Old apartments and new plans: reconciling planning and housing goals in two Texas cities

Increasingly, cities in rapidly growing regions are promoting redevelopment to achieve denser, mixed use patterns thought crucial to environmental sustainability. Redevelopment often threatens older apartments, built in the 1970s and early 1980s during a building boom fostered by federal tax incenti...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Community development (Columbus, Ohio) Ohio), 2010, Vol.41 (1), p.121-140
Main Author: Mueller, Elizabeth J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
affordability
affordable housing
apartments
case studies
community development
cost analysis
environment and sustainability
environmental impact
gentrification
housing
housing goals
leasing
low income households
mass transit
mixed-use development
pedestrian-friendly development
planners
planning
planning goals
population density
redevelopment
rental housing
social environment
social impact
subsidies
sustainable development
urban areas
urban planning
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Increasingly, cities in rapidly growing regions are promoting redevelopment to achieve denser, mixed use patterns thought crucial to environmental sustainability. Redevelopment often threatens older apartments, built in the 1970s and early 1980s during a building boom fostered by federal tax incentives. While often these aging apartments are a poor fit for the family households who inhabit them, they have become the largest stock of rental housing affordable to very low income residents. Replacing this stock of centrally located, transit accessible affordable housing would be extraordinarily expensive. City planners view these complexes as the opposite of the mixed use, pedestrian-friendly development needed in cities. Affordable housing agencies are concerned with preserving existing subsidized housing. Yet arguably, both planners and housers should be concerned about the loss of these aging apartments. Displacement of large numbers of low-income transit dependent residents from the central core of cities works against planners' environmental goals and adds to the number of households in need of subsidized housing. It also undermines existing low-income communities. This paper examines the prospects for preservation of older, affordable apartments in Dallas and Austin, chosen to contrast the role that comprehensive planning might play in bridging housing and planning goals.
ISSN:1557-5330
1944-7485
DOI:10.1080/15575330903548786