Seeking to address housing affordability and transportation congestion issues, the executive directors of the 25 largest public-sector metropolitan regional councils gathered in Los Angeles in September 2003 for their second regional forum. The three-day conference was sponsored by the Lincoln Institute, the Fannie Mae Foundation and the National Association of Regional Councils (NARC).

Case Studies

The opening session featured presentations on three case studies that illustrate different approaches to growth and development: Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles.

The Atlanta region is home to 3.6 million people in 10 counties. Charles Krautler, of the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), noted that the commission was created in 1947 and in 1952 presented its first regional plan. “It proposed a tight development pattern with an urban growth boundary close to where I-285 circles our region,” he explained. “It was rejected outright. Instead, we adopted a plan with growth in concentric circles. We did not have unplanned sprawl, we planned for it and we got it.” However, he continued, “now we have two societies. Many people moved to the northern part of the region and took their wealth with them. We encouraged them to trade long drives for big houses. But poverty remains concentrated in Atlanta and Fulton County.”

No slowdown is forecasted for 2030, as the population is expected to grow to 5.4 million people and employment to 3.1 million jobs. That means more congestion, and Atlanta faces other constraints as well. The region is the largest metropolitan area with the smallest water supply, and there is no opportunity for significant expansion of the supply. “If we keep doing what we’re doing, then what we have today is the best its going to be,” Krautler stated. “We’re trying to encourage a movement back to the city. After losing population for the last 30 years, the city has grown by 16,000 since the 2000 census. In a further effort to rewind the sprawl clock, ARC has designated 44 activity/town centers as part of its regional development plan linking transportation and land use. Each center receives planning and, more important, infrastructure resources to concentrate development.”

The Chicago metropolitan area is the “hub of the Midwest,” according to Ron Thomas of the Northeast Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC). With more than 8 million residents in 6 counties with 272 incorporated municipalities, Chicago has built its strength around the waters of Lake Michigan. The NIPC region hosts almost 4.5 million jobs and 62 companies that are listed in the Fortune 1000. The 4,000-square-mile region stretches north to Wisconsin and east to Indiana. And yet, Thomas laments, “our urban growth ‘edge’ is beyond our region. That means that the people who are attempting to control this growth are not at our table.”

Building on the Burnham plan, the first regional plan in the country created in 1909, Chicago’s urban fabric is held together by a series of 200 town centers, an extensive rail network and an expansive highway system. The good news, Thomas said, is that “90 percent of the region’s population is within one mile of a transit line.” Three satellite cities, Elgin, Joliet and Aurora, create a polycentric region around Chicago’s western fringe. The net result is that the region still has the capacity to absorb the projected growth of more than 2 million new people in the next 30 years.

Like every metropolitan region, Chicago is experiencing immigration from all over the world, but especially an influx of Hispanic families. New immigrants enter a region with longstanding socioeconomic patterns of segregation, especially in the southern counties. Thomas explained there are pockets of diversity in some suburban communities, but exclusionary zoning keeps the barriers high. While NIPC has successfully brought together the mayors in the metropolitan area to discuss critical issues, “we suffer from a lack of major universities, most of which are either downtown or 100 miles out,” Thomas noted. “Our political leaders are organized, and so is our business community. However, we run on parallel tracks and talk in stereo.” To address this disconnect, NIPC has created a broad-scale civic leadership process to undertake community-based planning. “We have created a tool called ‘paint the town,’ which allows interactive meetings in local city and town halls,” he continued. “We have a future to plan and it needs to be grounded where the people live, work and raise their families.”

Los Angeles has more than twice as many people as Chicago and more than 4.5 times the population of the Atlanta region, and yet “the urban portion of our region is the densest in the country,” according to Mark Pisano of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). “We have 187 municipalities in 6 counties. With 76 local officials in our structure, our congressional delegation comes to us for solutions to the tough issues we face. We do have a region that is large enough to cover the true regional economy, but the economic and social forces are relentless. Our economic bases are shifting faster than we can plan infrastructure to keep up with the changes.”

Like Chicago and Atlanta, Los Angeles is a polycentric region; it spreads across all of Southern California except San Diego County. “We were one of the first regions in the country to become a majority of minorities. Immigration drives development in our region,” said Pisano. Some of the trends are good. “Forty percent of our region is doing extremely well, but that means that 60 percent is not. We have been called the ‘new Appalachia’ by some, and we are banding together with other states along the border with Mexico to create the Southwest Authority. This, like other similar efforts around the country including the Appalachian Regional Commission, would create a federally supported multistate compact to address critical infrastructure needs required to support the economy of this large area.”

SCAG forecasts another 6 million people will arrive in the region by 2030, more than twice the population of the City of Chicago. As the new immigrants arrive, cities and towns already cramped by the constraints of Proposition 13 are beginning to close the door on new housing production. “Housing is the most undesirable land use in Southern California,” said Pisano. “We are seeing the fiscalization of land use. Our leaders tell me that they don’t want any more housing. They say this is sound fiscal policy. However, this approach just puts more pressure on places that already have housing. The net effect is that Los Angeles is three times more overcrowded than the rest of the region and eight times more crowded than New York City.”

To address these big-picture problems, SCAG is focusing on macro-level regional development patterns. “We can’t build our way out of the traffic congestion, but we have two scenarios under discussion,” Pisano continued. “The first focuses on infill development; the second proposes creation of the fifth ring of development in the high desert. Effective land use will generate three times more benefit than highway expansion.” Using a creative strategy of building truck lanes, paid for by the truckers, “we can create some relief and target key transportation logistics, i.e., moving freight out of the port of Los Angeles into the rest of the country. This strategy also addresses a key workforce issue, since you don’t need a college education to drive a truck. To fund such major infrastructure expansion, we are exploring how to create a tax credit that would allow significant private-sector investment in regional transportation projects.”

Discussion Sessions

Ruben Barrales, deputy assistant to President Bush and director of intergovernmental affairs for the White House, presented an overview of the executive branch’s current national priorities. During the discussion Krautler asked if a White House conference would be a possible response to the critical issues facing the largest metropolitan regions in the country. Barrales said the concept was worth discussing but would require considerable advance preparation to be effective. Pisano offered the resources of the group, working through NARC, to help with conference planning. Robert Yaro of the Regional Plan Association (RPA) suggested an interesting theme. “We’ve had several major eras of planning in this country,” he explained. “When Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, he spurred a major expansion in the nation’s land mass and then had to figure out what to do with it. One hundred years later Teddy Roosevelt appointed Gifford Pinchot to create the National Park Service. We’re due for another national planning initiative, but we now have many challenges that require a sophisticated response. We can’t build an economy based on people driving several hours to and from work each day. We need to focus on how we can create a place that is both pleasant and affordable.”

Armando Carbonell of the Lincoln Institute asked the group to expand on what national policies are needed to support the large metropolitan regions in the country. Comments included:

• We need to re-magnitize our regions, and modest incentives from Washington, DC, could help start that process.
• We need to partner with groups like the Urban Land Institute.
• We are flying blind and that’s dangerous. Even though we’re in the planning business, we need better data, better policies and different paradigms for managing our regional governance that include partners from our business and civic sectors as well as our political leaders.
• We can use a structure like the Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), created for transportation, to address other critical issues like water and housing.
• The bad news is that we are growing, but the good news is that we are growing. We attract smart, entrepreneurial people from around the world.

Dowell Myers, director of the Planning School in the University of Southern California School of Planning, Policy and Development, moderated a session focused on transforming regional actions into local implementation. As part of the program, representatives of three regions commented on their strategies.

“Seattle grew a lot over the last 20 years and we grew in different ways,” said Mary McCumber of the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC). “Our new growth was outside of our historic cities. We knew we needed to do something and we got lucky. We got ISTEA [Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act], a state growth management law and a new regional council at the same time.” Using these tools, PSRC created Destination 2030, which was honored as the best regional plan in the country by the American Planning Association (APA). “But we have planned enough. We are a land of process. Now we need to have the courage to act.”

Martin Tuttle of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) reported, “We used our federal transportation dollars to create land use incentives for community design and backed it up with $500 million. We asked people, ‘Is Atlanta what we want?’” Using the best data available and a sophisticated feedback planning process, SACOG brought the planning to the people and took the people’s plan back to the council.

Bob Yaro of RPA reminded the group that it takes “patience, persistence and perseverance.” He presented New York City as an urban success story, where 8 million people ride the transit system per day. “The Regional Plan Association, created in 1929, oversees a three-state region, and those states don’t like each other much. They have different DNA,” Yaro noted. Despite that history, RPA created the first strategy for a multi-centered region. Unlike the other regional councils, RPA is a private-sector organization. “The real power is in the civic community, if you can get people organized and move them in the right direction,” Yaro added.

Tom Bell, president and CEO of Cousins Properties in Atlanta, introduced a private-sector perspective on engaging in regional policy development: “I was surprised to read in Time magazine that the Atlanta region is the fastest growing settlement in human history. We are gobbling up 100 acres a day. There is no common ground. Democracy and land planning go together like oil and water. But you [planners] are the people who can make a change. Developers will do a lot of work if we can see a payoff. Visions are in short supply and the status quo is not an option.”

Addressing income distribution in the regions, Paul Ong, director of the Lewis Study Center at UCLA, reported that poverty rates among the elderly have declined at the same time that rates among children have increased. More distressing, poverty is higher and more concentrated in urban areas. “We are seeing a working underclass—not people on welfare but people who have jobs.” Rick Porth from Hartford and Howard Maier from Cleveland responded with case studies from their regions on income and social equity. In Hartford, Porth said, “the disparity is getting worse. More important, 20 percent of our future workforce is being educated in our worst schools.” Maier noted, “our economy is in transformation. The Cleveland area was a manufacturing center for steel and car production, but now we have more healthcare workers than steel or auto workers. As a region of 175 communities, we have 175 land use policies based on 175 zoning codes and maps. Each community’s plans may be rational, but together they project a future of sprawl without the ability for coordinated public services or facilities.”

In other sessions several regions that had developed assessment and benchmarking studies presented their current work, and the conference concluded with presentations by each of the councils on a best practice study, strategy or methodology that they have implemented.

The conference theme—confronting housing, transportation and regional growth—underscores the complexity of the metropolitan environment and the necessity for an integrated response to regional dynamics. Traditional regional councils are unique in their ability to link multiple regional systems to focus on specific regional questions. Housing affordability, a seemingly intractable problem overwhelming metropolitan regions, can only be understood against the backdrop of the local government fiscal policy. Transportation systems, often understood as infrastructure designed to service an existing regional settlement pattern, must be seen as a key determinant of economic development policy as well as a primary driver of land use change in regions. The metropolitan regions of this country are the economic engines of our states and the country as a whole. A new, enriched dialogue with the White House could stimulate a series of policy initiatives. As that conversation proceeds, regional councils are the key organizations to engage business and civic leaders with local elected officials around the regional table.

David Soule is senior research associate at the Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University in Boston. He teaches political science and conducts research on urban economic development, tax policy and transportation systems. He is the former executive director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), the regional planning agency representing 101 cities and towns in the Boston area.

Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 7 del CD-ROM Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

Como Visiting Fellow en el Lincoln Institute y Loeb Fellow de la Harvard University Graduate School of Design durante el curso académico 2004–2005, Mario Navarro ha emprendido un análisis crítico de la innovadora política de financiación de vivienda desarrollada en Chile durante los últimos 30 años. El objetivo del estudio, resumido aquí, es ayudar a los diseñadores de políticas de vivienda de los países en vías de desarrollo a entender el modelo chileno como alternativa para proporcionar viviendas a personas de sectores de ingresos bajos y moderados.

Hasta principios de los años 70, los programas de vivienda de los países en vías de desarrollo consistían en iniciativas patrocinadas por el gobierno para diseñar, construir y vender viviendas usando préstamos con tasas de interés subvencionadas. Estas políticas eran generalmente de escala limitada e inaccesibles por las familias pobres o no claramente orientadas en las mismas, y a menudo eran ineficaces (mayo de 1999). Conscientes de estos problemas, las organizaciones de desarrollo internacionales de mediados de los 70 empezaron a dirigir sus préstamos y consejos a países en vías de desarrollo basándose en la nueva estrategia de nuevas “necesidades básicas”, que consistía en proporcionar sitios y servicios, mejora de asentamientos informales, y vivienda básica (Kimm 1986).

Al mismo tiempo, e independientemente de estas organizaciones de desarrollo, Chile dio comienzo a varias reformas en el sector financiero y en programas de viviendas sociales, entre las que se encontraba la creación del primer programa del mundo en subsidiar la demanda para comprar viviendas (Gilbert 2004). Este modelo chileno se estableció diez años antes del método de “habilitación de mercados de vivienda” promovido por organizaciones internacionales como la Agencia de EE.UU. para el Desarrollo Internacional (Kimm 1986), el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (Rojas, Jacobs y Savedoff 1999) y el Banco Mundial (World Bank 1993). Según esta política habilitadora, los gobiernos generan incentivos y actúan como facilitadores, de modo que el sector privado produzca y financie las viviendas que necesita el país.

El modelo chileno ha influido en la política de vivienda de muchos países de América Latina, e incluso en la de otros continentes (Gilbert 2004; Gonzáles Arrieta 1997). No obstante, no se ha reconocido ampliamente como el primer programa en el que el gobierno desempeña la función de habilitador del mercado. Gilbert (2002), un experto importante del modelo chileno y su influencia en otros países, menciona que Chile se encaja en el modelo habilitador, pero mi estudio muestra que, más que sólo encajar, el modelo de vivienda chileno fue el precursor de la política. Las características principales de este programa (pagos puntuales en efectivo de una cantidad fija) corresponden “incuestionablemente al tipo de subsidio [para vivienda] que es menos problemático que otros” (Angel 2000).

El gobierno chileno, a través del Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo, MINVU, fue el protagonista principal del éxito del modelo chileno. Durante los primeros 27 años de implementación de esta política (hasta 2001), el MINVU no sólo financió y gestionó los programas de subsidio, sino que también fue la compañía inmobiliaria más grande y el segundo banco hipotecario del país, en términos de número de viviendas construidas y número de préstamos hipotecarios concedidos.

Tres períodos de política de vivienda

¿Cuáles han sido los instrumentos y las cantidades de recursos públicos y privados que se adjudicaron a la construcción y a la mejora de la vivienda social en Chile? Mi estudio se divide en seis partes; las tres primeras revisan períodos bien definidos de la política de vivienda en los últimos 30 años, y las tres partes siguientes describen los acontecimientos más importantes en la evolución de esta política.

El primer período, de 1974 a 1984, estableció las bases de la política de vivienda basada en la habilitación de mercados. Durante esos 11 años, se llevaron a cabo profundas reformas en el sistema bancario. Los programas de subsidio a la vivienda fueron creados y después se ajustaron significativamente con el tiempo. Sin embargo, se dedicaron pocos recursos a los programas de vivienda, y el sector privado participó solamente en el suministro de vivienda para la clase media alta. Los recursos públicos no llegaron a los grupos más pobres, por lo que el déficit de la vivienda siguió aumentando.

El segundo período abarcó más de 17 años, de 1985 a 2001, y durante ese período la política se consolidó con una intervención estatal significativa. El terremoto que sacudió la zona central de Chile en marzo de 1985 marcó el máximo histórico de déficit de vivienda, llegando a más de un millón de unidades. Este acontecimiento precipitó una mayor atención al diseño de programas de vivienda y subsidio, así como un aumento del nivel de recursos adjudicados a estos programas. Estos dos factores fueron decisivos para atraer al sector privado al mercado de vivienda social. La continuidad de las políticas de vivienda implementadas por gobiernos democráticos que dieron comienzo en 1990 fue un esfuerzo estratégico para consolidar la confianza y los conocimientos que requería el sector privado para aumentar su participación en el mercado. El gobierno continuó su función en la construcción y financiación de viviendas para amplios sectores de la población, y el enfoque de los recursos mejoró con respecto al período anterior. Aunque la dedicación seguía siendo inadecuada, el gran logro de este período fue la reducción del déficit de vivienda a la mitad de lo que había sido a mediados de los 80.

El tercer período, de 2002 a 2004, corresponde a la implementación de la política de vivienda de habilitación de mercados. Aunque la política de la vivienda de Chile recibió reconocimiento internacional antes de 2001, sólo el 25 por ciento de sus recursos se adjudicaron a familias por debajo del nivel de pobreza. A ese nivel de rendimiento, se habrían tardado 24 años en eliminar el déficit de vivienda (Focus 2001). El MINVU estaba gastando más de la mitad de sus recursos en programas de construcción de vivienda directos y seguía funcionando como un banco, concediendo préstamos hipotecarios, aunque más del 70 por ciento de los pagos estaban vencidos (División Técnica 2001).

Política de vivienda actual

Para mejorar el enfoque de su adjudicación de recursos, en 2002 el MINVU empezó la transformación más importante de su política de vivienda desde 1974. Al mismo tiempo, el MINVU dejó de conceder préstamos hipotecarios y abandonó la construcción directa de viviendas. En 2004, el 96 por ciento de los recursos se dedicaba a programas de subsidio y sólo el 4 por ciento a programas de construcción. Los programas de vivienda más importantes para familias urbanas según esta nueva política de vivienda se describen aquí.

Para los residentes más pobres, el MINVU creó un programa de subsidio llamado Fondo Solidario de Vivienda (Financiación para Viviendas Cooperativas) con un subsidio inicial de US$8.400 por hogar. Los solicitantes necesitan tener US$300 en ahorros y deben presentar una propuesta de vivienda específica. El subsidio cubre el costo del suelo, la infraestructura y una unidad de aproximadamente 33 metros cuadrados que contenga cuarto de baño, cocina, espacio multiuso y dormitorio. Esto se considera como la primera fase de una vivienda que se construirá paulatinamente con el tiempo. El permiso de construcción municipal está aprobado de antemano suponiendo una ampliación de la unidad a un mínimo de 51 metros cuadrados.

Las familias deben hacer las solicitudes en grupos organizados de al menos 10 hogares y con el apoyo de una organización gestora, que puede ser una municipalidad, una organización no gubernamental o una firma de consultoría registrada en el MINVU. El ministerio ya no decide dónde y qué construir, ya que los grupos familiares presentan sus proyectos y el MINVU selecciona los mejores desde los criterios de desarrollo social de diseño y urbanístico. La organización gestora recibe los fondos para desarrollar el proyecto, implementar un plan de acción social y ayudar a las familias con apoyo técnico para ampliar sus unidades.

Las familias no reciben ningún otro subsidio para la ampliación, pero como no tienen que pagar una hipoteca pueden ahorrar para financiar los materiales y la mano de obra requeridos. El nuevo programa es flexible y también acepta proyectos que comprenden la compra de viviendas existentes o construcciones en espacios abiertos existentes dentro de una parcela para aumentar la densidad de las viviendas.

El mecanismo de selección beneficia a las personas que compran viviendas usadas por sobre las que compran viviendas nuevas. El objetivo era abrir un nuevo mercado para el sector de ingresos muy bajos, haciendo posible que compraran las viviendas que habían sido construidas por el gobierno durante los 30 años anteriores. Esta política también está considerada como una solución a los problemas tradicionales asociados con la mudanza de familias a nuevos proyectos urbanos en la periferia de las ciudades, lejos de redes sociales y laborales y más costosas a la hora de desplazarse al trabajo. Este programa se concentra en las personas que viven por debajo del nivel de pobreza (aproximadamente 632.000 hogares en Chile, equivalente al 19 por ciento de la población). Se han concedido casi 30.000 subsidios de esta clase al año desde 2002.

El segundo programa de subsidios fue diseñado para personas de bajos ingresos por encima del nivel de pobreza que eran los consumidores principales de los anteriores proyectos de vivienda desarrollados por el MINVU hasta 2001. Los subsidios pueden usarse para comprar viviendas nuevas o existentes o para construir una vivienda en su propio suelo. El subsidio es de US$4.500 para viviendas que cuestan US$9.000 o menos y disminuye linealmente hasta US$2.700 para viviendas hasta un límite de precio de US$18.000. Se han concedido casi 40.000 viviendas anualmente bajo este programa.

Debido a las mejoras de crédito ofrecidas por el MINVU, seis bancos privados firmaron acuerdos para conceder préstamos hipotecarios para viviendas con un valor inferior a US$18.000. Esta política fue capaz de reducir los requisitos de alquiler y permitir a los trabajadores informales reunir las condiciones necesarias para obtener préstamos hipotecarios. Para reducir los índices de morosidad, los préstamos requerían un seguro contra incendios y desempleo o la muerte de la persona. Se incluyen tres mejoras de crédito en los acuerdos del MINVU con los bancos.

1. Subsidio para costos de cierre: se da al banco una cantidad fija entre US$300 (si el costo de la vivienda es de US$9.000 o menos) y US$120 (para valores de la vivienda de hasta US$18.000) por cada préstamo concedido para financiar una vivienda subsidiada.

2. Subsidio implícito: el MINVU garantiza que el préstamo se venda en el mercado secundario al 100 por cien de su valor nominal. Si no ocurre esto, el MINVU paga la diferencia al banco.

3. Seguro contra impago: en caso de ejecución de hipoteca, el MINVU garantiza que el banco recuperará el saldo de la deuda y el costo de los trámites legales. Contrariamente a los préstamos de la FHA en EE. UU., la ejecución hipotecaria la realiza el emisor del préstamo, no el MINVU.

Algunos distritos temían que los subsidios se asignarían sólo al límite superior del precio permitido y que el mercado no proporcionaría ni vivienda ni crédito por viviendas de menos de US$15.000. Los resultados mostraron que la progresividad de los subsidios era suficiente para estimular el mercado a todos los niveles de precios enfocados por el subsidio (ver Figura 7.1.3.1 en archivo anexo).

El tercer tipo de subsidio es para viviendas entre 18.000 y 30.000 dólares estadounidenses para promover unidades para ingresos mixtos en proyectos de vivienda privados. Sólo se han concedido 6.500 subsidios de esta clase al año. El subsidio ofrece un capital inicial de US$2.700, pero las mejoras de crédito se eliminaron porque muchos bancos privados ya estaban originando préstamos hipotecarios en esta gama de precios.

Las tres últimas partes del estudio analizan (1) temas clave para generar una política de vivienda habilitadora de mercados, incluidos los costos de transacción, acceso a financiación bancaria, ahorros para viviendas y apoyo a familias para que puedan aprovecharse de los subsidios; (2) el impacto de los programas de vivienda en los ingresos familiares y la distribución de la renta nacional; y (3) lecciones sobre las finanzas de las viviendas aprendidas de la experiencia de Chile en los últimos 30 años o más.

Conclusión

Mi estudio analiza la política de vivienda chilena desde 1974, para entender mejor cómo se hizo posible incorporar la participación del sector privado y mejorar el énfasis en la asignación de recursos al sector más pobre. El estudio explora las decisiones tomadas, tanto las buenas como las malas, en los últimos 30 años, y particularmente en los tres últimos años, e identifica las funciones de diferentes actores sociales y económicos en el proceso. Los primeros resultados son alentadores. Al usar el mismo presupuesto para subsidios en cada uno de los cuatro últimos años, el MINVU aumentó al 57 por ciento el número de familias de los tres tramos de ingresos más pobres que se han beneficiado de subsidios de vivienda del gobierno (ver Figura 7.1.3.2 en archivo anexo).

A pesar del gran avance en viviendas sociales en Chile, quedan muchas tareas por hacer. Un informe del MINVU estima un déficit de vivienda de 543.000 unidades en 2000 y sugiere que se necesitan 96.000 unidades de vivienda nuevas cada año simplemente para satisfacer la demanda de familias nuevas (Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo de Chile 2004).

Los efectos en términos del uso del suelo también son notables. Hasta 2001, todas las unidades de vivienda construidas para familias de bajos ingresos en el área de Santiago fueron desarrolladas por el MINVU en nuevos proyectos de relleno en la periferia de la ciudad. El programa de Financiación para la Vivienda Cooperativa, establecido en 2003, alentó la adquisición de viviendas existentes y aumentó la densidad de las viviendas dentro de áreas ya urbanizadas. Como consecuencia, el porcentaje de estos tipos de viviendas empezó a aumentar considerablemente, de cero en 2001 al 23 por ciento en 2003 y hasta el 63 por ciento en 2004, con una disminución correspondiente del porcentaje de nuevas unidades de relleno desarrolladas en la periferia.

Chile tardó más de 28 años en implementar completamente la política de vivienda de habilitación de mercados. Espero que este estudio pueda ayudar a otros países a formular sus políticas de vivienda, de modo que todos los ciudadanos, sin importar su condición socioeconómica, pueden tener la oportunidad de ser propietarios de un hogar decente.

Mario Navarro fue director de la política de vivienda en el Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo de Chile (MINVU) de 2000 a 2004. De 2004 a 2005 fue Loeb Fellow en Harvard y Visiting Fellow en el Lincoln Institute.

Referencias

Angel, S. 2000. Housing policy matters: A global analysis. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

División Técnica de Estudio y Fomento Habitacional. 2001. Informe de gestión: Diciembre de 2000. Santiago, Chile: Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo.

Gilbert, A. 2002. Power, ideology and the Washington consensus: The development and spread of the Chilean housing policy. Housing Studies 17(2): 305–324.

———. 2004. Helping the poor through housing subsidies: Lessons from Chile, Colombia and South Africa. Habitat International 28(1): 13.

Gonzáles Arrieta, G. 1997. Acceso a la vivienda y subsidios directos a la demanda: Análisis y lecciones de las experiencias latinoamericanas. Serie Financiamiento del Desarrollo (63).

Kimm, P. 1986. Evolving shelter policies for developing countries. Second International Shelter Conference, Viena, Austria.

Mayo, S. 1999. Subsidies in housing. Washington, DC: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo.

Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo de Chile. 2004. El déficit habitacional en Chile: Medición de los requerimientos de vivienda y su distribución espacial. Santiago, Chile: Política Habitacional y Planificación (321).

Rojas, E., Jacobs, M., and Savedoff, W. 1999. Operational guidelines for housing: Urban development and housing policy. Washington, DC: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo.

World Bank. 1993. Housing: Enabling markets to work. Washington, DC: Banco Mundial.

The community land trust (CLT) is one mechanism that addresses the need for affordable housing, and it also can be considered an institutional mechanism for capturing socially produced land value.

Faculty profile of Ming Zhang

Sustaining local communities will require mechanisms to envision and plan for the future and to engage residents in the process. Scenario planning is an increasingly effective way to address these efforts, and Western Lands and Communities, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s joint venture with the Sonoran Institute, is working to advance the necessary tools.

Scenario Planning to Address Uncertainty

Land use decisions and planning efforts are critical as communities look 20 to 50 years into the future to guide policy choices and public investments that are sustainable across economic, social, and environmental dimensions. As uncertainty increases and available resources decrease, it becomes ever more important to consider the full range of emerging conditions and to strive to ensure our ability to respond to those changes, adopt policies, and pursue investments that will be resilient across a variety of potential futures.

Key areas of uncertainty include population and demographic changes, economic trends, climatic variability and change, resource costs and availability, land markets, housing preferences, housing affordability, and the fiscal health of local governments. Simultaneous with increasing uncertainty and decreasing resources, or perhaps in part because of them, decision makers face conflicting perspectives on desired futures and on the role of government in providing services and infrastructure as well as regulation and planning.

Increased polarization means that more civic engagement and an informed and supportive public are needed to ensure stable policies and adequate investments in a community’s future. Scenario planning offers a mechanism to address these needs and issues of potential uncertainty and conflict. Fortunately, as the scope and complexity of planning and the demand for broader engagement have increased, advances in computing power and public access to technology are making new and more powerful tools available.

The Lincoln Institute has a long history of supporting the development of planning tools and publishing the results (Hopkins and Zapata 2007; Campoli and MacLean 2007; Brail 2008; Kwartler and Longo 2008; Condon, Cavens, and Miller 2009). This article covers lessons learned from the use of scenario planning tools in several projects undertaken by Western Lands and Communities (WLC), as well as mechanisms to expand their application.

Superstition Vistas

Superstition Vistas is a 275-square-mile expanse of vacant state-owned trust land on the urbanizing edge of the Phoenix metropolitan area (figure 1). State trust lands such as this site in Arizona are key to future growth patterns because the state owns 60 percent of the available land in the path of development. Colorado and New Mexico to a lesser degree face similar opportunities with their state trust lands (Culp, Laurenzi, and Tuell 2006). Creative thinking about the future of Superstition Vistas began to gain momentum in 2003, and the Lincoln Institute, through the WLC joint venture, was an early proponent of these efforts (Propst 2008).

Initial WLC objectives for Superstition Vistas scenario planning included capacity building, tool development, and opportunities to catalyze a planning process. More specifically, we sought to:

• look at the land in a bold, holistic, and comprehensive manner;
• advance the Arizona State Land Department’s capacity to conduct large-scale planning and establish an example for other state land agencies facing urban growth opportunities;
• design a model sustainable development;
• advance scenario planning tools and illustrate their use;
• catalyze and inform debates about modernizing state trust land planning and development management; and
• stimulate a larger discussion about the Arizona Sun Corridor megaregion.

WLC, along with regional partnerships, neighboring jurisdictions, the regional electric and water utility, two private hospital providers, and a local mining company, formed the Superstition Vistas (SV) Steering Committee to advance the planning effort, secure funding, and hire a consulting team. The consultants, working with the committee over a three-year period, conducted extensive public outreach and values research, assembled data on Superstition Vistas, developed and refined a series of alternative land use scenarios for the development of a community of 1 million residents, evaluated the impacts of the different scenarios, and produced a composite scenario for the site.

The Arizona State Land Department (the landowner) adapted the consultants’ work to prepare a draft conceptual plan for Superstition Vistas in May 2011 and submitted a proposed comprehensive plan amendment to Pinal County. The county is now considering the proposed amendment and its Board of Supervisors is expected to act in late 2011.

Sustainability Lessons

The scenario analysis, utilizing enhancements supported by WLC, identified the most important factors in shaping development patterns and potential conflicts among desired outcomes (figure 2). The inclusion of individual building and infrastructure costs for the alternative scenarios facilitated examining the sensitivity of varying these key factors and the cost effectiveness of four increasing levels of energy and water efficiency in each building type.

The scenarios also examined the impact of urban form on vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Scenario model outputs included land use indicators, energy and water use, VMT, carbon emissions, and construction costs. This analysis revealed the “low-hanging fruit” for sustainability improvements. The consulting team, working with the Steering Committee, identified a number of lessons that illustrate the value of scenario planning tools and can be applied to other efforts to design more sustainable and efficient urban areas (Superstition Vistas Consulting Team 2011).

1. Create mixed-use centers to reduce travel times, energy use, and the carbon footprint. Mixed-use centers along public transportation routes and close to homes and neighborhoods are one of the most effective ways to reduce travel times, energy use, and the resulting carbon footprint. Smaller homes, more compact forms of urban development, and multimodal transportation systems all create similar benefits (figure 3). However, the scenario modeling for Superstition Vistas demonstrated that mixed-use centers would be substantially more important than increased density in affecting transportation choices, energy use, and the carbon footprint.

2. Foster upfront investments and high-quality jobs to catalyze economic success. A strong local economy and a diverse balance of nearby jobs, housing, and shops are critical for a sustainable community, especially when high-quality jobs are provided at the beginning of development. Significant upfront public investment and public-private partnerships can supply critical infrastructure and have an enormous impact on shaping development and increasing the value of state trust land. State owned trust land could also provide unique opportunities for patient capital, with enhanced trust land management authorities providing access to resources for upfront capital investment and the ability to recapture these investments when the land is sold or leased later at a higher value.

3. Provide multimodal transportation infrastructure and regional connections to facilitate efficient growth. Another critical step is determining how to phase transportation improvements as the region grows and the market can support increased services. Phased components may include buses first, then Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), with rights-of-way set aside for eventual commuter or light-rail corridors. Identifying and building multimodal transportation corridors and infrastructure prior to sales for residential and commercial development should establish the cohesiveness of the entire area and enable the evolution to more capital-intensive transportation infrastructure as the community matures.

4. Design efficient buildings that save water and energy resources and reduce the community’s carbon footprint. Incorporating construction costs and return on investment (ROI) data in resource planning allows for financial feasibility and cost-benefit calculations. The consulting team modeled four levels of water and energy use (baseline, good, better, best) for each scenario and building type. Results demonstrated that investments in energy efficiency would be better spent on residential than commercial and industrial buildings. An additional finding showed that building centralized renewable power generation may be a better investment than extreme conservation.

5. Offer housing choices that meet the needs of a diverse population. Ensuring a viable community means meeting the needs of all potential residents with a broad variety of development types and prices that local workers can afford and that allow for adjustments under future market conditions.

6. Incorporate flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. A challenge for large-scale master plans that will take shape in multiple phases over 50 years or more is how to plan so the development itself can evolve and even redevelop over time. Plan implementation needs to include mechanisms to limit future NIMBY (not in my back yard) problems for necessary infill and redevelopment projects.

Procedural Lessons

The visioning process for Superstition Vistas involved planning a completely new city or region of communities in a vacant area with a single public landowner and no existing population. Given the recent economic downturn, as well as the limited capacity of the state agency to bring land to market, development of this area will likely be postponed for a number of years. Despite these particular conditions, procedural lessons learned in the project to date are relevant to other long-term and large-scale efforts, and to the expanded use of scenario planning for community decision making in general.

Agreed-upon procedures and planning processes become increasingly important as the planning and development time period grows and the number of stakeholders increases. Significant changes in participants, perspectives, and external factors, such as the recent collapse of the development economy, should be expected in any long-term, multiparty project. Such challenges need to be considered and incorporated into project tasks.

1. Design for change. Long-term projects need to accommodate changes in stakeholders, decision makers, and even political perspectives during the course of planning and implementation. Projects would benefit enormously from anticipating such changes, agreeing on mechanisms to transfer knowledge to new participants, establishing certain criteria and decisions that new stakeholders would be expected to follow, understanding how to deal with political or market conditions that will change, and building resiliency for such factors into the alternative scenarios themselves.

2. Consider governance. This is an issue for planning and implementation efforts and for the political decision-making structure of a new community. In building a new city it is important to consider how to create a governance system capable of implementing a consistent, comprehensive vision for a community that does not yet exist.

3. Incorporate new community designs into local and regional comprehensive plans. It is also critical to consider how a project at the scale of Superstition Vistas, with up to 1 million residents and a buildout plan of 50 years or more, can be incorporated into the framework of a typical county comprehensive plan. Scenarios and visions must reflect ideas and plans that local jurisdictions will be politically willing and administratively able to incorporate into their planning processes.

4. Phase development. Communities need to establish mechanisms that allow the adoption of a long-term buildout vision and then incorporate a series of flexible and adaptable phased plans to implement that vision in appropriate stages.

5. Plan for market changes. Market conditions, housing preferences, and employment opportunities will evolve, and large-scale projects with creative and compelling visions may even create their own demand. No one knows what future markets may offer, so consideration of alternative markets and adaptable community designs are critical. Projected housing mixes and estimates of development absorption need to be flexible and not based only on current preferences and trends.

6. Connect to common values. Demonstrating how development proposals connect to common visions and values that are shared and stable over time is also important. For Superstition Vistas, values such as an opportunity for healthy lifestyles and choices for residents across the socioeconomic spectrum were found to be broadly accepted. Planners also need to recognize values that are more controversial or may be transient and likely to change.

Challenges and Opportunities

The WLC experience in planning for Superstition Vistas has been successful in several respects. The community came together through the Steering Committee to develop a consensus vision that represented multijurisdictional cooperation around sustainable “smart” growth. Neighboring communities, at the request of the state land commissioner, deferred any consideration of annexation. In addition, the Arizona State Land Department developed a plan for a geographic scale, time horizon, and level of comprehensiveness well beyond anything attempted previously. However, the proposed comprehensive plan amendment for Superstition Vistas is at best a first step toward a vision for a community of up to 1 million people.

The Arizona State Land Department has been unable, at least so far, to push the envelope very far on new and more creative ways to conceptualize large-scale developments that could enhance the economic value of state trust lands and improve regional urban form. The recent collapse of land and housing markets throughout the country has also impacted this project and local perceptions of future growth potential. Since the overall effort to conceptualize and implement development plans for Superstition Vistas is just beginning, initial on-the-ground development is not expected for at least a decade. There will be multiple opportunities to build on these planning efforts to bring bolder and more comprehensive visions forward as the real estate economy recovers and the land becomes ripe for development.

Scenario planning and effective visualizations become both more important and more challenging to achieve when conducting larger and longer-term visioning exercises. Visualizations that provide compelling depictions of activity centers and higher-density, mixed-use neighborhoods can help to gain public acceptance. Effective mechanisms are also needed to convey to current participants that the planning process is imagining community characteristics and housing and lifestyle preferences for their grandchildren or great-grandchildren many years in the future.

As noted earlier, upfront investments in transportation, economic development, education, and utility services can significantly shape a community, serve as a catalyst for higher-level employment, and earn high returns. To achieve this potential, mechanisms are needed to facilitate these investments, whether on private lands or state trust lands. Continued work on the contributory value of land conservation, infrastructure investment, planning, and ecosystem services, as well as the integration of this information into scenario planning, would greatly aid efforts to address uncertainty and advance community sustainability.

Other Projects and Lessons Learned

WLC conducted three additional demonstration projects to further enhance scenario planning tools and apply them in different situations.

Gallatin County, Montana

Sonoran Institute staff worked with Montana State University (MSU) to engage local stakeholders in a workshop where each of four teams produced scenarios for concentrating projected growth within the currently developed “triangle” region of Bozeman, Belgrade, and Four Corners. This effort successfully integrated Envision Tomorrow scenario planning with housing unit projections from the Sonoran Institute’s Growth Model and demonstrated the value of ROI tools as a reality check on proposed land use and building types. The project also demonstrated the value of scenario planning to local experts.

Lessons learned include recognizing that (1) for many participants working with paper maps was more intuitive that the touch screen technology we had employed; (2) additional information on land characteristics, such as soil productivity and habitat values, should be used in preparing growth scenarios; and (3) more effective techniques are needed to visualize the density and design of different land use types, as well as to incorporate political and market realities that are not typically captured with scenario planning tools.

Products from this Montana project will include the creation of a library of regionally appropriate building types for use with ROI and scenario modeling and a report examining the costs and benefits, including sustainability impacts, of directing future growth to the triangle area of Gallatin Valley. With WLC support MSU has been able to incorporate the use of scenario planning tools in its graduate program.

Garfield County, Colorado

Sonoran Institute’s Western Colorado Legacy Area office, with support from the Lincoln Institute, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and other local contributors, utilized the Envision Tomorrow tool in a new way to advance implementation of previously adopted plans calling for mixed-use infill and redevelopment in target growth areas. This project focused on stakeholder education regarding the mechanisms necessary to implement recently adopted comprehensive plans calling for town-centered development, rather than on scenario generation for a comprehensive plan.

Examination of policy and market feasibility for redevelopment in downtown Rifle, Colorado, was one of three separate efforts undertaken. The City of Rifle project successfully utilized an ROI tool to identify financial and regulatory factors that could impact revitalization efforts and engaged the key parties necessary for implementation, including property owners, developers, realtors, planning commissioners, local officials, state transportation representatives, and local staff.

Among the lessons learned from this project was the importance of grounding bold visions with market reality. For example, previous planning efforts in Rifle had focused on six-to-eight-story mixed-use buildings, but in the current market even three-to-four-story projects are not considered feasible (figure 4c). Most attention now is given to two-story mixed-use projects and townhomes. Visualizations for an underutilized parcel in the center of town illustrated the type of one-story option that may be most feasible for initial commercial development (figure 4b). Constraints related to parking requirements and high minimum lot coverage requirements were also identified as limits on investment. In addition to pinpointing changes in Rifle’s building code, these findings spurred discussion about the role of public-private partnerships in catalyzing downtown development.

Morongo Basin, California

This area of high open space and wildlife habitat values between Joshua Tree National Park and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Southern California may be impacted by spillover from regional growth. This project with the Morongo Basin Open Space Group involves an innovative effort to link results from the ongoing conservation priority-setting efforts with both a GIS tool to analyze and predict how land use patterns impact wildlife habitat and the scenario planning capability of Envision Tomorrow.

We are evaluating the environmental impacts of the current and potential alternative development patterns and location-specific planning and land use options. The tools being developed for this effort will be useful to land trusts throughout the country that are interested in engaging partners on local and regional planning issues and incorporating larger landscape conservation and wildlife habitat goals into their projects.

Open Source Planning Tools

Western Lands and Communities has recently been focusing on efforts to develop open source planning tools as a mechanism to increase the use of scenario planning. Key factors that hinder their use include: (1) the cost and complexity of the tools themselves; (2) the cost and availability of data; (3) a lack of standardization, making integration of tools and data difficult; and (4) proprietary tools that may be difficult to adapt to local conditions and may impede innovation.

Proponents of open source modeling tools believe open and standardized coding will facilitate increased transparency and interoperability between models, ultimately resulting in faster innovation and greater utilization. As a result of our work with Envision Tomorrow on the Superstition Vistas project, WLC and other members of an open source planning tools group are continuing to advance scenario planning tools and pursue the promise of open source tools that can foster sustainable communities in many more locations.

About the Author

Jim Holway directs Western Lands and Communities, the Lincoln Institute’s joint venture with the Sonoran Institute, based in Phoenix, Arizona. He was previously assistant director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources and a professor of practice at Arizona State University.

References

Propst, Luther. 2008. A model for sustainable development in Arizona’s Sun Corridor. Land Lines 20(3).

Superstition Vistas Consulting Team. 2011. Superstition Vistas: Final report and strategic actions. www.superstition-vistas.org

Lincoln Institute Publications

Brail, Richard K. 2008. Planning support systems for cities and regions.

Campoli, Julie, and Alex S. MacLean. 2007. Visualizing density.

Condon, Patrick M., Duncan Cavens, and Nicole Miller. 2009. Urban planning tools for climate change mitigation.

Culp, Peter W., Andy Laurenzi, and Cynthia C. Tuell. 2006. State trust lands in the West: Fiduciary duty in a changing landscape.

Hopkins, Lewis D., and Marisa A. Zapata. 2007. Engaging the future: Forecasts, scenarios, plans, and projects.

Kwartler, Michael, and Gianni Longo. 2008. Visioning and visualization: People, pixels, and plans.

From its initial economic reform in 1978 through its liberalization of foreign investment and private sector development from the mid-1980s to the present, China’s major economic reforms have given priority to achieving a high rate of economic growth. The policies worked so well that China’s constant dollar GDP per capita grew nearly 10 percent a year from 1980 to 2010. This growth performance is unparalleled for a large country, but it has been accompanied by unaccounted-for costs, including the structural transformation of the economy, social adjustment and migration, and environmental degradation. A new Lincoln Institute book, China’s Environmental Policy and Urban Development, edited by Joyce Yanyun Man, addresses the last of these topics. It reports estimates from governmental agencies of undocumented environmental costs associated with economic production ranging from 9.7 percent of GDP in 1999 to 3 percent in 2004.

Economic growth in low-income countries is typically accompanied by environmental costs. This tradeoff is embodied in the “environmental Kuznets curve,” which postulates that environmental quality deteriorates with economic growth at low income levels and then improves with growth at higher income levels. Estimates of the environmental Kuznets curve for Chinese cities over the years 1997 to 2007 as reported in this book show that measures of industrial pollution in China declined as incomes increased over this period, indicating that cities with higher incomes experienced improvements in these measures of environmental quality as their incomes grew.

Several chapter authors argue that China’s environmental policies and performance are in transition. Environmental indicators are improving in response to new policies and regulations while economic growth continues. At the same time, there have been setbacks. For example, extreme events, such as this winter’s combination of extremely cold weather and atmospheric inversions in Beijing, produced very high levels of particulate concentrations in that city.

The logic behind the environmental Kuznets curve involves elements of both demand and supply. On the demand side, higher income populations have a growing appreciation for environmental amenities, and they advocate for environmental improvements. On the supply side, investment in new capacity uses modern equipment with more environmentally friendly processes and more affordable control technologies. China’s recent environmental improvements also stem from its strengthened environmental regulatory institutions. In 1982 the role of the Environmental Protection Agency was mainly advisory. It was transformed into a national agency in 1988, became the more independent State Environmental Protection Agency in 1998, and then was elevated as the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2008.

The growing influence of central environmental agencies has been accompanied by a change in the style of regulation. The earlier emphasis on command-and-control regulations (such as emission standards) was partially replaced by instruments based on economic incentives (such as taxes on inputs and a newly announced tax on carbon emissions). Research indicates that to date the commandand-control regulations generally have been more effective.

While central agencies set national standards, the responsibility for monitoring and enforcement was largely decentralized to municipal or metropolitan environmental bureaus. The performance of local managers is reviewed annually based on criteria that emphasize economic growth. Additional improvements in environmental outcomes may occur only when these criteria give greater weight to environmental improvements. For example, a rapid increase in the control of sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants followed the inclusion of reduced sulfur emissions as an annual performance criterion.

While China has much to do to reduce urban air pollution, clean up rivers and lakes, and improve energy efficiency, these objectives are becoming more important to its citizens. The increased availability of data on environmental indicators is stimulating the national dialogue on environmental quality. Professor Man’s new volume contributes to this dialogue by reporting on progress, identifying immediate challenges, and assessing new policies and regulatory approaches to environmental improvement.

Muchas áreas suburbanas de los Estados Unidos están mostrando signos de deterioro, con propiedades abandonadas, centros comerciales vacantes y espacios subutilizados. Estos paisajes han venido a caracterizar la expansión descontrolada: lugares construidos para el automóvil y a los que sólo se puede acceder por automóvil. Pero estos suburbios también tienen enormes oportunidades de reinvención creativa. Varias comunidades a lo largo del país están rediseñando la escala de sus suburbios para convertirlos en lugares animados y accesibles a peatones, construidos para la gente.

Los barrios suburbanos reorientados para peatones pueden prosperar y diversificarse para brindar un mayor respaldo a las economías locales, elevar los indicadores de calidad de vida, y mejorar las condiciones medioambientales locales y regionales. Incluso los suburbios deteriorados, plagados de estructuras en desuso y otras zonas muertas, tienen el potencial para generar nueva infraestructura de vivienda, acceso al transporte público, espacios abiertos y tiendas.

La Universidad de Utah estima que hay 1,1 millones de hectáreas de lotes de estacionamiento y otras áreas grises que están listas para ser revitalizadas, y medio millón de hectáreas están disponibles en áreas comerciales subutilizadas, como centros comerciales abiertos y tiendas vacantes (Dunham Jones y Williamson 2009). La transformación de estos paisajes va a ser una prioridad de planificación y desarrollo en los Estados Unidos en el siglo XXI.

Muchas ciudades están revitalizándose constantemente y capitalizando las recientes tendencias demográficas que respaldan dichos esfuerzos, pero las regiones económicamente robustas también necesitan comunidades suburbanas florecientes. Encuestas recientes realizadas por la Asociación Nacional de Corredores de Bienes Raíces y la Asociación Americana de Planificación han revelado que una mayoría de compradores potenciales prefiere vivir en barrios peatonales, con diversidad de tipos de vivienda y una mezcla de opciones residenciales, empresariales y comerciales. A medida que los “baby boomers” envejecen y la mayor parte de la generación del milenio ingresa en la adultez, una creciente cantidad de estadounidenses está dejando sus automóviles para vivir en entornos más céntricos y peatonales. En 2012, aproximadamente la mitad de la población prefería casas más pequeñas en barrios bien conectados con lugares para vivir, trabajar, hacer las compras y jugar (Asociación Nacional de Corredores de Bienes Raíces, 2011, Asociación Americana de Planificación, 2014).

A pesar de la creciente evidencia en favor de la revitalización urbana, muchos líderes locales no saben a ciencia cierta cómo empezar. Este artículo explora 10 maneras en que las comunidades de todo el país han reducido la escala de partes significativas de sus suburbios de expansión descontrolada para convertirlos en centros sociales florecientes.

1. Compartir una visión y elaborar un plan

Muchas comunidades comienzan por imaginar cómo quieren crecer y después elaboran un plan para concretar esa visión. ¿Los residentes quieren más viviendas, un centro de entretenimiento peatonal, un nuevo distrito de artes o una zona de agricultura urbana? ¿Es más importante aumentar la base gravable, reducir las víctimas mortales de peatones y de ciclistas, o aumentar el acceso a comida fresca? Las metas específicas ayudan a dirigir los esfuerzos de revitalización.

Los planes regionales y barriales hacen participar a los miembros de la comunidad en un diálogo sobre cómo aplicar las inversiones de infraestructura y aprovechar las oportunidades de revitalización a medida que aparecen. Los gobiernos locales pueden comenzar con un sitio pequeño —como un lote vacante o un edificio municipal— y, después de que dicho proyecto haya sido exitoso, continuar con más obras, generando el impulso necesario para rediseñar un barrio o corredor urbano entero, o incluso un sitio contaminado una vez que se haya limpiado. Un propósito compartido acerca de un lugar puede ser un incentivo poderoso para guiar el cambio en el futuro.

Considérese Midvale Slag y Sharon Steel, dos sitios contaminados adyacentes ubicados aproximadamente a 16 kilómetros al sur de Salt Lake City en Midvale, Utah. Ambos fueron descontaminados aproximadamente al mismo tiempo, pero sólo uno está prosperando.

En 2000, el Concejo Municipal de Midvale adoptó la “Evaluación de Reutilización y Plan de Ordenamiento de Bingham Junction” para el sitio de Midvale Slag, de 180 hectáreas de superficie. Los funcionarios municipales trabajaron con residentes, autoridades de la Agencia de Protección Ambiental (EPA) y otras partes interesadas para crear una estrategia de revitalización del sitio y convertirlo en un área de uso mixto comercial, residencial y recreativa. Ahora próspero, Bingham Junction creó aproximadamente 600 puestos de trabajo, 1,5 millones de dólares en ingresos anuales por el impuesto sobre la propiedad, y un aumento de 131 millones de dólares en el valor de las propiedades (EPA 2011). Las familias se han mudado a nuevos condominios, y se piensa construir 2.500 unidades residenciales más. También se han construido edificios de oficinas, un supermercado y otros almacenes, y la comunidad piensa desarro-llar hasta 200 mil metros cuadrados de oficinas comerciales y tiendas.

En contraste, el sitio de Sharon Steel, de 100 hectáreas, que no tenía un plan de revitalización ni una visión para el futuro, permanece vacante. Sin embargo, gracias al éxito de Bingham Junction, los funcionarios municipales han comenzado el proceso de planificación y construcción de visión en ese sitio.

2. Identificar activos

A muchos gobiernos locales les cuesta determinar dónde concentrar sus esfuerzos iniciales de planificación y construcción de visión. Los siguientes tipos de preguntas pueden ayudar a identificar qué tipos de activos aprovechar.

1. ¿Hay transporte público disponible? En caso afirmativo, ¿hay áreas subutilizadas cerca o inmediatamente adyacentes a paraderos de transporte que se podrían revitalizar para mejorar el acceso?

2. ¿En qué se invertirá el dinero de infraestructura existente? Por ejemplo, ¿en caminos, agua, alcantarillado, escuelas, estructuras cívicas, parques?

3. ¿Hay lotes de estacionamiento, edificios o centros comerciales vacantes o subutilizados cerca de estas inversiones de infraestructura?

4. ¿Cuáles de estas áreas tienen planes de revitalización o respaldo barrial para nuevos emprendimientos?

5. ¿Cuáles de estas áreas están cerca o adyacentes a otros activos públicos, como escuelas, biblio-tecas, parques o espacios abiertos?

6. ¿Algunos de estos sitios se pueden alinear con áreas de empleo existentes o emergentes?

7. ¿Algunas de estas propiedades están disponibles para ser revitalizadas? Es decir, ¿hay algún dueño dispuesto a colaborar con los objetivos y planes de revitalización de la comunidad?

Esta evaluación de propuestas no es un proceso lineal, paso por paso. A veces un sitio puede dejar de estar accesible de improviso, o se puede recibir un subsidio federal para convertir una carretera en una ruta principal. En otras situaciones, un dueño quizás no tenga voluntad para cooperar, o un sitio puede considerarse no apto. De todas maneras, una evaluación de las condiciones existentes puede ayudar a identificar sitios potenciales o barrios prioritarios.

3. Aprovechar las inversiones en infraestructura

Para atraer inversiones privadas y nuevos emprendimientos, los gobiernos locales pueden realizar inversiones públicas significativas, ya sea modernizando la infraestructura existente o invirtiendo en infraestructura nueva. Muchas ciudades y pueblos aprovechan la oportunidad para realizar inversiones de infraestructura en barrios que quieren revitalizar. Las investigaciones han demostrado que al aprovechar las inversiones públicas, las comunidades pueden aumentar el valor del suelo de un 70 a un 300 por ciento, estimulando al mismo tiempo las inversiones privadas, el capital social, el turismo y la actividad comercial un promedio del 30 por ciento (Litman 2010). También pueden alcanzar objetivos de planeación y revitalización reformando espacios públicos comunitarios para aumentar su valor compartido.

Norman, Oklahoma, ubicada aproximadamente 40 kilómetros al sur de Oklahoma City, es una obra interesante en curso. El pueblo tenía 27 millones de dólares para mejorar el flujo de tráfico y aumentar la seguridad en un segmento de siete cuadras de una calle que cruzaba la típica línea de tiendas de un distrito, con grandes lotes de estacionamiento a ambos lados de la calle. El pueblo se unió para ver cómo utilizar este dinero para realizar mejoras de mayor alcance en el paisaje vial, junto con las mejoras de seguridad necesarias. Empresarios, funcionarios universitarios y líderes locales se unieron para participar en planes estratégicos de ecología urbana y ver cómo se podría crear un área comercial peatonal.

Las municipalidades también pueden aprovechar las inversiones de capital para alcanzar otros objetivos comunitarios. Con recursos cada vez más escasos, los gobiernos locales no pueden ya darse el lujo de invertir en infraestructura con un objetivo único. Por ejemplo, la ciudad de Lenexa, Kansas (un suburbio de Kansas City), se propuso ser una comunidad más sostenible y vivible, y usó proyectos de infraestructura verde para alcanzar esta meta. Usando fondos de la Ley de Recuperación y Reinversión Americana, los funcionarios municipales implementaron una serie de mejoras en las bocas del alcantarillado a nivel vial que satisficieron objetivos claves de planeación y revitalización urbana, como la creación de espacios abiertos y el fomento de actividad peatonal, al mismo tiempo que resolvían los problemas del desagüe de la aguas pluviales.

4. Alinear códigos y ordenanzas

Algunos de los mayores impedimentos para el rediseño de los entornos suburbanos son los códigos y ordenanzas anticuadas e incoherentes. Estas regulaciones para el desarrollo del suelo —desde ordenanzas de zonificación a normas viales, requisitos de estacionamiento, cobertura de predios y límites de altura— son con frecuencia responsables de los patrones existentes de transporte y uso del suelo, y conforman la estructura legal por defecto de todos los emprendimientos nuevos. La consecuencia es que la construcción de un barrio peatonal de uso mixto es frecuentemente ilegal, y el emprendedor tiene que solicitar exenciones o permisos especiales, que pueden generar incertidumbre y demoras en el proceso de desarrollo o desalentar por completo los proyectos de revitalización.

Los estudios han demostrado que el respaldo gubernamental al desarrollo en las áreas de interés es el mejor predictor de inversiones privadas (Hook et al. 2013). Una de las maneras más fáciles de apoyar un crecimiento nuevo es cambiar los códigos y ordenanzas para legalizar los emprendimientos con acceso peatonal. Los nuevos códigos se pueden incorporar a una zona de actividad superpuesta o un plan barrial, para permitir el tipo de construcción necesario para transformar un área.

Hay una serie de recursos disponibles para ayudar a los gobiernos locales a determinar dónde y cómo cambiar sus códigos, como SmartCode (www.smartcodecentral.org), códigos basados en formularios (http://formbasedcodes.org), los códigos inteligentes de la Asociación Americana de Planificación: Regulación de desarrollo modelo de suelo (https://www.planning.org/research/smartgrowth), o la serie Essential Fixes (Correcciones esenciales) de la EPA (www.epa.gov/dced/essential_fixes.htm).

Por ejemplo, Columbia Pike en Arlington, Virginia, un corredor urbano de 5 kilómetros de longitud al que se llega cruzando el río Potomac desde el centro de Washington, DC, fue revitali-zado a escala peatonal después de que el condado modificó los códigos y ordenanzas de desarrollo subyacentes. En Columbia Pike, ubicada en un condado urbano que creció de forma explosiva en décadas recientes, el desarrollo y la inversión habían sido, por el contrario, mínimas en los últimos 30 años. A finales de la década de 1990, los líderes del condado crearon un código basado en formularios para fomentar una revitalización del corredor orientada al transporte público y el tránsito peatonal. El código es un código optativo (también conocido como código paralelo); la zonificación subyacente permanece activa, pero su uso es alentado por procedimientos de revisión y aprobación rápida. Desde la adopción del código en 2003, se han construido en la zona de Columbia Pike 1.000 unidades de vivienda nuevas y 22.297 metros cuadrados de edificación comercial, y se han aprobado 600 unidades de vivienda nuevas y 2016 metros cuadrados de edificación comercial.

5. Diseñar bien las calles

Para cualquier esfuerzo de revitalización, la red vial de la comunidad es fundamental. Los suburbios típicos tienen carriles anchos y de alta velocidad, diseñados para que los automóviles se puedan desplazar eficientemente por la zona. Pero el interés principal de todo esfuerzo de rediseño urbano debería ser el de posibilitar el desplazamiento a la gente y no los automóviles por un área. Este objetivo se puede lograr construyendo aceras anchas y atractivas, instalando carriles y estacionamiento para bicicletas, creando zonas de aislamiento entre la gente y el tránsito vehicular; desarrollando lugares atractivos para caminar; y diseñando cruces viales seguros. Las calles bien concebidas también pueden desencadenar inversiones y el proceso de revitalización. Sin embargo, en muchas comunidades suburbanas, que tienden a ser menos competitivas, el sector público quizás tenga que catalizar el crecimiento con inversiones iniciales de respaldo de infraestructura y equipamiento para atraer fondos privados.

Por ejemplo, Lancaster, California, una ciudad de tamaño mediano a 100 kilómetros al norte de Los Ángeles, transformó una arteria de cinco carriles en una calle comercial invirtiendo en una serie de mejoras viales. Estrecharon y redujeron la cantidad de carriles de tránsito, y agregaron estacionamiento en la calle y vegetación vial, lo cual redujo el tráfico de 60 kilómetros por hora a 25 kilómetros por hora. La inversión de 11,5 millones de dólares de la ciudad atrajo más de 300 millones de dólares en inversiones privadas.

6. Diseñar bien el estacionamiento

El estacionamiento es un problema para cualquier emprendimiento, pero es particularmente problemático en áreas suburbanas donde la comunidad está tratando de eliminar su dependencia del automóvil. La creencia popular es que el estacionamiento es esencial para la supervivencia de las tiendas; por lo tanto, muchas áreas suburbanas tienen un exceso de oferta de estacionamiento, debido a los distintos requisitos de código, diseño o financiamiento. Pero todo esfuerzo exitoso para rediseñar un suburbio requiere que los planifica-dores sopesen las necesidades de estacionamiento actuales con una visión creativa para un futuro menos dependiente del automóvil.

Las comunidades pueden evaluar cuánto estacionamiento es necesario y explorar modos alternativos de satisfacerlo colocando lugares de estacionamiento en la calle, permitiendo el estacionamiento compartido, o desvinculando los espacios de estacionamiento de las unidades de vivienda (EPA 2006). Para promover un entorno vial atrac-tivo para los peatones, es fundamental eliminar o reducir el estacionamiento de superficie, o colocarlo detrás de las áreas de tiendas. Los proyectos de revitalización más grandes quizás requieran un garaje de estacionamiento, pero debería estar ubicado en la parte trasera del sitio y no inmediatamente adyacente a otras oportunidades de tránsito. Es cada vez más común “envolver” el garaje de estacionamiento con unidades de viviendas más pequeñas u oficinas, para poder proporcionar estacionamiento sin interrumpir el paisaje vial.

A medida que el barrio reduce su dependencia del automóvil, puede reconvertir los garajes de estacionamiento incorporando jardines comunitarios en los pisos superiores o creando espacio de alquiler económico para empresas nacientes en los pisos inferiores. Una comunidad de Albany, Nueva York, transformó un viejo garaje de estacionamiento y concesionaria de automóviles en condominios de lujo.

Al planificar para usos futuros, un barrio puede mantener los espacios de estacionamiento que necesita ahora y permitir que el área evolucione, sin perder las inversiones iniciales efectuadas durante el proceso de revitalización. Los gobiernos locales también pueden modificar los códigos de zonificación y edificación para demandar que los constructores de garajes cumplan con requisitos mínimos de adaptabilidad (Jaffe 2013).

7. Agregar más zonas verdes

Los paisajes suburbanos se han descrito como “hostiles” o “insalubres” debido a sus amplias zonas subutilizadas, dominadas por superficies pavimentadas. Pero muchas comunidades están recuperando la naturaleza en estos entornos edificados, y transformando las calles y los pasajes que se encuentran entre un edificio y otro en zonas peatonales atractivas y florecientes.

Los árboles, las plantas, los espacios verdes abiertos y caminos recreativos ofrecen un descanso a la gente, proporcionan áreas de reunión social, mejoran las condiciones medioambientales y crean paisajes viales más habitables (Benfield 2014). Los sitios suburbanos pueden facilitar la integración de espacios verdes en nuevos proyectos de desarrollo porque frecuentemente tienen más acceso al suelo y flexibilidad que las áreas urbanas. Como inversión pública, el espacio verde también puede atraer iniciativas de desarrollo privado.

Los espacios verdes se pueden incorporar a tres niveles: en una región, en un barrio o en cada sitio individual. A escala de sitio, las municipalidades están comenzando a usar infraestructura verde para controlar las aguas lluvias, absorbiéndola en el suelo o captándola para usarla más adelante. Estas estrategias crean lugares más bellos, aumentan la seguridad peatonal, reducen la velocidad del tráfico, controlan los caudales de agua y generan apoyo popular para crear un sistema de gestión de aguas pluviales más efectivo. (Al igual que los baches, una alcantarilla visiblemente tapada al nivel de la calle probablemente genere más llamadas al municipio que una fuga en una tubería subterránea invisible). Las soluciones a nivel de sitio también pueden crear el impulso para una transformación suburbana de mayor escala, creando al mismo tiempo espacios públicos bulliciosos en antiguos lotes de estacionamiento, pasajes, edificios, áreas apaisajadas, techos o calles. Imagínense, por ejemplo, un mar de vegetación en cascada descendiendo del techo de un garaje de estacionamiento, o una plaza peatonal con macetas, árboles, mesas y sillas en una sección de un antiguo lote de estacionamiento.

A nivel regional y de barrio, los espacios verdes pueden conectar áreas naturales con tierras de cultivo y al mismo tiempo ofrecer funciones ecológicas críticas. Además, estas conexiones pueden dar soporte a caminos y senderos de uso múltiple, corredores de hábitats y otros “dedos verdes” integrados en la región. Los enfoques regionales se concentran en el movimiento de vida silvestre, gente y recursos naturales, como el agua. Las estrategias barriales se enfocan en conexiones con redes regionales más grandes, creando lugares interconectados de reunión pública, espacios abiertos, caminos coordinados de uso múltiple, y una red de infraestructura para bicicletas.

La revitalización del aeropuerto Stapleton en las afueras de Denver, Colorado, incorporó espacios verdes a nivel regional y barrial. Aproximadamente un tercio de sus 2.000 hectáreas se ha destinado a nuevos parques y espacios abiertos para las 12.000 unidades residenciales del proyecto. Cada casa se encuentra a 10 minutos de caminata de un espacio abierto. Los componentes centrales son el Central Park de 32 hectáreas y el corredor Westerly Creek de 34 hectáreas. Se han plantado más de 27.000 árboles, y los 6 millones de toneladas de hormigón que anteriormente formaban parte de las pistas de aterrizaje del aeropuerto se han incorporado ahora a los nuevos parques que se crearon. Este proyecto de revitalización no sólo convirtió el aeropuerto en un próspero entorno peatonal, sino que también genera anualmente 22 millones de dólares en impuestos sobre la propiedad y 13 millones de dólares en ingresos por impuesto a las ventas (Swetlik 2013).

8. Cambiar el uso del suelo

Muchas áreas suburbanas están repletas de grandes almacenes abandonados o subutilizados, y centros comerciales anticuados. Al volver a utilizar estos edificios como bibliotecas, escuelas, viviendas y hasta iglesias, las comunidades pueden reactivar una zona muerta y crear demanda en ese lugar. También pueden prevenir o retrasar el patrón de expansión descontrolada, reduciendo la necesidad de construir nuevas grandes tiendas departamentales en parcelas sin desarrollar. Sin una estrategia de revitalización más amplia, sin embargo, el reúso de grandes tiendas departamentales no modificará el paisaje físico para permitir una actividad peatonal significativa.

Los emprendedores urbanos frecuentemente tienen que consolidar parcelas y negociar con múltiples dueños, especialmente en corredores con múltiples centros comerciales y tiendas minoristas de uso único. En consecuencia, muchos emprendedores prefieren los viejos centros comerciales, que en general tienen una superficie significativa, un solo dueño, caminos existentes, servicio de agua y alcantarillado y viviendas residenciales adyacentes. La megaestructura existente quizás se tenga que demoler y reemplazar por edificios de densidad moderada, una cuadrícula vial tradicional y una mezcla de uso comercial y residencial. Por ejemplo, el proyecto de revitalización de las 40 hectáreas del Belmar Mall en Lakewood, Colorado, reconectó la cuadrícula vial. Estas calles atractivas para el tránsito peatonal ahora tienen 1.300 viviendas nuevas, cien mil metros cuadrados de espacio comercial y 63.000 metros cuadrados de espacios de oficina. Este método ha creado un centro en muchas comunidades suburbanas, o una revitalización similar de gran escala en dichos sitios.

El proceso de transformación de un paisaje suburbano en un barrio floreciente y peatonal toma tiempo y puede requerir inversiones en infraestructura pública. Reconociendo esto, algunas municipalidades piensan realizar un proceso de revitalización por etapas en varias décadas, pero proporcionando fondos en forma inmediata para infraestructura que será aprovechada por las inversiones futuras. Un componente crítico de un desarrollo por etapas exitoso es un proceso de planificación y zonificación compatible por parte del gobierno local. Se pueden diseñar acuerdos de largo plazo para aumentar la densidad o realizar actividades de revitalización en gran escala en un período de tiempo en particular, permitiendo que se vaya construyendo la oferta y demanda en el mercado.

Un ejemplo de un desarrollo por etapas exitoso es Potomac Yards en Alexandria, Virginia. Este antiguo sitio industrial fue descontaminado en 1997 y desarrollado de acuerdo a la zonificación en vigor en ese momento, creando un centro comercial abierto tradicional. Los inquilinos firmaron contratos de alquiler por 15 años, un plazo normal en ese momento y lugar. En los años siguientes, los funcionarios municipales obtuvieron financiamiento para construir una nueva estación del metro en la parte trasera del centro comercial, y se construyeron también varios edificios residenciales de uso mixto y alta densidad. Como resultado, el valor del suelo en Potomac Yards aumentó significativamente. En 2010, el concejo municipal aprobó un plan de revitalización, que comenzará en 2017 y se sincronizará con la apertura de la parada del metro. El centro comercial abierto será demolido para dar lugar a un nuevo barrio peatonal de uso mixto con 650.000 metros cuadrados destinados a oficina, comercio y residencias.

9. Proporcionar un liderazgo catalizador

El rediseño de barrios suburbanos para uso peatonal requiere la coordinación y cooperación entre departamentos municipales que normalmente operan en forma independiente. Los departamentos de transporte administran los sistemas viales, los departamentos de vivienda se encargan de viviendas de interés social, y los departamentos de obras públicas construyen sistemas de alcantarillado. Pero no hay un único departamento que pueda implementar la compleja gama de estrategias y cambios físicos necesarios para transformar una subdivisión residencial de uso único o distrito comercial en un barrio peatonal de uso mixto.

El liderazgo catalizador se basa por partes iguales en mediación, facilitación y liderazgo. Se basa en respetar la metodología tradicional de cada departamento, reconociendo al mismo tiempo que no hay un departamento en particular que tenga todas las respuestas o datos para resolver ciertos problemas. El liderazgo catalizador puede generar la confianza y el respeto necesarios para promover enfoques más colaborativos e innovadores para superar los desafíos presentados por la construcción de espacios suburbanos. Es esencial para orquestar estos esfuerzos, mediar entre partes con distintas agendas, y alcanzar las metas deseadas a tiempo y dentro del presupuesto.

La revitalización exitosa del centro de Silver Spring, Maryland, se benefició de este tipo de liderazgo. El área había sido un centro de comercio minorista dinámico en los años de posguerra. Pero como muchos centros suburbanos, perdió gran parte de su vitalidad cuando aparecieron los centros comerciales cerrados en la década de 1970, y los intentos posteriores de recuperar la base comercial fracasaron. En 1996, el condado decidió revitalizar el área creando una comunidad orientada a los peatones, de uso mixto y con acceso a transporte público. El administrador del condado sabía que la lentitud del proceso de otorgamiento de permisos podría afectar el proyecto, así que creó un programa de reducción burocrática, recogiendo la opinión del personal local responsable de hacer cumplir los códigos de edificación y del sitio (construcción, electricidad, incendio, mecánica, accesibilidad, zonificación, carteles, gestión de sedimentos y aguas pluviales, revisión del plan de subdivisión, y códigos y normas de inspección). Los participantes, reunidos en mesas redondas, identificaron y resolvieron problemas interdepartamentales para los proyectos propuestos en la zona de revitalización. Al reunirse en un mismo lugar, los representantes de todos los departamentos pudieron superar las barreras de diseño, zonificación y códigos de manera más eficiente. Como resultado, Silver Spring ha transformado su paisaje suburbano en una comunidad floreciente, con más de 70.000 metros cuadrados de superficie comercial y de esparcimiento, 46.000 metros cuadrados de espacio de oficinas y casi 2.000 residencias.

10. Anticipar lo que viene

El proceso de rediseño de comunidades suburbanas puede ser largo y difícil, pero hay una serie de puntos de partida posibles, desde la creación de una visión y planes, hasta la realización de inversiones de infraestructura y la construcción del primer proyecto. Al comenzar este proceso, los líderes municipales deberían considerar varios temas:

• Determinar cómo medir el éxito. Tener un objetivo claro y mensurable para la revitalización de un corredor o de un centro comercial abierto puede ser crítico para asegurar que el proyecto siga su curso. ¿El objetivo es aumentar las ventas minoristas, la cantidad de pasajeros que usan el transporte público o la cantidad de viviendas de interés social? En el curso de un proyecto, las comisiones municipales y las juntas de planificación, zonificación y transporte tendrán que tomar decisiones aparentemente menores —como, por ejemplo, aumentar o disminuir la cantidad de plazas de estacionamiento— que pueden tener efectos potencialmente con-siderables. Es más probable que las municipalidades alcancen sus objetivos de largo plazo si articulan y definen claramente las medidas del éxito desde el comienzo.
• Gestionar los lugares revitalizados para todos los grupos de ingreso y edad. Muchas ciudades y pueblos están aprovechando la expansión de las líneas de transporte público para transformar sus paisajes suburbanos, lo cual atraerá a más minorías, residentes de bajos ingresos y jóvenes que quieren vivir en barrios peatonales. Las municipalidades tienen que planificar de acuerdo a ello, y adaptarse a estas nuevas demografías proporcionando viviendas de interés social, oportunidades de empleo y opciones de comercio minorista.
• Respetar y celebrar las originalidades locales y regionales. Esencialmente, los barrios atractivos tienen un gran sentido de lugar, con paisajes viales, estilos arquitectónicos o arte pública singulares. A medida que las comunidades transforman sus paisajes suburbanos, los líderes pueden permitir que los barrios crezcan orgánica y auténticamente, y evitar que centros comerciales genéricos se reemplacen por centros municipales genéricos que a largo plazo no se desempeñen mucho mejor.

La evolución de los paisajes suburbanos en los Estados Unidos representa oportunidades enormes para repensar de forma creativa los entornos edificados y naturales del país. El rediseño de estos lugares para peatones puede ayudar a restaurar la actividad en las calles y crear lugares vitales y prósperos para vivir y trabajar.

Sobre la autora

Lynn Richards, próxima presidente y directora ejecutiva del Congreso para el Nuevo Urbanismo, fue fellow Lincoln/Loeb de 2013 en la Escuela de Posgrado de Diseño de la Universidad de Harvard y el Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Previamente, a lo largo de 13 años, ocupó varios puestos de liderazgo en la Agencia de Protección Ambiental de los EE.UU. (EPA), entre ellos, directora en ejercicio y directora de políticas de la Oficina de Comunidades Sostenibles.

Recursos

American Planning Association (APA). 2014. Investing in Place: Two Generations’ View on the Future of Communities: Millennials, Boomers, and New Directions for Planning and Economic Development. APA, May. https://www.planning.org/policy/polls/investing/pdf/pollinvesting report.pdf.

Benfield, Kaid. 2014. People Habitat: 25 Ways to Think about Greener, Healthier Cities. Island Press.

Dunham Jones, Ellen, and June Williamson. 2009. Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs. Wiley and Sons.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 2011. Cleanup and Mixed-Use Revitalization on the Wasatch Front: The Midvale Slag Superfund Site and Midvale City, Utah. Mayo.

EPA. 2006. Community Spaces, Parking Places: Finding the Balance through Smart Growth Solutions. EPA 231-K-06-001.

Hook, Walter, Stephanie Lotshaw, and Annie Weinstock. 2013. More Development for Your Transit Dollar: An Analysis of 21 North American Transit Corridors. Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.

Jaffe, Eric. 2013. “We Need to Design Parking Garages with a Car-less Future in Mind.” Atlantic Cities, 14 noviembre.

Litman, Todd. 2010. Evaluating Non-Motorized Transport Benefits and Costs. Victoria Transport Policy Institute. www.vtpi.org/nmt-tdm.pdf.

Lukez, Paul. 2007. Suburban Transformations. Princeton Architectural Press.

National Association of Realtors (NAR). 2011. The 2011 Community Preference Survey: What Americans Are Looking for When Deciding Where to Live. NAR, March. http://www.realtor.org/sites/default/files/smart-growth-comm-survey-results-2011.pdf.

Swetlik, Deana. 2012. “The Many Uses Blooming at Denver’s Old Airport: Stapleton.” Urban Land, 11 octubre, 2012.

As interest in urban living grows, the cost of residential real estate in many hot markets is skyrocketing. According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS 2015), in 2014 rental vacancy rates hit their lowest point in two decades; rents rose in 91 out of 93 metropolitan areas studied; and the consumer price index for contract rents climbed at double the rate of inflation—and 10 percent or more at the top end, in Denver, San Jose, Honolulu, and San Francisco. Despite some interruption from the mortgage crisis, asking prices for homes for sale have continued to rise as well, often beyond the reach of potential home buyers (Olick 2014); in Washington, DC, the median home value nearly tripled from 2000 to 2013 (Oh et al. 2015). As housing activists look for effective tools to prevent displacement of lower-income families from gentrifying neighborhoods and create inclusive communities, many are turning to community land trusts (box 1) as a way to help build the nation’s stock of permanently affordable housing.

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Box 1: The CLT Model

Under the CLT model, a community-controlled organization retains ownership of a plot of land and sells or rents the housing on that land to lower-income households. In exchange for below-market prices, purchasers agree to resale restrictions that keep the homes affordable to subsequent buyers while also allowing owners to build some equity. The CLT also prepares home buyers to purchase property, supports them through financial challenges, and manages resales and rental units.

CLTs thus bring sustainable home ownership within the reach of more families, supporting residents who want to commit to their neighborhoods for the long term. In gentrifying areas, they provide an effective way for lower-income families to retain a stake in the neighborhood because they take a single initial subsidy (which could come from a variety of sources, often public programs such as the HOME Investment Partnerships Program or Community Development Block Grants) and attach it to the building, keeping the units affordable over time without new influxes of public money. In weak housing markets, they are beneficial as well (Shelterforce 2012), providing the financial stewardship that ensures fewer foreclosures, better upkeep, and stable occupancy. In 2009, at the height of the foreclosure crisis, Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) loans were 8.2 times more likely to be in the foreclosure process than CLT loans, despite the fact that CLT loans were uniformly made to low-income households (Thaden, Rosenberg 2010), and MBA loans included all income brackets. Of the very few CLT homes that did complete foreclosure, none were lost from the CLT’s portfolio.

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Much like community development corporations (CDCs), many CLTs grew from grassroots neighborhood organizations. Traditional community organizing (distinct from broader “resident outreach”) creates a base of residents who are empowered to determine for themselves what they need and mobilize to get it; as a united front, these individuals are better able to counter-balance corporate or governmental opponents and other forms of institutional power. Strategic collaboration and strength in numbers are essential to the successful formation of a CLT. But the skills required to organize politically around local concerns are very different from the skills required to manage real estate. While both sets of skills are required to implement and sustain a CLT, growing these core competencies under the same roof might hamper the neighborhood-based organization’s ability to pursue or achieve its core founding mission.

How have community organizations that created CLTs navigated the challenge of building two seemingly incompatible skill sets? We examined the experience of five established CLTs in locations across the country to see how they addressed this challenge and how their focus evolved as a result. From Boston to Los Angeles, community organizers faced a range of conditions, from high-vacancy neighborhoods with almost no housing market to booming areas where displacement was the top concern. Yet all five organizations had remarkably similar reasons for starting a community land trust: each CLT director spoke of wanting community control of land to prevent residents from either losing a home or being unable to afford one. Even those CLTs that began in weak housing markets were located near downtowns, university districts, or other popular areas, and recognized the potential for displacement as conditions in the neighborhoods improved. All agreed that a clear community vision is essential to the success of a CLT, but some groups take direct responsibility for creating and implementing that vision, while others are devoted to housing work on behalf of a parent organization charged with shepherding the larger vision. Approaches to organizing and housing development varied as well, but all agreed that these two activities can be a difficult mix.

Dudley Neighbors Inc., Boston, MA

The oldest organization in our study, Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), formed in a cold market in the 1980s to fight illegal dumping on broad swaths of vacant land left behind by a wave of arson. The city was proposing a master plan for the area without seeking input from residents, and community members responded by organizing DSNI to assert the community’s right to direct decisions about land use within its boundaries. They won that right and through DSNI decided that a CLT was the best tool to help the organization implement the community’s vision. “A lot of times, groups want to jump into creating a CLT thinking it will magically solve a neighborhood’s problems,” says Harry Smith, director of DSNI’s CLT, Dudley Neighbors Inc. (DNI). “But first we say: ‘Have you written down a vision of development in your community, and can you say how a CLT fits into that?’”

Founded in 1984, DNI is an independent organization, but it maintains close ties to its parent organization. The two groups share staff, and DSNI appoints a majority of the CLT’s board. The CLT is responsible only for providing affordable housing and community control of land, freeing DSNI to make organizing and community planning its main priority. Neither DSNI nor DNI carry out development directly, but instead partner with local affordable housing developers.

Because of its long history and established relationships, DSNI engages in less confrontational organizing than it did in its earliest days. But it doesn’t shy away from it if necessary. In fact, Smith reports that maintaining a CLT can be a unique political strength. When DSNI organizes around the fate of a particular parcel of land, “Having a land trust gives us an extra level of impact,” he says.

Sawmill Community Land Trust, Albuquerque, NM

Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Sawmill CLT was born in 1996 when, after a decade of community organizing, low-income residents banded together to fight a nearby factory that polluted their air and threatened their health. They wanted to assert control over future use of the space. After leaders attended a conference to learn more about CLTs, they held a series of community meetings on the topic. Though some residents aired concerns about the lack of land ownership in the CLT model, a community elder reminded them that they didn’t truly have ownership of their property in any case, either because they were renting or were ill-equipped to control what happened on their land. Former executive director Wade Patterson says, “The fact that the work was specifically geared toward controlling housing costs assuaged concerns about gentrification and displacement. The fact that we got a house instead of another factory was something we couldn’t argue with.”

Sawmill CLT was created as a standalone organization dedicated to housing development, stewardship, and property management. It’s one of the largest CLTs in the country, with 34 acres, which includes rental, ownership, and senior housing. Recently, it won an RFP issued by the city of Albuquerque to revitalize an old motel in a new neighborhood in the city, and the CLT is figuring out how to enter the community respectfully from outside.

Albuquerque’s Sawmill-area neighborhood associations, including the Sawmill Advisory Council, which launched the CLT, focus on “community building” through cultural events, says Patterson. The CLT supports neighborhood organizing by offering meeting space in one of its buildings and other support. Patterson says, “Our goal isn’t to lead but to be behind them.”

San Francisco Community Land Trust, San Francisco, CA

SFCLT was launched in 2003, at a time when the city was already one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, and low-income residents were concerned about soaring rents and illegal evictions for condo conversions. Housing organizers were seeking a model that could prevent evictions and give lower-income residents more control over their living situations.

The CLT is a standalone entity, but it maintains a close relationship with the housing organizers who founded it. When its partner groups organize to prevent evictions or condo conversions in an at-risk building (generally small apartment buildings), SFCLT steps in as a preservation purchaser and converts them to co-ops on CLT-owned land. SFCLT has in-house real estate expertise, but does not develop new buildings, and it contracts out any needed rehabilitation. It handles the financial aspects of the acquisition and the conversion, the stewardship of the land, and the training and support that helped residents form a co-op board and carry out co-op governance. “Housing groups refer everyone to us; we’re the only housing organization that can help stabilize a multi-unit apartment building by buying it,” says director Tracy Parent. SFCLT organizes its member base to support the broader issues that its coalition partners push for, but it doesn’t “initiate organizing” on issues, according to Parent.

T.R.U.S.T. South LA, Los Angeles, CA

When T.R.U.S.T. South LA was formed in 2005, its target neighborhoods were filled with vacant lots and deteriorated housing, while surrounding areas were under increasing development pressures. While the founders—Esperanza Community Housing Corporation, Strategic Actions of a Just Economy, and Abode Communities—originally envisioned the CLT as primarily a housing tool, it has taken on a broader role in implementing a community vision. “Originally, we formed as a land acquisition group. Then our members wanted to organize,” says executive director Sandra McNeill. The CLT has, for example, organized against a slumlord who was trying to evict residents from a building he had strategically let deteriorate in order to cash in on expiring section 8 affordability restrictions. It has also organized to raise funding for transportation and green space improvements in its neighborhood and participated in coalitions to support broader citywide policies such as increased funding for affordable housing.

The group now describes itself as “a community-based initiative to stabilize the neighborhoods south of downtown Los Angeles.” T.R.U.S.T. South LA is a standalone organization that considers itself part of the development team on housing projects, partnering with others to purchase, finance, and construct or rehabilitate housing.

Although T.R.U.S.T. South LA does a lot of organizing, nearly all of its policy work is conducted in collaboration with other groups, including its founding partners. “Affordable housing developers generally aren’t risk takers,” says McNeill. “They may be involved in political work to ensure that funding streams are in place for affordable housing, but that’s as far as most of them go.”

Community Justice Land Trust, Philadelphia, PA

Community Justice Land Trust in Philadelphia formed in Northeast Philadelphia in 2010 amid combined cold and hot market challenges. Although the neighborhood suffered from a large number of vacant and abandoned properties, it was surrounded on all sides by booming markets, and those rising prices and development pressures seemed likely to spread. The Women’s Community Revitalization Project (WCRP), along with a coalition of local civic organizations, held dozens of public meetings to help the community members understand what forming a CLT would mean and to explore their concerns about resale restrictions. Attendees voted in favor.

Community Justice CLT is set up as a program of WCRP, which has its own in-house development and organizing expertise, including an entire department devoted to organizing.

But as WCRP’s executive director Nora Lichtash warns, “Sometimes you lose relationships when you’re organizing. . . . Sometimes people don’t like to be pushed to do the right thing.” Indeed, WCRP apparently pressured its local council person enough on certain issues that she declined to give the CLT vacant land it had hoped to secure for its first development. In the end, however, the council person helped the group establish a citywide land bank (Feldstein 2013–14), which furthers some of the same goals as the land trust.

Despite potential tensions like these, Lichtash believes that organizing and CLT functions should stay closely related. “It’s important to remember that organizing and building affordable housing fit together,” she says. “Your funders think you should be doing one or the other, but it’s not good for CLTs to be separated from organizing. You’re building your capacity for present and future work. When you organize, you’re respected because you have people power.”

To Develop or Not to Develop: A Big Decision

Affordable housing development is a complicated and expensive business that no community organization should take lightly if it is thinking about starting a CLT. As DNI’s Smith says, “If you do development work, it will take time away from organizing, which is cumulative. It takes time and a lot of sacrifice to form a truly representative, neighborhood-based organization. If you cut corners, you risk jeopardizing a lot of the power you’ve built up over the years.”

The Boston experience, for example, begins with a cautionary tale. DSNI stepped in when the original developer for the CLT’s first project backed out of the deal. It was “traumatic” for staff and board, says Smith. “It took so much time. It distracted DSNI from its core functions.”

The idea of controlling development resources and accessing developer fees can be seductive to grassroots groups, says WCRP’s Lichtash. But they should proceed with extreme care. “Becoming a developer can muddy the waters,” she says. “You have to focus on every detail in million-dollar deals. It takes you away from educational work.”

“Real estate work is very hard, speculative,” Lichtash continues. “You think you’re getting one thing and instead you get another. I tell people to partner for a long time first. It’s hard to keep both tenants and funding sources happy.”

Patterson of Sawmill agrees and adds that it’s particularly difficult “to meet all the deadlines and reporting requirements on funding [for development]. I’m always shocked by the amount of administrative overhead that’s required.” He also advises that if you can’t make the numbers work, “it’s important to know you can pull out of a project if needed.”

T.R.U.S.T. South LA’s McNeill says, “Development definitely has its own language. It’s complex stuff. Nonprofits that do it have large budgets and tend to have sizable staffs. I respect the skill it takes to pull off these deals. It’s a very different skillset from what we do.”

Another consideration is that affordable housing development is not an easy industry to break into these days. In the current funding environment, many of the subsidies that CLTs have traditionally used to develop and steward their units are being slashed, and mortgages for potential CLT home buyers are harder to find. McNeill says, “We’ve gone through enormous shifts in the housing industry. The reality is that there isn’t an opening now for new organizations to get into the development business. It’s definitely not the time.”

Even the ongoing stewardship of a CLT requires a different kind of relationship with residents than an organizer would have. “Developer fees and rent collection could impact the relationship with residents and the power dynamic,” says Smith of DNI. “You’re responsible to leaseholders and non-leaseholders in your community, so there are tensions,” according to Lichtash of WCRP. And as SFCLT’s Parent comments, “Organizers often paint issues as clear moral choices,” but when you are involved as a property manager, “there are nuances.”

Eyes on the Prize

Once a community group has determined that a CLT is an appropriate tool for keeping housing affordable to local residents, the next questions should be: How will the roles be divided up? Who is taking the lead on implementing the broader vision? Is there an organization already in place that’s committed and able to take that on, or does one need to be created? Are there groups serving the community that already have development expertise and access to funding that could partner with a CLT or even fold one into their work? How can the new CLT partner with and support the community’s organizing work rather than distract from it?

Many newer CLTs are following the lead of groups like DSNI and T.R.U.S.T. South LA by setting up a separate organization to manage the stewardship and land ownership functions, and then drawing on the capacity of existing affordable housing developers through partnerships. While every locality is different, this approach seems like a wise place for groups to start, especially if they want to preserve their energy for the important work they started with: fighting for vibrant, equitable communities.

Miriam Axel-Lute is the editor of Shelterforce, a magazine devoted to the field of community development. She has written extensively on both organizing and community land trusts.

Dana Hawkins-Simons is an award-winning journalist who has published groundbreaking investigations in U.S. News & World Report. She is also the former director of the Opportunity Housing Initiative at the National Housing Institute.

References

Beckwith, Dave, with Cristina Lopez. 1997. “Community Organizing: People Power from the Grassroots.” http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers97/beckwith.htm

Feldstein, Jill. 2013/14. “Winning a Land Bank We Can Trust.” Shelterforce. Fall/Winter 2013/14. www.shelterforce.org/article/3910/winning_a_land_bank_we_can_trust2/

Horwitz, Staci. 2011. “It’s All About Choice.” Shelterforce. www.shelterforce.org/article/2313/its_all_about_choice/

Joint Center for Housing Studies. 2015. State of the Nation’s Housing 2015. Harvard University. www.jchs.harvard.edu/research/state_nations_housing

Oh, Seunghoon, Josh Silver, Annelise Osterberg, and Jaclyn Tules. 2015. Does Nonprofit Housing Development Preserve Neighborhood Diversity? An Investigation into the Interaction Between Affordable Housing Development and Neighborhood Change. Manna, Inc. www.mannadc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Final_Neighborhood_Impact_Analysis_7_1.pdf

Olick, Diana. 2014. “Housing Still Too Expensive Despite Positive Signs.” CNBC.com, July 10. www.cnbc.com/2014/07/10/housing-still-too-expensive-despite-positive-signs.html

Shelterforce. 2012. “What’s the Point of Shared-Equity Homeownership in Weak Market Areas?” Shelterforce. www.shelterforce.org/images/uploads/theanswer171-2.pdf

Schutz, Aaron and Marie G. Sandy. 2011. “What Isn’t Community Organizing.” In Collective Action for Social Change: An Introduction to Community Organizing, London: Palgrave McMillan. pp. 31–44.

Thaden, Emily and Greg Rosenberg. 2010. “Outperforming the Market: Delinquency and Foreclosure Rates in Community Land Trusts.” Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/1846_1154_LLA10102%20Foreclosure%20Rates.pdf

The Sun Belt grew at spectacular rates in the late twentieth century, and among western U.S. cities Phoenix and its metropolitan region led the pack. The Census Bureau reports that between 1990 and 2000 Maricopa County was the fastest growing county in the nation at 44.8 percent, increasing from 2,122,101 to 3,072,149 people. The county is the fourth largest in the nation in terms of total population. During the 1990s, the city of Phoenix topped one million people and became the sixth largest U.S. city. Its spatial expanse has eclipsed that of the city of Los Angeles. According to the Phoenix Planning Department’s data, the region is growing by about 63,000 residents per year and requires about 23,000 new housing units to meet the demand. Statewide, the population is growing by more than 2,000 residents per week, and the number of people in the state is expected to double in the next 20 years.

The weather, relatively affordable housing and abundant jobs attract a diverse array of newcomers, but increased population has numerous social and environmental consequences. Debate rages about the impacts of growth locally and nationally: Is it good? Is it deleterious? Can it be sustained? At what cost? Who benefits? Who suffers?

A group of Arizona State University (ASU) faculty has recognized that these phenomena represent an opportunity for both research and public service in this fast-growing urban environmental laboratory. Furthermore, knowledge gleaned from such inquiries could lead to smarter growth and more livable places in the future. This notion provides the intellectual foundation for a project named Greater Phoenix 2100 (GP 2100), which seeks to provide data and analysis to the region’s decision makers to help them make wise choices about the future.

Greater Phoenix 2100 Workshops

The Lincoln Institute helped ASU launch GP 2100 through workshops in April 2001 that brought together ASU faculty and staff, community leaders, national participants from institutions such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Research Council, and four distinguished speakers who stimulated debate and discussion. The panelists were ecologist and author Dan Botkin, professor emeritus of the University of California-Santa Barbara; Michael Crow, an authority on science policy and executive vice provost at Columbia University; political scientist Helen Ingram, formerly director of the Arizona Water Resources Research Center and now professor of human ecology at the University of California-Irvine; and Bob Yaro, executive director of the Regional Plan Association.

They observed that for the Phoenix metropolitan region to continue to prosper, three overlapping spheres of influence must be considered: the creation of knowledge capital, the enhancement of social capital, and the preservation of natural capital.

The GP 2100 workshop panelists and other participants suggested that ASU should become the convener for discussions on growth, as well as the data bank for computer-stored geographical information about these intersecting, mutually dependent spheres. As a result, ASU should create various scenarios for the future in a “Sim Phoenix” format and a “Decision Theater” that would be a physical and a virtual place where academic and community leaders could probe the consequences of possible actions.

Databases and Audiences

Still in its early stages, ASU’s GP 2100 seeks to coordinate federal, state and academic information programs relating to the environment of the region. The project will be linked with similar studies in other metropolitan areas and global city regions (Simmonds and Hack 2000). GP 2100 will answer questions that people care about by providing objective, scientifically based information using state-of-the-art forecasting and decision tools and theories. Coupled with the Central Arizona/Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research Project (CAP LTER) supported by the National Science Foundation, GP 2100 has the potential to launch a network of similar undertakings nationally and internationally.

GP 2100 will develop and present a wide variety of scientific and technical data on the past, present and possible futures of the Phoenix metropolitan region. The project builds on the premise that knowledge can be used to create better lives for future generations. GP 2100 will provide learning and research experiences to six major groups of people.

• Regional decision makers and community leaders. Many activities, including community visioning exercises and open space ballot initiatives, point to an acute need for regional leadership. Regional decision makers have identified the need for sound, long-term environmental information.
• The general public. GP 2100 will generate considerable interest within the metropolitan Phoenix community. According to several opinion polls, the public is deeply concerned about growth, environmental quality, and the livability of their neighborhoods.
• Middle- and high-school students and teachers. The project will offer engaging learning opportunities for students and teachers about scientific and decision-making processes. The multiscale aspect of the project will enable teachers to illustrate how specific neighborhoods are connected to regional systems.
• ASU faculty. GP 2100 will be an umbrella and a catalyst for researchers studying the urban ecologies of the region. It will provide the opportunity to explore the integration of scientific information, the examination of new technologies for representation and visualization, and a platform for advancing modeling and decision theory.
• ASU students. Both undergraduate and graduate students will be engaged in GP 2100’s unique multidisciplinary studies that will contribute to an improved quality of life in the region.
• Future generations. The century-long approach means that there will be several generations of audiences.

Goals and Benefits

The goal of GP 2100 is to make the best possible scientific and technical information available in ways that will enable wise, knowledge-based decision-making that can shape the region during the next 100 years. This time frame presents a purposefully longer-term view of the metropolitan region than has previously been developed. While short-term visioning is limited by immediate considerations, a century-long perspective requires the incorporation of mutigenerational concerns and changes in technology. A 100-year time frame also allows for evaluation of impacts of such geologically common events as droughts, major floods and gradual climate changes. In short, GP 2100 will be a strong scientific resource for consideration of the region’s long-term prospects and for creating the kind of future its residents want.

Two types of benefits will flow from the project. The first relates to the future quality of life in the region. An underlying assumption of GP 2100 is that better information will lead to wiser decision-making that will, in turn, result in healthier, more livable communities. Metropolitan Phoenix is expected to double from 3 to 6 million people in the next 20 or 30 years. Meanwhile, the global population will increase from 6 to 9 billion people and will become more urban. Such growth poses many challenges relating to land use, transportation, open space, biodiviersity, urban design, recreation, employment, equity, air quality, water quality and quantity, and the overall quality of life of city regions. The GP 2100 effort will be beneficial to those who are addressing these concerns in Phoenix by providing a prototype of how science-based tools and a regional perspective can better inform long-term decision-making. By viewing the Phoenix region as an urban environmental laboratory, the lessons learned will have implications for the broader scientific and policy communities.

GP 2100 will also be an asset for ASU researchers and students, who will have the opportunity to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams and will have access to state-of-the-art GIS and visualization technologies. New and emerging theories in urban and landscape ecology, decision science, land use and environmental modeling, and biocomplexity will be explored.

Special Features

Several linked products are envisioned to flow from GP 2100. Existing data can be coalesced into a dynamic warehouse of continuously updated regional information. Such a data repository can be presented to the public through an Urban eAtlas, which will be made available in electronic and more conventional forms to provide documentation of existing conditions and enable the construction of future scenarios. The digital version will be available on-line so it may be continuously accessed and updated.

The data archives and Urban eAtlas will contribute to a third major product: Sim Phoenix, an interactive computer game that can help researchers, citizens and decision makers visualize the consequences of “what if” scenarios. Sim Phoenix is a step toward the creation of an even more ambitious visualization project: a Decision Theater where local leaders, citizens, students and researchers can explore future options for the region. The Decision Theater will be a physical space in which scientific data, group dynamics and interactive computer technology are used to develop simulations of the region’s futures and considerations of their consequences. The simulations and their representations will evolve with new computational and representational technologies as well as with new scientific information.

GP 2100 will complement and augment existing long-term monitoring activities being conducted at ASU, such as the CAP LTER project, one of only two such urban LTER sites in the nation. Launching a satellite in cooperation with NASA is one monitoring possibility. This “Phoenix-Sat” would pass over the region twice daily, enabling diurnal measurements of such dynamic parameters as traffic, air quality, soil moisture and construction. It is possible that the Phoenix-Sat could be part of a larger international remote-sensing program for urban resource monitoring. Tools such as the data archives, Urban eAtlas, Sim Phoenix, the Decision Theater and Phoenix-Sat will enable scholars and decision makers alike to probe the major issues that metropolitan areas like Phoenix will face in the coming century. As a result, problems may be foreseen and avoided and opportunities pursued with vigor.

Faculty in the life, physical and social sciences at Arizona State University are currently compiling a comprehensive suite of information about the region. Planners, policy analysts and educators also could identify a series of key response variables and parameters for a Decision Theater. Computer scientists could program this complex information so that it can be displayed in both two- and three-dimensional formats, as well as animated views illustrating changes through time. The data could be automatically updated from dynamic government and university databases, from hundreds of sensors throughout the metropolitan region, and from orbiting satellites.

In this first-of-its-kind Decision Theater, high quality audio and visual presentation systems will include a 180-degree screen, which provides an immersive, synthetic environment along with comfortable ergonomics. This arrangement enables decision makers and researchers to come together to explore, debate and analyze options for the future. The Decision Theater is capable of high-resolution stereoscopic viewing using shuttered glasses. A visitor can have her or his viewing position tracked (”head-tracking”), giving the impression of truly walking within the data and data results, pondering the possible landscapes of the future from different angles. It could be associated with an innovative Planetary Imaging Faculty set up jointly by ASU and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as well as dance and visual representation projects from ASU’s Institute for Studies in the Arts. While real-time interaction with data and models in the Decision Theater is engrossing, a comparably rich on-line experience is also possible through the use of web-based multimedia, text, data download and upload, and modeling tools. The virtual Decision Theater allows a participant to interact with a Sim Phoenix-like game.

How will the Decision Theater be implemented? Four interactive parameters appear especially crucial for modeling the future: water availability, air quality, open space and land use. ASU and its community and government partners already possess an enormous storehouse of data on these parameters, but the challenge is to combine the data in meaningful ways. To this end, the Greater Phoenix 2100 team, in conjunction with the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Geological Survey, is now developing a water availability prototype that would use the hydrologic cycle to model regional water availability using factors of precipitation, supply, evaporation and demand to illustrate water futures both graphically and spatially.

A Model for Other Metropolitan Regions

Generations of citizens and scholars will benefit from Greater Phoenix 2100. The project will result in products that will help community and business leaders make wiser decisions. It will assist local, state, and federal officials in planning and designing programs and policies. The project will aid teachers and students in their understanding of natural and social processes. Greater Phoenix 2100 presents uniquely complex targets for technological, scientific and policy analysis advancements. It will produce and facilitate interaction with massive, typically disparate, datasets. Because its major components are easily transferable to other urban regions, the project can provide a model for other places interested in pursuing similar initiatives. In this century, some two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas. Greater Phoenix 2100 has far-reaching implications concerning the application of knowledge capital to regional and urban decision-making in order to maximize social capital while maintaining the natural capital of the metropolitan region.

Frederick Steiner, an internationally recognized expert on environmental planning, is dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. He was formerly professor and director of the School of Planning and Landscape Architecture at Arizona State University.

Reference

Simmonds, Roger and Gary Hack, editors. 2000. Global City Regions: Their Emerging Forms. London: Spon Press.

Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 4 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

En muchas ciudades brasileñas, los impuestos a la tierra y las edificaciones son muy poco utilizados. Según datos del Instituto Brasileño de Administración Municipal (IBAM), por ejemplo, en la mitad de los municipios de más de 50.000 habitantes el impuesto a la propiedad representa menos del 30% del total de los recursos tributarios. Considerando que para la mayoría de estos municipios los ingresos a cuenta de impuestos locales representan menos del 30% de los recursos totales, los impuestos a la propiedad no sobrepasan al 10% de los recursos financieros de los municipios (incluyendo transferencias intergubernamentales). Tales porcentajes resultan incluso menores en los municipios más pequeños. Otros impuestos basados en la tierra, tales como el impuesto a la transferencia de bienes raíces y el impuesto a las mejoras a la propiedad presentan un patrón de resultados igualmente desalentadores.

Especialmente a partir de la nueva Constitución brasileña de 1998, cuando la responsabilidad principal de planificación del uso de la tierra fue transferida al nivel local, los municipios se han vuelto cada vez más conscientes de que la regulación del uso de la tierra y las inversiones públicas en infraestructura introducen cambios en el valor de la tierra. Muchos empleados oficiales públicos están actualmente tratando de desarrollar estrategias de planificación para capturar parte de los beneficios “gratuitos” resultantes. A la vez, los gobiernos locales están encontrando problemas en la aplicación de instrumentos tradicionales de planificación tales como el Plano Diretor, una medida constitucional que requiere que las ciudades con poblaciones mayores de 20.000 habitantes desarrollen un plan maestro. Estas ciudades se encuentran cada vez más involucradas en el debate sobre la flexibilidad del marco regulativo del uso de la tierra. Consecuentemente, la idea de una zonificación flexible a cambio de contribuciones de los promotores se ha vuelto también popular.

Para investigar los aspectos económicos, financieros y de planificación urbana de estos cambios negociados en el uso de la tierra, el Instituto Lincoln y la Municipalidad de Santo André (Estado de São Paulo) organizaron un programa de tres días sobre “Instrumentos y Técnicas de Financiamiento del Desarrollo Urbano en base a la Tierra” en mayo de 1998. Durante los dos primeros días, empleados municipales de Santo André se reunieron con conferencistas invitados para compartir sus experiencias en instrumentos de zonificación, captura del valor y desarrollo económico local en lugares tan diversos como Nueva York, Ciudad de México y Colombia. Las discusiones abarcaron tres temas generales: la captura del valor y el financiamiento urbano; la planificación urbana y el mercado de la tierra; y las negociaciones y asociaciones público-privadas.

El programa finalizó con un debate público que incluyó a una audiencia regional de aproximadamente 200 planificadores, promotores y representantes de organizaciones no gubernamentales, del sector privado y de las comunidades locales dentro de la región del Gran ABC (siete municipios alrededor de São Paulo, incluyendo a Santo André, que en conjunto constituyen el área industrial más densa de Latinoamérica). Un grupo de discusión sobre la efectividad de las negociaciones en base a la tierra y las asociaciones público-privadas en el contexto brasileño contó con la participación de conferencistas de la Universidad de São Paulo, del sector de bienes raíces y de los gobiernos locales.

Numerosas conclusiones se derivaron del programa. Primero, los cambios negociados del uso de la tierra típicamente se producen en ambientes donde los impuestos a la propiedad no funcionan bien. En Santo André, por ejemplo, las restricciones operativas y legales existentes dificultan el reacondicionamiento del sistema de impuestos a la propiedad (ver Figura 1).

Segundo, los cambios negociados del uso de la tierra en Santo André parecen acompañar un cambio continuo de usos industriales a usos asociados con el moderno sector terciario de servicios. A través del proceso de negociación, se introduce una mayor flexibilidad dentro del existente marco legal, como se ha observado en las recientes negociaciones entre el centro comercial Plaza ABC y Pirelli, la empresa multinacional de fabricación de neumáticos. Tercero, aun cuando las negociaciones del uso de la tierra aparentemente satisfacen expectativas en lo que se refiere a complementar la dinámica de la economía local, no hay una metodología ni un marco bien establecidos que permitan definir reglas claras y estables basadas en un análisis sólido de costo y beneficios. En comparación con experiencias internacionales como la de Nueva York, resulta difícil prever las compensaciones monetarias que se pueden esperar en las ciudades brasileñas y si dichas compensaciones son realmente eficientes (en términos de Pareto) vis-a-vis situaciones en las que el permiso de desarrollo se hubiese negado.

Finalmente, los cambios negociados del uso de la tierra deben ser vistos como un elemento esencial de la estrategia general de desarrollo económico local. En la región del Gran ABC, las asociaciones estratégicas entre inversionistas de los sectores público y privado son cada vez más importantes en vista del proceso constante de reestructuración local y regional que ha tenido dramáticos efectos negativos en los niveles de ingreso y de empleo.

Entre las lecciones que nos ofrece el programa de Santo André está la necesidad de desarrollar mejores medidas para calcular los aumentos del valor de la tierra causados por los cambios de zonificación, a fin de poder desarrollar medios para capturar esos valores a través de sistemas más eficaces de tasación. Además, la experiencia de Nueva York muestra que es mejor recolectar impuestos a tasas más bajas por medio de un sistema universal y estable, que en base a una negociación arbitraria caso por caso, la cual puede prestarse al abuso y a la corrupción.

Jeroen Klink, economista urbano, es consejero del alcalde de Santo André. Anteriormente fue Dissertation Fellow del Instituto Lincoln, y se encuentra completando su tesis de doctorado sobre “Fuentes de Financiamiento Urbano: la Aplicabilidad del Modelo Estándar Económico al Caso Brasileño” en la Escuela de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de la Universidad de São Paulo, Brasil. Luis Carlos Afonso, economista, es Secretario de Finanzas de Santo André. Irineu Bagnariolli Jr., sociólogo urbano, es Secretario de Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano de Santo André.

Figura 1: Limitaciones a la Revisión del Impuesto a la Propiedad

En 1993, la administración de la ciudad de Santo André aprobó una ley otorgando un descuento del 40% en el impuesto a la propiedad. Dicho descuento iba a ser válido solamente durante ese año. Sin embargo, la reducción ha sido mantenida como resultado de varias cláusulas legales que determinan que el valor del impuesto en el año en curso no puede exceder el valor del año anterior, estableciendo así un límite al impuesto.

Otra restricción al uso más agresivo del impuesto, especialmente a fin de promover una tasación más equitativa, es la interpretación dada por la Corte Suprema de que el impuesto no puede ser progresivo. La única excepción permitida es la aplicación penal por desuso o falta de uso de la propiedad, cláusula que en sí misma depende de la emisión de nuevas leyes federales y que ni siquiera ha sido discutida por el Congreso. (Claudia M. De Cesare, “Usando el Impuesto a la Propiedad para la Captura del Valor: el Caso de Brasil”, Land Lines, enero de 1998).

Durante 1990 y 1991, una administración previa en Santo André trató de otorgar descuentos al impuesto a la propiedad basados en las características físicas, el uso actual y el tamaño de la propiedad, pero la iniciativa fue rechazada posteriormente por dictamen de la Corte a causa de su supuesto carácter progresivo oculto. Así, el límite a los impuestos a la propiedad, a pesar de ser revocado formalmente por una ley posterior, permanece básicamente inalterado, ya que si los impuestos fueran aumentados los sectores más pobres de la población serían los más afectados en forma negativa.

Finalmente, en Santo André y en todas las ciudades brasileñas, el valor del metro cuadrado de tierra está fijado por ley, lo cual impide la capacidad de la administración urbana de aplicar impuestos a la propiedad de bienes raíces de acuerdo con su valor en el mercado.