governments (and even international agreements, as in the earlier European common market) can inhibit or even prohibit such things as municipal tax-cutting competition in pursuit of relocated private investment, thus eliminating a lose-lose situation for public budgets. But, even in the best of cases, such opportunities are limited, politically difficult and technically complicated.

Conclusions

In the context of the globalizing economy, city politicians and officials face remarkably similar uncertainties in Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and the United States. As economies have become more open, some industrial sectors have been hammered, while others have been able to take up new opportunities (such as motor vehicle exporting in South Africa) and new niches have emerged. The current geopolitical context poses challenges for city administrations; how they think about their role in this period of imported instability is significant. There is a tension between those who think that the role of city government is to frame competition with other cities, and those who see more cooperative roles.

Cities themselves need to develop capacity to formulate and implement plans. They cannot simply rely on the panoply of outside professionals and agencies that have increasingly defined urban agendas. Some of the needed sharing can fruitfully take place in an academic environment, especially where long-term research helps to inform choices. It is particularly important to widen opportunities for sharing between the city officials and scholars of the global South and the North, to the mutual benefit of both.

Priscilla Connolly teaches urban sociology and planning at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Azcapotzalco, Mexico. William W. Goldsmith directs the Program on Urban and Regional Studies at Cornell University. Alan Mabin is associate professor in the Graduate School of Development Management at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In June 2003 the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Sonoran Institute established a Joint Venture project to assist diverse audiences in improving state trust land administration in the American West. The goal of this partnership project is to ensure that conservation, collaborative land use planning, and efficient and effective asset management on behalf of state trust land beneficiaries are integral elements of how these lands are managed. The two institutes seek to utilize their core competencies to broaden the range of information and policy options available to improve state trust land management. This article introduces the Joint Venture and describes some of the work now under way in Arizona and Montana.

State trust lands are a phenomenon that dates back to the Northwest Ordinance of 1785. With this ordinance, the U.S. Congress established a policy of granting land to states when they entered the Union as an asset to generate funding to support the public education system, a fundamental state responsibility. Starting with Ohio in 1785 and ending with Arizona and New Mexico in 1910, each new state received a set of federal lands that, under federal enabling legislation and the corresponding state constitution, were to be held in trust for the benefit of the public schools. The trust mandates established by the U.S. Congress and the states are clear: to generate revenue to support the public schools and other institutions. In some cases there are other minor institutional beneficiaries as well, but the public schools (K–12) are by far the largest beneficiary throughout the state trust land system. That singularity of purpose continues today and distinguishes state trust lands and the state programs that administer them from other types of public lands.

While Congress intended state trust lands to be perpetual, the lawmakers expected that over time some lands would be sold to produce revenue. Initially Congress provided little guidance to states on how they should manage their state trust lands. Many states that entered the Union soon after 1785 quickly sold all or most of those lands for profit, and today little remains of that heritage. Because of these actions, Congress placed increasingly stringent requirements on new states in order to limit the use of state trust lands. Since most western states entered the Union in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they retain most of the original state trust lands designated at the time of statehood.

Today these lands continue to be managed to generate income for the authorized beneficiaries. This revenue is either made available in the year in which it was generated (typically from leasing activities) or, in the case of outright sale of land or nonrenewable resources, deposited into a permanent fund that generates annual income for the beneficiaries. In Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Wyoming these permanent funds or endowments are in excess of one billion dollars each.

What Is a Trust?

A trust is a legal relationship in which one party holds property for the benefit of another.

There are three participants in this relationship: a grantor or “settlor,” who establishes the trust and provides the property to be held in trust; a trustee, who is charged by the settlor with the responsibility of managing the trust in keeping with the settlor’s instructions; and a beneficiary, who receives the benefits of the trust.

The trustee has a fiduciary responsibility to manage the property held in trust (the trust corpus) in keeping with the instructions of the settlor and for the benefit of the beneficiary. This fiduciary responsibility can be enforced by the beneficiary if the trustee fails to meet the obligations outlined in the trust documents.

Fifteen western states continue to own and manage appreciable amounts of state trust land (see Table 1). The nine states with the largest and most significant holdings are the initial focus of the Lincoln Institute and Sonoran Institute Joint Venture: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming (see Figure 1). Collectively these states manage more than 40 million acres of state trust lands. The landholdings are as diverse as the states that manage them and include coastal forests in Washington, mountaintops in Montana and low deserts in Arizona.

Traditionally these lands have been managed almost exclusively for natural resource production, with the leasing and sale of natural products being the principal sources of revenue. The reliance of state trust land management on natural resource extraction is understandable in the context of the natural resource–based economies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But today, as the West continues to urbanize and the region’s economies shift to the information age, trust land managers are recognizing a need to broaden the land use activities of their trust land portfolios. Invariably that means rearranging the portfolio from one that is overly reliant on natural resource extraction to one that recognizes the real estate value associated with commercial, industrial and residential development, as well as recreation and conservation.

Like many land use decisions, particularly in areas experiencing explosive growth, state trust land administration is increasingly controversial. As on federal public lands, traditional uses (i.e., cropland, grazing and timber production, and oil, gas, coal and mineral extraction) are at odds with public interests in recreation and natural open space. Efforts to sell and lease lands for commercial and residential development can create tensions between a state agency acting as a trustee and a local community vested with managing growth. Balancing the protection of the public values inherent in many of these lands with traditional and new uses, all within the context of the state trust’s fiduciary responsibilities, is a challenge for trust land managers.

At the same time, population pressures in the West have increased demands on public education funding. State trust lands are one obvious source of revenue to meet these funding demands, which in turn may generate even more pressure on trust land managers who as trustees of a permanent trust need to achieve both short- and long-term financial returns from the trust’s assets. An additional complexity is that the application of trust principles varies among the states, based in part on differing state trust land enabling legislation created in each state at the time of statehood.

Recognizing the value of bringing diverse interests together and providing solid information to stakeholders and key decision makers in land use planning and development environments, the Lincoln Institute and Sonoran Institute Joint Venture project seeks to

• facilitate efforts to modernize state trust land laws and regulations in key western states
• foster education and research efforts that focus on key issues related to state trust land administration
• increase public awareness of the resource and economic values of state trust lands along with the impacts of state trust land management decisions on local communities, including implications for public finance
• develop and implement on-the-ground model projects designed to explore innovative approaches to collaborative land use planning and conservation management of state trust lands
• provide relevant technical information and tools to decision makers and agency staff involved in state trust land management.

Trust Land Reform in Arizona

Arizona is in the midst of a three-year discussion among diverse stakeholders to reform its laws governing state trust lands. Arizona is noteworthy because the burgeoning growth of Phoenix and Tucson is reaching significant tracts of state trust lands. These lands are some of the most valuable real estate holdings in the Intermountain West and comprise 12 percent of the land in the state. Unlike many other western states, Arizona has long recognized the real estate value of its holdings and has an active real estate disposition program that has sold thousands of acres into the urban marketplace. The revenue from these sales has been deposited into the permanent fund of the state trust entity, and the income from the fund is directed to the trust’s beneficiaries. The permanent fund is now valued at more than one billion dollars and is predicted to double in value over the next 10 years.

In the mid-1990s state trust land sales in metropolitan Phoenix came to a screeching halt when the development interests of the Arizona State Land Department encountered conflict with the goals of local communities interested in preserving some of this land as natural open space. Attempts to accommodate local concerns through state legislation have met with mixed results due to the strictures of the Arizona enabling act and state constitution. Several key court decisions interpreting these laws have constrained the Arizona State Land Department from conserving open space or enabling the department to achieve the highest and best use on these lands when sold or leased for residential and commercial purposes. An attempt in 2000 to secure voter approval to revise aspects of Arizona’s constititution and modernize state trust land management failed at the ballot box in the face of unanimous opposition from the conservation community.

This situation has set the stage for a diverse group of interests to convene in the hopes of developing a comprehensive reform proposal that the Arizona legislature and governor’s office will consider. Even with their support, the final package will need voter approval to amend the state constitution, followed by changes in the federal enabling act that will require the approval of the U.S. Congress.

The Joint Venture directed its initial efforts toward working with the conservation organizations participating in the stakeholder group. We provided analyses of the current laws and proposed changes, with assistance from the law firm of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, to help the conservation community promote a constructive agenda that has been incorporated into the package. In addition, our information related to land use planning was useful to other stakeholders in developing elements of the package that will ensure more collaborative planning between the Arizona State Land Department and local governments charged with land planning responsibility, while also increasing the range of tools available to local communities to protect natural open space on state trust lands.

We are also working with officials from the City of Tucson (the second largest city in Arizona) and the Arizona State Land Department to assist their efforts to develop 10,000 acres in the city’s growth corridor. This Houghton Area Master Plan includes more than 7,500 acres of state trust lands. Our work is directed toward the planning effort by providing examples of smart growth development at the urban edge. A key element is to document evidence that greenfield projects are not necessarily synonymous with sprawl and that a number of examples of recent master-planned communities at the urban edge are incorporating smart growth elements, such as interconnected open space for active and passive recreational use, pedestrian orientation, mixed-use development accessible to public transit, and a diverse mix of housing types, sizes and prices. As important, these progressive master-planned communities are achieving success in the marketplace, which is a preeminent concern of the Arizona State Land Department.

While the City of Tucson, in partnership with the Sonoran Institute, is working to promote infill and brownfield development, even under the most optimistic of scenarios more than 50 percent of the city’s explosive growth will be greenfield development. If successful, this master-planning effort will guide development on 50 square miles of state trust lands within the city and can serve as a local land use planning model for other state trust lands.

Trust Lands in Montana

The Joint Venture has also initiated an assessment of policy issues affecting state trust lands in Montana. Working with a local advisory group chartered by the Department of Natural Resources (the manager of Montana’s state trust lands), we have provided information that will help guide land use planning on 12,000 acres of state trust lands in Flathead County at the gateway to Glacier National Park. This effort will serve as a template for future department plans for land uses other than grazing and forest management. For example, the department has shown an interest in generating revenue from leasing land for conservation, recreational, residential, commercial and industrial uses. Increasing interest in these “special uses” is creating a paradigm shift in how the Department of Natural Resources interacts with local governments and how local governments interact with state trust lands.

As growth expands throughout much of western and central Montana, the department seeks to capture additional revenue opportunities through the development of special uses. While local communities are recognizing that state trust lands can be a source of economic growth and can contribute positively to meeting growth demands, they are also requiring those land uses to be responsive to local community values and concerns. Sound, objective land planning and valuation information are essential to the development of policies that will guide Montana state trust land management in the future.

Final Comments

In the brief time since the Joint Venture was established there has been no shortage of issues that could benefit from better information and collaboration among diverse parties. This fall the Lincoln Institute and the Sonoran Institute will convene a small group of experts from academia and the public and private sectors to identify the issues of greatest concern that will guide further research efforts. Our work in Arizona and Montana will continue as we seek to develop a broad-based approach to increasing awareness about state trust lands. The successful resolution of the issues affecting state trust land management will benefit not only local school children, but also many conservationists, developers, ranchers and businesses throughout the West.

Reference

Souder, Jon, and Sally K. Fairfax. 1996. State trust lands: History, management and sustainable use. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

Andy Laurenzi is the program director for state trust lands at the Sonoran Institute, a nonprofit organization established in 1990 to bring diverse people together to accomplish shared conservation goals. The Sonoran Institute is based in Tucson, Arizona, with offices in Phoenix and Bozeman, Montana (www.sonoran.org).

We are deeply saddened to report that in early May the Lincoln Institute lost one of our key partners in the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean. Mario Lungo was knowledgeable, talented and prolific as a teacher, researcher and author. Moreover, he truly understood the mission of the Latin America Program and how he could best contribute to it.

An architect, urban planner and social scientist from El Salvador, Mario was head of the Department of Spatial Organization at the “Jose Simeón Cañas” Central American University in San Salvador. He lectured on architecture, urban studies and planning and conducted research on large-scale urban development projects, immigration, risk management, urban planning and governance. He was previously director of the Planning Office of the Metropolitan Area of San Salvador in El Salvador between 1998 and 2003, and conducted research programs in Central America for more than 15 years. He published extensively in books and journals in different languages and taught in several countries of Europe, North America and Latin America.

Mario was the leader of the Institute’s work in Central America and specifically on large-scale urban development projects. Martim first met Mario Lungo in 1988 in Quito at an international seminar on environmental and urban development issues. When we began organizing a Latin American network of scholars and experts to develop research and educational programs on land policy, Mario stood out as a key figure, not only in El Salvador, but in all of Central America. He was definitively one of the best known scholars in the region, as well as a respected and admired colleague.

Martim O. Smolka and Laura Mullahy, Program on Latin America and the Caribbean, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

In Central America the magnitude and impact of Mario Lungo’s work has been significant since he introduced the field of urban land studies to the region in the 1990s. He had a great capability to organize local networks, to encourage young students to develop in the field, to understand Central America’s urban problems, and to visualize ways to address them. Mario left behind an important heritage and with his death he encourages us to continue the work he started. We learned from him not only academic issues, but also his way of facing life.

Silvia García Vettorazzi
Program in Planning and Urban Development, Rafael Landívar University, Guatemala City, Guatemala

I had the opportunity to be with Mario in many different cities at different times. He is now in a city that I do not know, but I’m sure he’s making marvelous observations about it.

Alfredo Garay, Under-Secretary of planning, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina

In its short history, European spatial planning has been through several iterations, and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has supported many related activities that document that process, as well as the participating individuals and entities. Following a course held in Cambridge in 2001, the Institute published the book European Spatial Planning (Faludi 2002) on the movement’s early years when the European Union (EU) had no particular planning mandate. Rather, the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) was an initiative of the member states, supported by the European Commission.