Joint Center for Housing Studies

Location: Nationwide

Website: urbanretailinstitute.com
The Center was originally formed in 1959 as the Joint Center for Urban Studies of Harvard and MIT, and took up the challenge of addressing intellectual and policy issues confronting a nation experiencing widespread demographic, economic and social changes, with dramatic and far-reaching effects on cities in particular. With principal support from the Ford Foundation the research agenda was based on the premise that the resolution of these issues called for imaginative interdisciplinary approaches to the study of urban problems and issues and required cooperation among universities, government and industry.

During the decade after its inception, when urban studies programs were not yet established at Harvard or MIT, the Center concentrated on building a bridge between multidisciplinary research and policy applications. Research activities were deliberately flexible and exploratory.

In the 1970s, the Center consolidated its research around a core of subjects related to housing. Its analysis of U.S. housing policy reflected the national debate over the government’s responsibility to ensure a decent home and suitable living environment for all its citizens. Early in this period, the Center recognized the need to supplement housing analysis with research in related fields, and with input from outside the academy, in the form of partnerships with public, private, and not-for-profit entities.

The Policy Advisory Board (PAB) of the Joint Center for Housing Studies was formed in 1971--- under the guidance of John T. Dunlop, former United States Secretary of Labor and then Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences--- to bring together a diverse group of leading firms and organizations with interests and influence in the housing sector. The PAB continues to play a critical role in identifying emerging issues and trends and joins our commitment to advancing housing as a national priority.

By 1975, research in regional and urban economies, demographic trends, and social policy had been integrated into the program, and during the 1980s the Center underwent a variety of institutional changes. In 1985, the Joint Center for Urban Studies officially became the Joint Center for Housing Studies. In 1989, the Center evolved into a unit based solely at Harvard and jointly affiliated with the Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Kennedy School.

In 1988, the Center launched its signature report The State of the Nation’s Housing, which continues to provide a widely-referenced annual assessment of housing markets, homeownership, and affordability challenges. Since 1998, the Center has expanded its programs of research and convenings to address emerging issues in remodeling markets, rental housing, and housing finance, and has been at the forefront of national policy discussions concerning mortgage and consumer lending and the foreclosure crisis.

In contrast to the Center of several decades ago, the Joint Center for Housing Studies is institutionally smaller, yet more connected to national and international networks as we investigate and illuminate housing’s critical role in the economy and in communities. We continue to foster strong academic ties with schools, faculty and students from across the university community, and to engage with new initiatives on global urbanism, sustainability, and other critical topics for the 21st century. Most importantly, our work continues to serve as a resource for scholars, public and private sector leaders, housing practitioners, and policymakers.

Heart & Soul Community Planning

Location: Nationwide

Website: www.orton.org/who/heart_soul

There’s something special about every town—the corner barbershop on Main Street, acres of wilderness, busy local shops, hard-working lands and people, or deep-rooted traditions. That character is why people love their towns. It’s why they live there. And it’s also in danger.

Towns everywhere struggle to cope with rapid demographic, economic and land use changes, and many are losing what makes them special. Traditional planning processes aren’t enough to respond to a dizzying array of challenges and keep our towns from becoming soulless shells of communities. And top-down, isolated decision-making isn’t enough to engage today’s diverse, active, information-hungry citizens, who have the power to strengthen their communities in the face of change.

The key to successful communities is their heart and soul—the unique cultures, landscapes, traditions and values that people cherish—and with people themselves taking action to sustain and enhance the places they love. Many communities are ready to protect their unique character, deeply engage their citizens, and meet the challenges of the 21st Century. For these communities, there is a new, better way forward.

We help small cities and towns describe, apply and uphold their heart and soul attributes so that they can adapt to change while maintaining or enhancing the things they value most.

We have coined the term “Heart & Soul Community Planning” to describe an approach that engages citizens in land use planning as a pathway to vibrant, enduring communities. Our approach helps diverse citizens identify and enhance a town’s most valued attributes: those special places, characteristics and customs that residents treasure and that connect them to one another. If lost, these attributes would be widely missed and alter the character of the town.

Heart & Soul Community Planning is an innovative, multi-disciplinary path to helping citizens from all walks of life discover and protect their towns’ heart and soul assets so that they can adapt to change while enhancing the attributes they value most. Our approach is built on an underlying set of principles described in our Declaration of Community Heart & Soul Beliefs.

Small cities and towns across America face many challenges. Towns that are close to significant natural resource amenities face increasing development pressures from urban professionals plying their trades via the Internet and enjoying the great outdoors, and from burgeoning retirement populations seeking the high quality, low stress way of life found in these picturesque and desirable places. Other communities suffer from youth exodus, crumbling infrastructure and antiquated economies, and they are tempted to embrace development at any cost.

Stories of confrontation and alienation are commonplace in local newspapers, and many citizens simply opt out of their towns’ important discussions and decisions due to skepticism, fatigue, intimidation or a sense that their voices don’t count.

While innovation and success has occurred across the country, land use planning in America has yet to engage a broad base of local citizens to help them define and shape the future of their communities.

Traditional quantitative approaches use important data about demographic and economic shifts, traffic counts and infrastructure needs, but frequently fail to account for the particular ways people relate to their physical surroundings and ignore or discount the intangibles—shared values, beliefs and quirky customs—that make a community.

Furthermore, a collection of quantifiable attributes without an understanding of shared values and a sense of purpose does not motivate citizens to show up and make tough, consistent decisions. It also fails to account for how citizens’ day-to-day lives and livelihoods—and those of future generations—will be affected by change.

A community is a special place full of stories of the people who live there. Collectively, these stories are a big part of the community’s character: its heart and soul. In a way, planning is like writing the next chapter in a community’s story.

As we embark on the 21st century, there are signs that citizens expect to have a greater role in community decisions. In The Next Form of American Democracy, Matt Leighninger wrote, “[C]itizens seem better at governing, and worse at being governed, than ever before…. We are leaving the era of expert rule, in which elected representatives and designated experts make decisions and attack problems with limited interference, and entering a period in which the responsibilities of governance are more widely shared.” The Foundation has witnessed many examples of “ordinary” citizens leading the way.

We believe that local citizens have the ingenuity and know-how to write the next chapter: to ensure the sustainable economic, environmental and social well-being of their communities. With the full participation of those who live, work and play in a community, a town can tap into its deep beliefs to direct the forces of growth and change, protecting and enhancing its heart and soul.

Heart & Soul Planning is an iterative process beginning with:

- Discovery and Articulation of valued assets,

- Implementation of policies, regulations, institutions and traditions to enhance and protect agreed on assets, and

- Stewardship of those assets and characteristics through evaluation, accountability and regular review and reassessment of Heart & Soul assets and the health of the community.

The Heart & Soul approach builds on innovative efforts in many disciplines across the country and around the world, including: values-based planning; consensus building; participatory democracy; citizen engagement; appreciative inquiry; community development; grassroots sustainability and buy-local movements; digital and other storytelling; the arts as a catalyst for citizen engagement and change; economic development; land conservation; “Smart Growth”; visualization; quality-of-life indicators; landscape design; historic preservation; applied GIS and other technologies. We acknowledge our many partners—known and unknown—for their groundbreaking work.

StreetSense

Location: Nationwide

Website: www.streetsense.org

StreetSense is a multi-disciplinary look at the challenges and opportunities that our cities, towns, and countrysides are facing. StreetSense is founded on the principle that the design of our environments cannot be left simply to architects and engineers. On the contrary, what is around us is a product of every discipline working, or not working, together to create the most practical response to the needs of a society.

Our panel of contributors includes architects, urbanists, economists, developers, financiers, lawyers, and engineers. The goal is to make connections where there often is none. For example what does the cost of health care have to do with the way we build or how does regionalism protect our national and financial security?

Through making uncommon links we arrive at common sense solutions to adapt, grow, and prosper in an ever-evolving world. Our approach relies on the principles of thrift “that which cause a ramifying series of solutions (Berry)."

StreetSense is built around conversations, observations, and creating a dynamic toolkit for practical community building.

Better Cities and Towns

Location: Nationwide

Website: www.urbantimes.org

Better! Cities & Towns is dedicated to providing the best news, analysis, and intelligence on compact, mixed-use growth and development available in any medium. We offer free blogs, articles, and links to useful content from around the web, updated daily.

We also offer premium articles from our periodical Better! Cities & Towns, formerly called New Urban News, that is available by subscription. Most members of the Congress for the New Urbanism subscribe as part of their membership.

We send out regular email updates to more than 15,000 recipients — mostly decision-makers and implementors of smart growth — and we are available on Facebook and Twitter.

Better! Cities & Towns is part of New Urban Publications, an expert publisher in this field since 1996. We also publish books, such as New Urbanism: Best Practices Guide — required reading for New Urbanism certification — and SmartCode Version 9 and Manual.