In August 1985, residents of Jaguaribara, a small community in the Brazilian state of Ceará, received word that the government intended to drown their town.

Planned construction of the massive Castanhão dam and reservoir nearby would flood the town, and the entire community would have to be relocated and rebuilt 50 kilometers (31 miles) away. After years of delay and ongoing resistance, the official work order was signed in 1995; by 2001, residents had to say wrenching goodbyes to the place they had lived, loved, and grown up in, and move to a brand-new, planned community built on land donated by nearby municipalities.

In a multipart series for Jornal Diário do Nordeste called “Castanhão: 30 Years,” journalist Thatiany do Nascimento Pereira traced the many stories of heartache, community activism, and collective rebuilding that emerged from such a complex, large-scale land use decision. Homes, memories, and public landmarks were left behind in the move—yet so was much of the town’s historic economic segregation, given the blank slate of a new planned community.

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy honored do Nascimento Pereira in November with the top prize in its 2025 Lincoln Award (Premio Lincoln) for Journalism on Urban Policy, Sustainable Development, and Climate Change, at COLPIN 2025—the Latin American Conference for Investigative Journalism. The 16th annual COLPIN, held in Buenos Aires, marked the fourth year the Lincoln Award has been offered as part of the conference.

Second prize went to a pair of Nicaraguan researchers for “The ‘Ghost Houses’ of the Ortega-Murillo’s Flagship Housing Program,” which documented unmet promises and missing millions from the government’s housing plan. The Nicaraguan journalists are now living in exile in Costa Rica due to their work highlighting the political regime’s corrupt practices.

Third prize was awarded to Mary Triny Zea Cornejo for her story “Relocation of a Population Displaced by Rising Sea Levels Threatens an Important Protected Area,” which explored Panama’s mass relocation of 300 families from Cartí Sugdup Island. The three top winners participated in a panel discussion at COLPIN; five more projects received honorable mentions.

Among the 266 entries—which came from 19 countries, across a wide variety of media, including video and interactive data visualizations—climate change and water management were consistent themes, says Laura Mullahy, senior program manager at the Lincoln Institute.

Climate change, in particular, has emerged as “a transversal theme, associated with mining, extreme weather events such as hurricanes, heat waves, and floods, and water crises that affect cities and regions,” Mullahy says. “Many of the articles link land conservation and water management with infrastructure megaprojects, tourism, and other means of transformation of protected areas.”

She’s also noticed an increase in articles that view urban planning efforts through the lens of segregation, housing, or informal settlements—where the focus is not on the practice itself, but on effects “such as eviction, rising land and housing costs, and inequality in access to services.”

Architect Miguel Jurado has served on the Lincoln Award selection committee since the outset, reviewing hundreds of contest entries each year, and says the depth of the submitted works has matured in that time. “From the initial emphasis on conservation and climate change, the focus has shifted to narratives that connect climate, territory, inequality, and economic structures,” he says.

With its focus on land use and how cities function, the Lincoln Award “has opened new thematic avenues for investigative journalism in the region,” says Adriana León, of the Lima, Peru–based IPYS (Instituto Prensa y Sociedad), which organizes COLPIN. “For IPYS and COLPIN, the Lincoln Award is an essential contribution to the goal of promoting quality journalism.”

Below, find the winners of the 2025 Lincoln Award for Journalism on Urban Policy, Sustainable Development, and Climate Change, along with links to their work. (See the 2024 winners here.)

2025 Premio Lincoln Winners

First Prize: Thatiany do Nascimento Pereira, Brazil, for the series “Castanhão: 30 Years Since the Construction Began,” published in Jornal Diário do Nordeste.

The multipart narrative reflects on how the construction of Brazil’s largest dam, begun three decades ago, forever transformed the city of Jaguaribara in the northeastern state of Ceará, completely flooding the original location. Combining memories, old photographs, and the testimonials of those who lived through this displacement, the series explores the social, political, and cultural tensions arising from the project, revealing the pain of loss but also the ways in which the community has resisted and rebuilt its identity despite displacement.

Second Prize: Equipo Divergentes and Connectas, Nicaragua, for “The ‘Ghost Houses’ of the Ortega-Murillo’s Flagship Housing Program.”

The Nicaraguan government promised to build 50,000 homes by 2026, but now reports only 6,000 delivered nationwide. Using satellite imagery, Nicaraguan researchers demonstrated that Managua’s housing plan was only 27 percent completed, despite official claims that the total investment had been fully disbursed. That leaves a deficit of $30 million and more than 4,000 homes unbuilt in the two planned developments. The investigation also revealed that financing from the Production Development Bank (BFP) and private banks carries interest rates close to 10 percent annually, meaning that over 25 years, a family will end up paying more than double the value of the house. All of this, occurring amid three- to four-year delays in delivery, has benefited companies affiliated with the political regime.

Third Prize: Mary Triny Zea Cornejo, Panama, for “Relocation of a Population Displaced by Rising Sea Levels Threatens an Important Protected Area,” published by Mongabay Latam.

Panama carried out the first mass relocation due to rising sea levels in Latin America, moving 300 families from Cartí Sugdup Island, the most populated island in the indigenous Guna Yala archipelago, to the mainland. However, the new settlement affects 11 hectares (27 acres) of forest within the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, one of the country’s most important protected areas. This article revealed that the Environmental Impact Study omitted the long-term effects on biodiversity and the threat to the Guna people’s cultural identity. Although the government presents the relocation as a “flagship project for climate change adaptation,” experts warn that its implementation was flawed and could exacerbate environmental degradation.

Honorable Mention 1: Jorge Dett, Peru, for “Social Housing: Undercover Business?” for Latina Televisión.

Districts in the Peruvian capital of Lima such as San Isidro, Surco, and Miraflores, known for their high real estate prices, now feature buildings with units as small as 40 square meters, a result of the implementation of a new Social Interest Housing Law. This legislation allows construction in previously restricted areas, which has led to a disproportionate and unregulated increase in building construction and densification due to unclear and sometimes contradictory regulations.

Honorable Mention 2: María Luzdary Ayala, María Gabriela Ensinck, María Belén Galeano, Eirinet Gómez, Sergio Rincón, Judith Scheyer, Flávia Schiochet, Kennia Velázquez, Ahiana Figueroa, Maximiliano Manzoni, Juan David Olmos y Suhelis Tejero, CONNECTAS, PopLab (México), EcoGuia (Colombia), O Joio e o Trigo (Brasil), Argentina + Sustentable (Argentina), Consenso (Paraguay) and TalCual (Venezuela), for “Water for Ultra-Processed Foods: A Bad Deal for Latin America.”

This collaborative report reveals excesses, abuses, and inequities in the volume of water granted via concession to ultra-processed food industries in Latin America’s four largest economies. The investigation found that weak regulations, inadequate controls, and corporate lobbying combine to facilitate the excessive consumption of water, often at very low prices, in areas already experiencing severe water scarcity. This situation exacerbates the problem of water inequality for vulnerable communities.

Honorable Mention 3: Judith Herrera Cabello, Chile, for “Climate Change: How Could the Inter-American Court of Human Rights Influence the Policies Adopted by National Governments?” published by Revista Hiperlatidos, Chile.

This report examines the advisory opinion requested by Chile and Colombia from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) regarding the responsibilities of national governments in addressing climate change and its impact on their territories and citizens. The article focuses on two main topics: the process before the IACHR and its potential effects on the public policies of the countries involved; and the impacts of climate change in Chile, such as drought, wildfires, and rising temperatures.

Honorable Mention 4: Kenneth Andrei Pérez and Arturo Contreras Camero, Mexico, for “Where Are We Going to Live?” for Capital 21.

Through personal experiences and expert analysis, this six-episode video series explores the phenomena that have driven up housing prices in Mexico City in recent years. The series seeks to explain, from both an international and national perspective, how the housing crisis is being experienced in this city, as well as possible solutions or alternatives that exist to address it.

Honorable Mention 5: Neil Marks, Guyana, for “Billions in Carbon Revenues Helping Amerindian Communities with Economic, Social, Cultural Advancement,” published by Newsroom Guyana.

Guyana earns revenue for preserving its rainforest, which blankets over 85 percent of the country, and in a single year was able to distribute more than $3.8 billion in carbon credit funds to 232 Indigenous communities as part of its Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS 2030).  This report details how the Indigenous village of River’s View rebuilt its dock and cultural spaces through the program. While some organizations have expressed concerns about transparency and genuine participation in the management of these resources, under the principle of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC), the communities decide themselves how to invest the funds in infrastructure, education, or other areas of economic or cultural advancement.

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: The reservoir created by Brazil’s Castanhão dam, whose construction 30 years ago forced an entire community to relocate. A recent series exploring that displacement won first prize in the annual Lincoln Award for land policy journalism in Latin America. Credit: Viktor Braga via Flickr CC.

As state and local governments struggle to make progress on challenges including affordable housing and climate change amid dramatic policy shifts at the federal level, reporters and editors learned more about those efforts—and the solutions to be found in land policy—at the 2025 Lincoln Institute Journalists Forum.

The two-day workshop, the latest installment in a series held for more than twenty years, was put on in December in partnership with the Bloomberg Center for Cities and Arnold Ventures. More than 30 working press attended, representing outlets including Bloomberg, Politico, Slate, Fast Company, Pro Publica, and Governing magazine, as well as the Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Texas Tribune, Baltimore Banner, and Substack. The Journalists Forum is designed to allow reporters and editors to take two days away from their pressing deadlines to gain perspective on the issues they are covering; the last two workshops had a focus on housing, in 2023, and climate, in 2022.

In welcoming remarks, Lincoln Institute President and CEO George W. “Mac” McCarthy  said that the organization has been committed to supporting local government through technical assistance and other means since David C. Lincoln, son of founder John C. Lincoln, established it in Cambridge in 1974. “From our first days, our interest has been in … making it possible for local governments to do their job, because for us, we think that the quality of life is delivered by your local government.”

Anaclaudia Rossbach, executive director of UN-Habitat, delivered the opening keynote online from Dakar, Senegal, highlighting the importance of local initiatives around the world to build safe and affordable housing and environmentally resilient metropolitan regions. “Localization has been a key principle for us,” she said, noting how cities and nations worldwide are putting together action plans on what she views as an intertwined crisis of housing and climate change.

In the US, however, as the first panel revealed, state and local governments trying to pursue their own policies have encountered vigorous opposition by the federal government, in the form of halting offshore windfarms, freezing or clawing back funding for clean energy and mitigation initiatives, and initiating lawsuits against setting vehicle emissions standards or holding polluters liable for compensation. That has state and local governments playing a lot of defense and in some cases punching back, said Nestor Davidson, a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

But states are also engaging in pre-emption of their own, inherent in the zoning reform mandates that override local control of land use. Those kinds of initiatives aren’t ideological as much as a practical attempt to streamline bureaucracy and prompt more housing to be built amid the constraints of a not-in-my-backyard stance in established neighborhoods, Davidson said. “A lot of what states are trying to do is overcome fragmentation and overcome local parochialism,” he said. Tracy Loh, fellow at the Brookings Institution,  observed that the tumultuous array of pre-emptions, legal challenges, and regulatory reversals are making it harder for metropolitan regions to manage rapidly changing economies. The panel was moderated by Enrique Silva, chief program officer at the Lincoln Institute.

Having heard those perspectives on the current political environment, the journalists then explored challenges and opportunities for state and local governments in three categories—housing, climate, and local public finance—and discovered several interconnected policy elements among those topics.

Housing. As the Trump administration calls for reducing rental assistance and other programs under US Housing and Urban Development, state and local governments have been tackling the urgent issue of housing affordability on their own. In a panel moderated by Solomon Greene, director of Land and Communities at the Lincoln Institute, Charles Gardner, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, reported that 33 states enacted legislation aimed at expanding the supply of housing through zoning and code reform, a big increase since 2023. The measures—such as allowing accessory dwelling units, reducing minimum parking requirements, banning single-family only zoning, increasing density at transit stations, and streamlining permitting so housing projects don’t get bogged down—constitute a “great land use realignment,” he said, and are getting popular support in red and blue states alike.

New housing still faces pushback in established neighborhoods, and some local leaders have decried any diminishing of local control over land use and development. But as more communities understand the outdated land use rules they have in place,  zoning reform becomes more legible as a way to create a range of housing types that are more affordable, said Sara Bronin, law professor at George Washington University and founder of the National Zoning Atlas, a database of zoning conditions in 9,000 jurisdictions. Even as they push to increase housing supply, local leaders need to understand flooding and sea level rise to halt “nonsensical” development in vulnerable areas, she said.

Colin Higgins, executive director of the National Housing Crisis Task Force, a bipartisan coalition promoting innovations in the production and preservation of housing, said that in pursuit of the goal of producing up to 8 million new homes, communities need to include subsidized and mixed-income projects alongside the luxury market-rate housing that upzoning enables. That would help address growing skepticism about filtering—the theory that wealthier homebuyers who move into high-end housing open up apartments, condos, and smaller single-family homes that are lower in price.

In a second panel on housing moderated by George W. “Mac” McCarthy, practitioners talked about alternative pathways to affordability, including pre-assembled and manufactured homes, community land trusts (CLTs), and homes built on government-owned land.

Reina Chano Murray, associate director at the Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS), demonstrated recent efforts to help municipalities identify land they own that is suitable for housing. CGS identified 276,000 acres of buildable, government-owned land in transit-accessible urban areas with existing infrastructure, across the US. These public lands present many opportunities for the potential development of affordable housing options, including establishing a community land trust, which allows buyers to purchase homes on leased land and agree to restrictions on resale profit.

Charles Dillard, director of planning for the City of Burlington, said that Vermont city is testing what’s possible in developing city-owned land, and has one of the longest-running community land trusts, the Champlain Housing Trust, as a model. John Smith, executive director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Association in the Roxbury section of Boston, said the bulwark against gentrification is community control of land.

While new construction is an obvious path to expanding affordable housing options, cities and towns must also strive to preserve existing housing stock, some of which gets snapped up by institutional investors, said McCarthy. A recent report published by the Lincoln Institute revealed that nearly 9 percent of residential parcels across 500 urban counties have corporate owners, who often jack up rents and outmaneuver first-time homebuyers. The Trump administration recently moved to restrict purchases of housing stock by institutional investors.

Nature-Based Solutions. Two panels of experts examined the question of whether local and state climate action can have any impact on what’s happening to the whole planet. The retrenchment at the federal level is breathtaking, said Jody Freeman, professor at the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program, including withdrawal from international emission reduction treaties, the deregulation of fossil fuels and their impacts by the Environmental Protection Agency, the termination of collection of climate data, and the dismantling of the Inflation Reduction Act and its promotion of clean energy.

The panelists and moderator Peter Colohan, director of partnerships and program innovation at the Lincoln Institute, described a federal rollback defined by unprecedented maneuvers. Freeman offered, as an example, “the executive orders from the president directing the attorney general to identify state climate policies that the administration disagrees with … as somehow unlawful or unconstitutional, and sue the states in order to block them.”

Bradley Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation, said advocates are spending a lot of time in court defending “a legacy of victories” once thought secure, on fronts including offshore drilling, the Endangered Species Act, or Vermont’s use of the Superfund law to collect money from fossil fuel companies to pay for climate action.

“It’s going to take a lot of resources to just maintain [previous wins],” he said. “Fortunately the advocacy community is very well organized … I think we have a pretty solid front for defending against a lot of those rollbacks.”

The dramatic redirection from Biden administration climate policies has prompted state and local government to fill the gap with dedicated funding for emissions reductions, clean energy like solar and wind power, and what Melissa Hoffer, chief of the Massachusetts Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience, described as a “nature-forward but engineered” approach to building coastline resilience. By establishing statewide codes that promote geothermal heating and a switch from fossil fuels to renewable-powered electricity, she said, states can prove that “clean energy and energy efficiency is really the pathway to affordability.”

“Cities have been leading the charge on climate long before state and federal governments were ever involved,” said Brian Swett, Boston’s chief climate officer. “Gina McCarthy, one of our great EPA administrators and the first and only domestic climate czar, used to say … that’s where innovation happens.” He cited the city’s Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance, which sets requirements for large existing buildings to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions over time. “You pilot at the city level, and we’ve been proud of what we’ve been able to do in Boston. So we’re back in that moment again. We are used to leading the charge.”

State, local, and regional initiatives promoting land conservation, biodiversity, and ecosystem protection preservation are similarly continuing apace despite policy reversals at the federal level, as a second climate panel revealed. Peter Stein, principal at Lyme Timber Company, acknowledged the termination of the Biden administration’s 30×30 initiative and moves to expand resource extraction on public lands, but said land conservation has widespread support among voters.

“A little more than a year ago … Donald Trump got elected, but $18 billion worth of local public finance was passed by voters in the U.S. in red, purple, and blue counties and states to support land conservation,” he said. “There’s a long history of voters voting to tax themselves … to pay for land conservation. Eighty percent of all the public money that’s invested in conservation comes from local and state governments.”

Regional collaboration on land conservation is partly filling the vacuum at the federal level, including a pact between New England governors and eastern Canadian premiers, as well as targeted efforts to protect ecosystems and wildlife corridors, said Deb Davidson, chief strategy officer at the Center for Large Landscape Conservation. In Massachusetts, Governor Maura Healey launched a package of initiatives promoting biodiversity and wildlife protection. Efforts are also underway to make agriculture more climate-friendly, said Vincent Gauthier, senior manager at the Environmental Defense Fund. Agricultural communities are working with environmental advocates to “develop solutions that find the right trade-offs for everyone, for the climate, and for farmers and ranchers whose livelihoods are on the line every day.”

The land conservation panel was moderated by Chandni Navalkha, director of conservation and stewardship at the Lincoln Institute.

Public Finance and the Property Tax. In two sessions, panels of experts examined the extraordinary fiscal squeeze being felt by cities and towns nationwide, with pandemic aid winding down and future federal funding in doubt, the cost of providing services soaring, and the bedrock source of local revenue—the property tax—under threat. Moderator Bethany Paquin noted that “lawmakers all over the country are exploring how they can provide meaningful property tax relief without undermining … essential local services,” but proposals making headlines in Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania among other places would scale back the property tax dramatically or eliminate it altogether.

The new wave of property tax revolts is driven in part by booming housing markets and significant increases in assessed home values that have prompted nearly a doubling of property tax bills in some cases, said Jared Walczak, vice president of the Tax Foundation. “It’s not surprising that people have some really strong, robust responses to this. I don’t blame them,” Walczak said, though he added: “I do think that the solutions they’re talking about are irresponsible and will not work.”

Because the property tax is the primary source of revenue for local governments and school systems, it is hard to imagine what would take its place, said Billy Hamilton, deputy chancellor emeritus at Texas A&M University. Big increases in a sales tax, or the income tax, seem politically infeasible.  Targeted property tax relief in the form of circuit breakers can help those who struggle to pay rising bills, the panelists agreed.

Meanwhile, cities and towns struggle each year to keep a balanced budget, said Katie McCue, deputy executive director at the Massachusetts Municipal Association. Property tax revenues in Massachusetts are capped each year by Proposition 2 1/2, but the cost of providing services, including employee health care and retirement funding, continues to rise. Municipalities have had to rely on voter-approved overrides to bolster funding for services or to build a new school, she said.

Experts in the second public finance panel, moderated by Luis Quintanilla, program analyst at the Lincoln Institute, suggested there are precious few other ways for local governments to raise revenue. Andrew Reschovsky, professor emeritus at the LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin, reviewed the practice of charging user fees, partly making up for the post-pandemic drop in commercial property tax revenue in struggling downtowns. Daphne Kenyon, principal at D.A. Kenyon & Associates, said payments-in-lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreements with nonprofit institutions can bolster municipal coffers, but only to a point.

Other tactics include establishing a vacancy tax or a land value tax, said Nathan Seegert, professor of finance at Northeastern University. Municipalities that are responsible for an increasing array of obligations, from filling potholes to educating kids, need to diversify their revenue portfolio to have any hope of functioning in that role, he said. “If we’re going to have this trend of pushing the services further down the chain, we’re going to have to be creative in what kind of revenue sources we look for, that can provide that stability.”

At an evening reception at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Jorrit de Jong, director of the Bloomberg Center for Cities, introduced Harvard professor Michael Sandel, who shared reflections on the current state of American democracy, including the bare-knuckle tactics being deployed as different levels of government fight with each other. Sandel, who wrote The Tyranny of Merit and was recently awarded the  Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, said the public discourse might be less polarized if educated elites would “listen more” and avoid technocratic slogans like “follow the science.” He also said that while more than a century old, the ideas of Henry George, the 19th century political philosopher who inspired Lincoln Institute founder John C. Lincoln, are critical to understanding the high home prices and real estate speculation of today.

The journalists also heard from Brett Smiley, the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, who referred to Sandel’s description of state and local governments as historically laboratories of democracy, but now seen more as “outposts or sanctuaries of democracy. I found that pretty meaningful and certainly motivating for the work that we’re doing in the environment that we’re in right now.” As a classic second city in the orbit of Boston, Providence is daylighting rivers, taking down freeways, and promoting arts and culture to attract those seeking an alternative to larger cities, Smiley said. More affordable housing is a key part of the city’s economic development strategy.

Finally, a panel of journalists and publishers in the closing “Practicing the Craft” roundtable addressed a troubling dilemma: that while the actions of state and local governments are more important than ever, many communities lack the capacity to cover those activities.

Over the last 20 years, about 3,500 newspapers have shut down, most of them weeklies that provided the kind of granular, hyper-local neighborhood coverage that community democracy depends on, said Dan Kennedy, a professor at Northeastern University. Some 50 million Americans are left with limited or no access to a reliable source of local news, according to the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Kennedy cited several successful examples of independent digital startups based on a nonprofit model, though he added “they tend to be located in affluent suburban communities, and urban communities of color and rural areas are struggling.” Success stories included Brookline.News,  which co-founder Ellen Clegg reported was gaining in circulation covering local stories in that Boston suburb of 65,000 people. Dale Anglin, representing Press Forward, a national local news network funded by the MacArthur Foundation, reported “strengthening information networks that keep communities engaged and informed” through chapters in 32 states, and suggested that not only formal news outlets but video influencers and others deserve support.

Local reporters and editors can do their jobs better if they have access to training for covering complicated issues like housing, said Jon Greenberg of the Poynter Institute. Charles Sennott, co-founder of Report for America and publisher of the Martha’s Vineyard Times, suggested that local outlets—just like cash-strapped local governments—need to work smarter and more efficiently, and could make judicious use of artificial intelligence.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines. Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Catherine Benedict is the digital communications manager at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: 2025 Journalists Forum panelists shared their work with reporters from media outlets across the country. Credit: Catherine Benedict

Some 50 miles inland from the iconic San Francisco Bay—east of the Golden Gate Bridge, beyond the Berkeley Hills and Mount Diablo—is the lesser-known California Delta, more than 1,100 square miles of lowlands and estuaries near the city of Stockton, at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.

Those two waterways alone drain about half of California, and much of that water gets pumped southward and westward to more populous areas of the state. Almost all the land in the delta—98 percent, much of it farmland—has been reclaimed since the 19th century with the help of hundreds of miles of levees and channels that drained what was once an inland sea during the wet winter months.

However, those drained wetlands, deprived of their natural sogginess, have been subsiding for decades as the peaty soil gets exposed to oxygen. “When you dry those out and make them terrestrial, they subside, the land elevation sinks,” says Brett Milligan, professor of landscape architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Davis. Despite its inland setting, “you have many places in the delta that are up to 20 or 25 feet below sea level.”

As sea levels rise, tidal saltwater intrusion from San Francisco Bay is increasingly a problem—especially during droughts and the summer dry season, when there’s less freshwater draining from the rivers to push back against rising tidal flows. Higher sea levels also put added strain on protective levees as the delta behind them sinks, increasing the risk of their potential failure.

An increase in salinity creates a lot of problems—for agriculture, for the ecosystem, and for the drinking water supply of millions of Californians. “We have one of the largest water infrastructure systems in the world,” Milligan says, largely focused on moving water from the wetter northern parts of the state to the more arid southern regions—“and the delta is sort of that switching point from north to south.”

This tangle of interconnected issues is why the delta is often regarded as a “wicked problem,” Milligan says. “There are so many factors involved. It’s very complex; conditions are also changing quite fast.” Climate change is exacerbating nearly every challenge facing the delta: Tides are getting higher. Droughts are getting more frequent and more intense. Winter snowpack in the uplands would once have held back freshwater long into the spring, but it now melts earlier, and more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow to begin with.

That variety of factors makes the problem more complex, but it also means there are multiple ways of looking at—and perhaps addressing—the overarching issue of salinity in the delta. To help the delta community discuss and better understand some of the available solutions, Milligan and colleagues are conducting a series of participatory scenario planning workshops focused on salinity management as part of a four-year, multi-campus University of California project called Just Transitions in the Delta.

Exploring Multiple Futures to ‘Liberate the Present’ 

Scenario planning is a type of collective visioning process that invites community members to imagine and evaluate a set of specific, possible futures. It’s an inherently participatory process, but Milligan is foregrounding that idea of inclusion and equity, intentionally seeking out voices who don’t typically have a seat at the decision-making table.

By engaging dozens of people from across the delta’s diverse population—from farmers to Indigenous tribal members to residents of communities bearing a disproportionate burden of environmental pollution—Milligan hopes to build a broader understanding of the adaptation strategies available, and what tradeoffs each one presents. “We were really interested in trying to explore, within a context where people are often at odds, could this type of scenario planning around salinity management options be a way to build trust and mutual understanding?” he says.

The project is now in its third year, and Milligan and his colleagues presented their progress at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s Consortium for Scenario Planning conference in 2025. (Registration is now open for the 2026 conference, to be held February 4–6, 2026, in Salt Lake City, Utah.)

So far, Milligan’s team has conducted more than half a dozen workshops with well over 100 total participants—including two main public workshops in 2024 and 2025, as well as smaller sessions requested by Indigenous groups and vulnerable communities—with the goal of first deciding upon the suite of scenarios to be included, then designing and refining them.

“The first thing we did was a lot of outreach and interviews,” Milligan says, to determine and design the six main scenarios to be considered. The questions ranged from what people valued most about the delta, to which salinity management practices they wanted the team to explore, to who else ought to be included in adaptation discussions. Notably, Milligan says, 83 percent of respondents felt that past decision-making in the delta had not been equitable.

Using feedback from those interviews, the team designed a set of six scenarios for evaluation, which continue to be refined as workshops yield more feedback, and created an immersive, interactive exhibition of scenario narratives and maps ahead of the second full public workshop.

The first scenario is simply “Business as Usual,” which extrapolates current trends into the future as a sort of baseline from which to compare other adaptation measures. The second scenario models the Delta Conveyance Project, a long-discussed, partially permitted 40-mile water supply tunnel that could be built beneath the delta. The controversial tunnel is not particularly popular among many residents, Milligan explains, “but a lot of people wanted us to model that, to compare it to the other options.”

The third and fourth scenarios are nature-based restoration solutions. The “Eco Machine” approach would use strategically placed green infrastructure to reduce salinity intrusion and create recreational and ecological benefits. The “New Green Watershed,” meanwhile, is more ambitious in scope, phasing in green infrastructure across the entire region, along with carbon banking, land repatriation to Indigenous communities, and wet soil agriculture (such as rice farming) to reverse land subsidence and transition the delta to a regenerative green economy.

“That was driven by tribal input asking us to think about the delta more holistically,” Milligan says. “A lot of people are concerned about flooding, and interested in what can be done upstream in terms of land management, better fire stewardship, restoration of meadows, and things like that, that will influence when and how water comes down,” he says. “Could you reinvent the delta in a way that’s more sustainable and make that economically viable?”

The last two scenarios focus on more traditional infrastructure, but implemented and managed in smarter ways. “Bolster and Fortify” models how major engineering investments in the delta’s gray infrastructure—such as barriers, operable gates, and augmented levees—could reduce salinity and protect subsided land from levee breaches. “Calling on Reserves” focuses on operating upstream dams and reservoirs differently—allowing more water out when necessary to push back against tidal intrusion, for example—combined with statewide investments in increased water efficiency and storage.

In the large public workshops, participants have so far ranked the two nature-based solutions most favorably (with the tunnel and business-as-usual scenarios battling it out for last place).

Those workshops also sought input on how each scenario ought to be assessed. The team is now using hydrodynamic and other modeling methods to evaluate and score each scenario according to six criteria participants selected: water quality and flow, ecological restoration, Indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, recreation, and economy. A final public workshop in 2026 will present the fully modeled and scored scenarios, and ask participants to rank their preferences.

“What I find most useful about scenario planning is exploring multiple futures as a way to kind of liberate the present and how we think about futures. There’s not just one way the world can be,” Milligan says. He notes that people seem to be more open to understanding other people’s perspectives in the context of specific scenarios.

Encouragingly, post-workshop surveys have confirmed that participants feel the process has been useful. “We get very positive feedback from people saying they felt heard,” Milligan says. But voicing opinions is not the only reason people are attending the workshops; many have said they specifically came to hear what others had to say. “I’ve never heard that in my 12 years working in the delta,” he says.

“People are showing up because they’re curious about how other people experience this and think about this, which was a goal for our project—can we foster that kind of learning space? It seems that many people are coming to these because they want to learn; they want to understand other ways of how it can be.”

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Middle River Bridge near Discovery Bay in the California Delta. Credit: toddarbini via iStock/Getty Images Plus.

Millones de estadounidenses, ya sea que vivan en zonas urbanas o rurales, se enfrentan a la necesidad urgente de tener una vivienda segura y asequible. Y cientos de ciudades, tanto grandes como pequeñas, buscan formas de desarrollar resiliencia ante los fenómenos meteorológicos extremos que amenazan a los residentes y, en algunos casos, de adaptarse a la llegada de nuevos residentes que huyen de los impactos de un clima cambiante. Las soluciones a todos estos desafíos comparten un ingrediente esencial: el suelo.

Los gobiernos de todo el mundo ya poseen más que suficientes terrenos para satisfacer estas necesidades; sin embargo, grandes cantidades de terrenos públicos están vacantes o desaprovechadas, y su propósito no coincide con las necesidades actuales. En particular, esto es cierto en los niveles más locales de gobierno, como ciudades, condados, estados, distritos escolares y autoridades públicas. Estos terrenos podrían y deberían utilizarse para el beneficio público, en especial, para viviendas asequibles y soluciones basadas en la naturaleza. Sin embargo, es más fácil decirlo que hacerlo.

Este otoño, el Instituto Lincoln planea lanzar una campaña centrada en ayudar a las comunidades a hacer uso de las parcelas de propiedad pública adecuadas para brindar soluciones con beneficios duraderos.

Como país, nos faltan unos 4,7 millones de hogares. Según un análisis realizado por el Centro de Soluciones Geoespaciales del Instituto Lincoln, los Estados Unidos tienen más de 111.690 hectáreas edificables de terrenos propiedad del gobierno en áreas urbanas accesibles para el transporte público, lo suficiente como para alojar entre dos y siete millones de viviendas nuevas, según la densidad. Esta estimación excluye adrede parques, humedales y servidumbres de paso, y se concentra en sitios donde el desarrollo no sacrificaría el espacio abierto.

El punto no es construir en cada hectárea. El punto es que los terrenos públicos, usados de forma estratégica, pueden modificar la curva de costos de viviendas asequibles y crear espacio para la infraestructura verde que protege a los barrios del calor y las inundaciones.

El impulso ya es visible en todos los niveles de gobierno. La administración federal ha pedido a las agencias que identifiquen las propiedades que podrían utilizarse para viviendas. Mientras tanto, los estados y las ciudades están tomando medidas: California ha fortalecido su Ley de Terrenos Excedentes para exigir que las agencias locales realicen un inventario de las parcelas disponibles, las ofrezcan primero a los emprendedores inmobiliarios de viviendas asequibles y se rijan según procedimientos transparentes y exigibles. Una ley en el Distrito de Columbia vincula la asequibilidad a los acuerdos de terrenos públicos al exigir una parte importante de unidades por debajo del precio de mercado, en especial cerca del transporte público. Massachusetts ha presentado una cartera de parcelas estatales excedentes con el objetivo de producir miles de viviendas. El programa de Tierras Públicas para la Vivienda de San Francisco destina sitios grandes de bajo rendimiento, como Balboa Reservoir, de 6,8 hectáreas, a viviendas de ingresos mixtos; y Sound Transit, en el estado de Washington, bosquejó una política para dedicar propiedades excedentes a viviendas para personas con ingresos limitados cerca de las estaciones. No son casos aislados, sino ladrillos que construyen una estrategia.

La reutilización de terrenos públicos no es solo una solución de vivienda, también es una forma de desarrollar resiliencia. Muchas de las parcelas más prometedoras son ideales para soluciones basadas en la naturaleza que gestionan las aguas pluviales, refrescan los vecindarios y suman espacios públicos. El programa Ciudad Verde, Aguas Limpias de Filadelfia utiliza calles, parques, patios escolares y otros derechos de paso públicos para captar aguas pluviales, lo cual reduce los desbordamientos del alcantarillado a la vez que reverdece los barrios. La Medida W del condado de Los Ángeles financia proyectos de múltiples beneficios, como Magic Johnson Park, donde la captación de agua, el hábitat, la recreación y la sombra se unen en terrenos públicos. En Nueva Orleans, el Distrito Gentilly Resilience agrega parcelas públicas e institucionales para almacenar agua y reducir las temperaturas del barrio. Estos proyectos dejan en claro que la reutilización de los terrenos municipales puede mejorar las condiciones de vida en las comunidades, que deberán centrarse en cuatro pilares concretos y viables para que este esfuerzo tome vuelo:

1. Encontrar los terrenos. Los gobiernos deben crear inventarios abiertos a la comunidad de parcelas de propiedad pública con potencial para el desarrollo. Mediante la metodología Who Owns America^®, el Centro de Soluciones Geoespaciales puede producir mapas específicos de jurisdicción de alta calidad completos, con atributos de parcelas como zonificación, contaminación potencial, acceso a infraestructura, proximidad a empleos y transporte público, y limitaciones y prioridades conocidas. Como los funcionarios públicos no suelen contar con la capacidad y los recursos para realizar este análisis, prevemos trabajar con socios que respalden una toma de decisiones clara. Los mapas pueden clasificar los sitios en categorías: la vivienda como prioridad (cerca del transporte público o corredores donde las unidades asequibles de tamaño familiar tienen más sentido), la resiliencia como prioridad (vías de inundación, corredores ribereños o islas de calor que podrían ser un mejor apoyo para el almacenamiento de agua, la refrigeración y el hábitat) y beneficio doble (sitios que pueden albergar viviendas e infraestructura verde).
2. Corregir las normas. Los buenos inventarios solo sirven si las normas permiten que los terrenos públicos se usen para el beneficio público de manera predecible y a gran escala. Las políticas de resiliencia como prioridad suelen incluir cinco elementos: una necesidad para inventariar terrenos excedentes y proporcionar aviso público; un proceso de primera oferta o prioridad para las entidades de vivienda asequible calificadas; reservas mínimas de asequibilidad que son más fuertes cerca del transporte público de alta calidad; autoridad explícita para arrendar o vender terrenos por debajo del precio de mercado para cumplir con los objetivos de asequibilidad; y plazos con consecuencias para que los procesos no se detengan. Para las autoridades públicas, como las agencias de transporte, agua y educación, los objetivos a nivel de cartera crean responsabilidad y protegen la alineación con la misión. A medida que la campaña evoluciona, esperamos proporcionar un texto modelo para políticas, facilitar los intercambios entre pares y ofrecer soporte técnico para alinear los objetivos de los propietarios públicos con las adquisiciones, la zonificación y el financiamiento.
3. Brindar financiamiento. Incluso cuando el valor del suelo está en debate, las viviendas muy asequibles y la infraestructura verde moderna requieren financiación, en especial desde el principio. Las comunidades deben adoptar un enfoque de capital trenzado que trate el valor del suelo como patrimonio en la estructura de capital y entrelace múltiples flujos de financiamiento. La iniciativa Acelerar la Inversión Comunitaria del Instituto Lincoln, que convoca a agencias públicas, entidades crediticias impulsadas por la misión, filántropos y capitales privados a fin de estructurar proyectos invertibles, es un buen ejemplo de un programa que ayuda a los socios a combinar el patrimonio del suelo con bonos estatales de vivienda, patrimonio de crédito fiscal, inversiones concesionarias o relacionadas con el programa, herramientas federales y financiamiento local para cerrar brechas. Una vez que las jurisdicciones pueden cuantificar el valor desbloqueado por el suelo, pueden negociar con confianza y transparencia.
4. Recuperar los beneficios Lógicamente, las comunidades esperan claridad, equidad y valor público visible de los acuerdos de terrenos públicos, lo que requiere diseñar procesos que generen confianza, desde solicitudes de propuestas estandarizadas hasta precios fijos del suelo. A través del programa Comunidades Vibrantes de Lincoln en la Universidad Lincoln de Claremont, podemos proporcionar capacitación directa, asistencia técnica y capacitación para los equipos intersectoriales (funcionarios públicos, líderes comunitarios, profesionales de la vivienda y agencias de infraestructura) que desean trabajar juntos para usar terrenos públicos para el beneficio público. Este desarrollo de capacidades en equipo es esencial: el éxito de todo este trabajo hasta la entrega depende de la ejecución coordinada.

Para evitar algunas preocupaciones predecibles, nuestros inventarios tienen un diseño específico para evitar cualquier riesgo de erosión del espacio abierto: excluyen parques y hábitats sensibles y dirigen la atención a sitios ya pavimentados, desaprovechados y con servicios de transporte público. Además, muchos proyectos de resiliencia agregan espacios abiertos asequibles (como un parque acuático inteligente o una vía verde sombreada) y, al mismo tiempo, protegen de las inundaciones a los barrios que se encuentran río abajo. También debemos tener en cuenta que, a diferencia de lo que piensan algunos críticos, los acuerdos de terrenos por debajo del precio de mercado no son “regalos”. De hecho, el público recibe un valor duradero: viviendas siempre asequibles, protección climática y comodidades garantizadas por arrendamientos de terrenos, restricciones de escrituras y convenios exigibles. Por último, el problema no puede solucionarse solo mediante terrenos federales. Las propiedades federales pueden ser de ayuda en los márgenes, pero la mayor parte de la oportunidad recae en los gobiernos locales y las autoridades públicas que controlan el suelo cerca de los empleos y el transporte público. Es por eso que los programas estatales y locales son lo más importante, y por eso nuestros esfuerzos se centrarán en ayudar a esos propietarios a actuar.

Esta campaña unirá los puntos entre la producción de viviendas y la resiliencia ante el cambio climático en más lugares. Y vinculará la política con la entrega, para que los compromisos se conviertan en hogares e infraestructura verde reales en el terreno, ya que la escasez de viviendas y la emergencia climática no esperan.

Los terrenos públicos son un fideicomiso público. Si se usan bien, pueden ayudarnos a entregar viviendas a las personas en lugares donde las oportunidades y las necesidades son mayores, mantener los barrios a salvo del calor y las inundaciones, y renovar la confianza de que las instituciones públicas pueden resolver grandes problemas. Esta próxima campaña será nuestra invitación a todas las partes para que trabajen juntas al ritmo y a la escala que requiera el momento.

Imagen principal: Una renderización de la comunidad Balboa Reservoir que se está desarrollando en terrenos públicos en San Francisco. Crédito: Van Meter Williams Pollack.

Millions of Americans, whether living in urban or rural places, face an urgent need for safe and affordable shelter. And hundreds of cities, large and small, are looking for ways to build resilience to extreme weather events that threaten their residents—and, in some cases, to adapt for an influx of new residents fleeing the impacts of a changing climate. Solutions to all these challenges share an essential ingredient: land.

Governments around the world already possess more than enough land to meet these needs; however, large amounts of publicly owned land sit vacant or underutilized, their purpose mismatched to current needs. This is especially true at more local levels of government, like cities, counties, states, school districts, and public authorities. This land could, and should, be repurposed for public benefit, especially affordable housing and nature-based solutions—but that’s easier said than done. This fall, the Lincoln Institute plans to launch a campaign focused on helping communities put the right publicly owned parcels to work to deliver solutions with enduring benefits.

As a country, we are short about 4.7 million homes. According to an analysis by the Center for Geospatial Solutions at the Lincoln Institute, the United States has more than 276,000 buildable acres of government-owned land in transit-accessible urban areas—enough to support between roughly two and seven million new homes, depending on density. This estimate deliberately excludes parks, wetlands, and rights-of-way; it concentrates on sites where development would not sacrifice open space.

The point is not that every acre should be built on. It is that publicly owned land, used strategically, can bend the cost curve for affordable housing and create room for the green infrastructure that protects neighborhoods from heat and floods.

Momentum is already visible across every level of government. The federal administration has asked agencies to identify properties that might be repurposed for housing. Meanwhile, states and cities are taking action: California has strengthened its Surplus Land Act, compelling local agencies to inventory available parcels, offer them first to affordable housing developers, and follow transparent, enforceable procedures; a law in the District of Columbia ties affordability to public land deals by requiring a substantial share of below-market units, especially near transit. Massachusetts has advanced a portfolio of surplus state parcels with the aim of producing thousands of homes; San Francisco’s Public Lands for Housing program is putting large, underperforming sites such as the 17-acre Balboa Reservoir to work for mixed-income housing; and Sound Transit in Washington state has framed a policy to dedicate surplus properties for income-restricted housing near stations. These are not one-offs; they are the building blocks of a playbook.

Repurposing publicly owned land isn’t just a housing solution—it’s also a way to build resilience. Many of the most promising parcels are ideal for nature-based solutions that manage stormwater, cool neighborhoods, and add public space. Philadelphia’s Green City, Clean Waters program uses streets, parks, schoolyards, and other public rights-of-way to capture stormwater, cutting combined sewer overflows while greening neighborhoods. Los Angeles County’s Measure W finances multi-benefit projects such as Magic Johnson Park, where water capture, habitat, recreation, and shade come together on public land. In New Orleans, the Gentilly Resilience District aggregates public and institutional parcels to store water and lower neighborhood temperatures. These projects make it clear that repurposing municipal land can make communities better places to live—but communities will need to focus on four concrete and actionable pillars for this effort to take off:

1. Find the land. Governments should create public-facing inventories of potentially developable publicly owned parcels. The Center for Geospatial Solutions can produce high-quality, jurisdiction-specific maps using its Who Owns America® methodology, complete with parcel attributes like zoning, potential contamination, access to infrastructure, proximity to jobs and transit, and known constraints and priorities. Because public officials often lack the capacity and resources to conduct this analysis, we envision working with partners to support clear decision-making. The maps can classify sites into categories: housing-first (near transit or corridors where family-sized affordable units make the most sense), resilience-first (flood pathways, riparian corridors, or heat islands that could better support water storage, cooling, and habitat), and dual-benefit (sites that can host both housing and green infrastructure).
2. Fix the rules. Good inventories only matter if the rules allow publicly owned land to be used for public benefit predictably and at scale. “Affordability-first” policies typically include five elements: a requirement to inventory surplus land and provide public notice; a first-offer or first-look process for qualified affordable housing entities; minimum affordability set-asides that are stronger near high-quality transit; explicit authority to use below-market ground leases or sales to meet affordability targets; and timelines with consequences so that processes don’t stall. For public authorities—like transit, water, and education agencies—portfolio-level targets create accountability and protect mission alignment. As our campaign evolves, we hope to provide model policy language, facilitate peer-to-peer exchanges, and offer technical support to align public-owner goals with procurement, zoning, and financing.
3. Fund it. Even with land value on the table, deeply affordable housing and modern green infrastructure require funding, especially early on. Communities should embrace a braided-capital approach that treats land value as equity in the capital stack and weaves multiple funding streams together. The Lincoln Institute’s Accelerating Community Investment initiative—which convenes public agencies, mission-driven lenders, philanthropy, and private capital to structure investable projects—is a good example of a program that helps partners pair land equity with state housing bonds, tax-credit equity, concessional or program-related investments, federal tools, and local gap funding. Once jurisdictions are able to quantify the value unlocked by land, they can negotiate confidently and transparently.

4. Fulfill the benefits. Communities rightly expect clarity, fairness, and visible public value from public land deals, which requires designing processes that build trust, from standardized RFPs to fixed land prices. Through the Lincoln Vibrant Communities program at Claremont Lincoln University, we can provide direct training, technical assistance, and coaching for cross-sector teams—public officials, community leaders, housing practitioners, and infrastructure agencies—who want to work together to deploy public land for public benefit. This team-based capacity building is essential; the success of all of this work through the point of delivery depends on coordinated execution.

To head off some predictable concerns, our inventories are designed precisely to avoid any risk of eroding open space: They exclude parks and sensitive habitats and steer attention to already paved, underused, and transit-served sites. Moreover, many resilience projects add accessible open space—a water-smart park, a shaded greenway—while protecting downstream neighborhoods from flooding. We should also note that, counter to what some critics think, below-market land deals are not “giveaways.” In fact, the public receives lasting value—permanently affordable homes, climate protection, and amenities secured by ground leases, deed restrictions, and enforceable agreements. Finally, federal land alone cannot solve the problem. Federal properties can help at the margins, but most of the opportunity lies with local governments and public authorities that control land near jobs and transit. That is why state and local programs matter most, and why our efforts will focus on helping those owners act.

This campaign will connect the dots between housing production and climate resilience in more places. And it will link policy with delivery, so that commitments turn into actual homes and green infrastructure on the ground, because the housing shortage and the climate emergency will not wait.

Publicly owned land is a public trust. Used well, it can help us house people where opportunity and need are greatest, keep neighborhoods safe from heat and floods, and renew confidence that public institutions can solve big problems. This upcoming campaign will be our invitation to all parties to get moving—together, and at the pace and scale the moment requires.

George W. McCarthy is president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: A rendering of the mixed-income Balboa Reservoir community under development on public land in San Francisco. Credit: Van Meter Williams Pollack.