The Lincoln Institute provides a variety of early- and mid-career fellowship opportunities for researchers. In this series, we follow up with our fellows to learn more about their work.

With a master’s degree in urban planning and a PhD in anthropology, Adriana Hurtado Tarazona has long been fascinated by the intersection of human behavior and urban form—especially how and where people choose to live. After receiving a graduate student fellowship from the Lincoln Institute’s program on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), she spent years studying social housing megaprojects on the outskirts of Colombia’s cities, speaking at length with the people who lived in them to learn how they experienced their community and built environment.

Today, Hurtado Tarazona is an associate professor of planning, governance, and territorial development at the Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies (CIDER) at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. “I teach an introductory course on land planning instruments, so I’m still talking about what the Lincoln Institute taught me back in 2005, when I went to a course in Quito,” she says.

In this conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, Hurtado Tarazona discusses why housing ought to be a social policy versus an economic one, shares some of the surprising sentiments she’s heard from residents of social housing, and explains why paying people to upgrade existing homes may be a better solution than subsidizing new homebuyers.

JON GOREY: What is the general focus of your research, and how did your Lincoln Institute fellowship support that work?

ADRIANA HURTADO TARAZONA: I received the fellowship for my master’s thesis in 2006. I was doing an analysis of the impact on land values of some of the BRT infrastructure in Bogotá —the TransMilenio. It was one of the first studies; at the time, the TransMilenio had only four years of implementation, so it was very new. I was trying to document the changes in the urban space around the two big stations, from the perspective of the land market and from the perspective of the residents of the area.

It was very nice to be in that program, because I got to meet a lot of the professors linked with the Latin America program. I loved the experience. And three years ago, one of my students got the same fellowship that I got almost 20 years before. So it was really nice to now be in a different position, sponsoring my student, and she got to live the benefits of that fellowship.

JG: What are you working on now, and what are you hoping to work on next?

AHT: Right now I have four research projects—two of them are related to the main topic of my PhD thesis, which is social housing, specifically the production and urban expansion of social housing megaprojects in urban borders. One project, which we are finishing this year, is called vertical peripheries, with York University in Toronto. We analyze the subjective impact of living in the periphery, but also the impacts on urban planning and governance of this metropolitanization process, where the social housing overflows the urban limits of Colombian cities. The other one is focused on the economic impact of access to social housing. So we are going to analyze specifically how women-led households have to change their domestic economies to keep up with the costs of accessing homeownership for the first time.

The third one is the care infrastructure project, led by the University of Washington in Seattle. It’s a comparative project between Belfast, Belo Horizonte in Brazil, and Bogotá. We are trying to analyze stories of urban change in general, and specifically, in Bogotá, we are analyzing how care became a focus of urban policy, which was not the case until very recently, and we are analyzing the birth of the district CARE system as urban infrastructure. We have these new regulations that understand care infrastructure at the same status as water, sewage, and roads, which is very interesting, and we are trying to document how that could happen, under what conditions did that happen?

And another thing I’m doing with the Lincoln Institute is a small research grant from last year. The main researcher is from Brazil, and along with Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia, we’re trying to do a comparative analysis of interventions that try to support densification.

JG: What’s something surprising or unexpected you’ve learned in your research?

AHT: I have been asking people if they’re happy with their homes, in general, and the first surprise was from an urbanistic perspective. Local urbanists are very critical of these peripheral, massive, standardized, social housing megaprojects, because they are far away from the city, disconnected, with problems of accessibility. I knew all that, and I came to the fieldwork with this very critical perspective.

But then I sat with people, and the first thing they told me was, ‘No, I love this. I love the order. I love that everything is standard.’ Everything that urbanists see as the ‘unlivable city’ and the ‘nonplace,’ the people were saying, ‘No, I like this because it’s planned, it’s orderly, it’s clean.’ That was the first thing that surprised me.

And it surprised me more because they had lived before in self-constructed houses where they had more space, more flexibility of spaces, and they were better located in the city. But then when I spent time with them, I started realizing that this is part of the trade-off people make, because the housing market didn’t allow them to buy anywhere else, and they prioritized homeownership in the formal city over the time they had to spend in transport, over being close to family, to friends, to networks of support.

They knew what they were losing, but this was part of a very conscious trade-off: I am losing this, but I’m gaining this. And the thing they were gaining was the stability of their own home, even if it was small, far away, and very expensive. And that has a lot to do with the opportunities that this country gives to people for social mobility, which are narrowly focused on having access to property. Being part of the new middle class in Colombia means primarily having your own home in the formal city, not in the informal neighborhoods.

JG: When it comes to your work, what keeps you up at night? And what gives you hope?

AHT: What worries me is that housing policy in Colombia—and I think this is the case in other countries also—follows the logic of real estate agents, that the only way to solve the housing problem is to build new housing and sell it to low-income households with subsidies. But we also have lots of alternatives and lots of different ways to address the housing problem.

In Colombian cities, including Bogotá, the qualitative housing deficit is three times more than the quantitative housing deficit. So that means three times more households need better housing and not new housing. But our housing policy gives all the resources and all the attention to building new housing. Neighborhood housing upgrade programs exist, but they don’t have enough budget, they don’t have enough attention, and they are not seen as the legitimate way to solve the housing problem.

So what I really wish we would do is to change the focus and to start paying enough attention and giving enough resources to upgrading what we already have, the built city. It would be environmentally better, economically better for people. There are a lot of advantages, but of course, it’s a slower process. It doesn’t show lots of big numbers, and it doesn’t follow the interest of these real estate and financial sector agents.

What gives me hope is that we have some interventions that are showing good results. One of them is the support for densification in informal-origin neighborhoods. These are programs that recognize that there are neighborhoods of informal origin, with self-constructed homes, that are older, they have good locations in the city, they already have access to the urban goods and services and infrastructure, but they need support to grow in height.

So we have a program here that offers help in structural reinforcement, and they offer subsidies for people to build a second floor on their houses, and then that new unit they could use to live in, if they are crowded, or they could rent it to other households, so they have a new source of income. I think it’s a really innovative program, because at the same time, it ameliorates housing availability and the structural security of the houses, and also gives low-income households the opportunity to have new income from these new units.

The state is supporting a thing that will happen anyway, with or without their help. But if the state intervenes, it happens better, it happens more securely, and it’s a different way to invest public resources to solve the housing problem. But these are small pilot projects. So the thing I want to work on in the future is to figure out how to scale this up and make housing and neighborhood upgrading a more central part of urban policy.

JG: Can you talk about the connection between anthropology and urban planning?

AHT: In all my research projects, I try to understand urban processes from above and from the ground, and I think the combination of having studied anthropology and urban planning allows me to do that. It’s a very good way to understand one process from different perspectives. And specifically for technical topics, such as land management instruments or land value capture, when you talk to people that are living the process, you can amplify your understanding.

Since my master’s thesis, I’ve been curious about how people understand land value. In the contexts I studied, people are very preoccupied about the changes in land value of their properties, but they deal with those changes, or prospective changes, in very different ways.

For example, my student’s thesis was analyzing ethnographically how people deal with the uncertainty of the delays of an urban renewal plan, how they understand the prospective land value increment of their home, and how that aspiration of profit implies tensions in daily life with other values of their home, like the use value of their home.

And I have found the same thing in social housing, this constant tension between the home as a place for living and the home as an investment, from which they are interested in profiting. Even if they are very low-income households, those two narratives and values of home are always in tension, and they impact not only their individual behaviors, but also their community behaviors, and even their ways of relating to public institutions and the city.

So that’s my main curiosity, and that’s why I combine talking to people, being with people, and just spending time with them, with more technical things like analyzing documents, laws, regulations, and quantitative data, too.

JG: What’s one thing you wish more people understood about social housing?

AHT: We need to recenter housing policy as a social policy and not as an economic policy. We have the opportunity in Colombia, and other Latin American countries that have not yet fallen into hyper-financialization, to not follow the trajectory of the United States, of Spain, of places in which the housing crisis is worse now than ever; we are not yet in that state.

JG: What’s the best book you’ve read lately, or a favorite TV show you’ve been streaming?  

AHT: I really enjoyed reading Melissa García-Lamarca’s book about people in debt in Barcelona, Non-Performing Loans, Non-Performing People. It’s about the subjective impacts that living in debt has on people, and how we understand debt as not only an economic issue, but also as a moral issue.

I’m trying to link that with our new project. I’m starting to read feminist economic analysis and anthropological economic analysis, to have a very deep understanding about what living in debt, and housing debt specifically, means for people, and what impact does this have on different aspects of their daily lives. Because here, debt is not only restricted to mortgages—low-income people here have to resort to all kinds of formal and informal debt to pay their living costs. So it’s debt with a relative, debt with a bank, the mortgage, and then it also links even to criminal debt, a criminal lender, people that charge illegally high interest rates to low-income households.

I try to watch TV on really unrelated topics. I was watching Silo, which is a dystopian futurist series about people that live in a high rise, but it’s subterranean—which is really depressing! But I like these post-apocalyptic things.

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

Lead image: Adriana Hurtado Tarazona of Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Credit: Courtesy photo.

Massachusetts está requiriendo que muchas comunidades cercanas a estaciones de tránsito rezonifiquen para permitir viviendas multifamiliares con un mínimo de 15 unidades por acre. La mayoría de las comunidades ha cumplido con la Ley de Comunidades de la MBTA, pero también ha generado un rechazo.

Sin duda, parte de la resistencia es causado por el miedo al cambio y “viviendas por acre” es un concepto abstracto para la mayoría de las personas. Este mapa explora cómo se ve la métrica en el mundo real, con fotografías de las calles en Gran Boston donde la densidad bruta de los barrios es de alrededor 15 viviendas por acre o más.

As the 39th mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, Brett Smiley is addressing public safety, affordable housing, education, and climate resilience. Before being elected mayor in 2022, Smiley—who was born and raised in the Chicago area and moved to Rhode Island to work in politics in 2006—was head of the state Department of Administration, chief operating officer of Providence, and chief of staff for former Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo.

With a population of about 191,000, Providence is the third-largest city in New England after Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts. Once home to extensive manufacturing and mills, the city in recent years became known for embracing New Urbanism, historic preservation, and adaptive reuse, and for culinary, cultural, and arts innovations. The Congress for the New Urbanism is returning to Providence in the summer of 2025 for its annual summit.

Smiley sat for an interview with senior fellow Anthony Flint this spring at City Hall. Their conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, is available as a Land Matters podcast.

Anthony Flint: The narrative arc of Providence over the last 30 years has been remarkable: a second city brought out of economic doldrums by dismantling highways and daylighting rivers and paying attention to urban design. Now there are concerns about affordability, beginning with housing. Where does the city go from here?

Brett Smiley: I appreciate you mentioning the remarkable progress that the city has made. We’ve come a long way, and while many postindustrial cities continue to struggle, Providence is on an entirely different trajectory. Through the pandemic, we had an influx of people wanting urban amenities, wanting arts and culture and diversity and walkability, but with a little bit less work than it is to live in Manhattan or Brooklyn, certainly less expensive than living in those places or in Boston.

One of our competitive points is that we were less expensive. But we’ve not kept pace with building, and as a result, housing prices are skyrocketing. We are on the top five list of net inflow migration, but 50 out of 50 for new housing starts. Our task is to make it easier to build more densely, and to do so in the context of the world in which we find ourselves, so that means incorporating green infrastructure, preparing for climate change, while also allowing for more growth.

We think we can actually lead the way in doing both. It’s an exciting time in the city. We don’t have a hard time selling Providence. What we have a hard time doing is making sure that there’s a home available for everyone who wants one.

AF: You’ve got different places where you can build infill, including surface parking lots. You’ve got some places that don’t require tearing anything down.

BS: We have plenty of places to build. One of our economic challenges has always been that we are in, from a cost perspective, the same economic market as Boston, and yet our rents or sales prices are significantly discounted to Boston. We’ve got a gap to fill there in terms of the price that the housing unit can command and the cost it takes to construct it, which is why we’re working so hard on allowances for things like bonuses for density and the relaxation of parking minimums, ways to try to allow developers to help projects become financially viable; while also looking at some more innovative solutions that cities around the countries are trying, such as changes to the fire code and other ways that actually will reduce the cost of construction by relaxing some of the regulatory requirements.

AF: Unlike the mayors of Boston or Paris, you’ve been a little less enthusiastic about the complete streets concept of pedestrian, bike, and bus lanes. How has your thinking evolved?

BS: I remain convinced that pedestrian safety is of critical importance. We know that one of the reasons that people like living in Providence and want to move to Providence is because of its walkability, and pedestrian safety is super important to me and to the city. We’ve also been working closely with the AARP. Pedestrian safety is really important to older residents. I’m convinced that Providence is a great city to retire to.

The dilemma that I see is that the discussion around bicycle lanes and those who commute by bicycle seems to consume a disproportionate share of the conversation. We know that only two to four percent of the population commutes by bike. We have aspirations of doubling or quadrupling that number. It’s still going to be less than 10 percent of people commuting by bike. We do want to see more people choosing that as an alternate means of transportation. When we’re talking about five percent of the commuting public, sometimes it feels like 75 percent of the conversation.

That’s the shift that I’ve been sensitive to, and I try to devote time and resources to the means and methods of transportation that most people actually use, which is not, in fact, biking. We’re in the Northeast. We have real winters. It’s a city of seven hills, famously in its history, and it doesn’t work for everyone to be able to commute by bike year-round. Most of those folks still have a car. I just try to be realistic about how much time and energy and resources we put into a slice of the commuting public that represents a relatively small minority.

AF: Can you reflect on the challenge of retaining major employers, like the toy manufacturer Hasbro, and the practice of offering things like tax breaks for economic development?

BS: The tactics for economic development have changed in my career in public service. At first, when I was working in government, people were trying to woo headquarters based upon incentives. Then corporate leaders were making decisions, and then the conversation shifted where it became all about talent. Headquarters were choosing where to go based upon where the talent was, maybe less so based upon the financial incentives. Then the pandemic changed it a third time, where with the increase of remote or hybrid work, people are starting to work anywhere and everywhere.

The really meaningful growth that we’ve seen over the last decade, and particularly since the pandemic, are people moving here with good jobs in hand that are located somewhere else or nowhere at all. They’re moving here with good jobs, and it doesn’t matter where their job is. The way in which we think about economic development has shifted. The way I think about economic development has shifted, which is one of the reasons that housing is so primary in my priorities because housing is, in fact, an economic development strategy.

When people can choose where they live and their job is not dependent on that location, you have to give them a high quality of life and an affordable home, and so that’s what we’re working on. Nevertheless, there is still a role for major site-based employers. In terms of municipalities’ reputation, companies that people know can be very important to your identity and to your city’s economic prospects and its brand, if you will, and Hasbro is one of those. It’s got a century-long history in Rhode Island. It’s currently headquartered in neighboring Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

The CEO there has said that that site is no longer working for them, and we found ourselves in a competition with Boston. To date, they’ve not made a decision, but we put forward a very compelling package and proposal, and I hope that they choose Providence. Part of our pitch, in addition to being competitive on an economic package, is again, back to this quality of life and livability. It’s really easy for me to convince the executive suite at Hasbro that mid-career professionals and young workers want to be here, that this is the kind of city that has a youthful vibrancy that other cities have, but it’s a place that they can actually afford to be.

We made a compelling economic package, and we would do that for other major employers as well to choose Providence. I will say, despite the comments about the importance of embracing the hybrid and remote workers, the other thing about having a corporate headquarters that really does matter is it impacts the investments that that company makes in the community, its philanthropy, and its volunteer time. Whereas hybrid or remote workers are often not doing the same level of investment in a community as a headquarters does.

There’s real value in making sure that there is a core corporate community that helps support and sustain our civic institutions, our artistic organizations, and other groups that rely on that corporate philanthropic support that seems to be most generous in the headquarters city as opposed to a regional office or a place in which they just happen to have hybrid or remote workers.

AF: A recent study found that Providence nightlife generates nearly a billion dollars a year in economic activity, but pointed out that many workers can’t catch a bus to go home after the bars and restaurants close. What can Providence, lacking a light rail or subway, do to improve transit?

BS: It’s important that we refer to it as life at night, because it’s not just nightlife. There are thousands of employees that work during what we refer to as “the other nine to five”: 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. That’s restaurants and hospitality and nightclubs, but also someone working the overnight shift at a hospital and other jobs like that.

We don’t have a subway or light rail system here in Providence or anywhere in Rhode Island. We have a bus system that works reasonably well during the day but is less frequent—and in the case of some lines, shuts down—late at night. The solutions are to look at other means of transportation like ridesharing and micromobility, and with our bus system, RIPTA, to provide better service to these major employment centers. We don’t need brand-new innovations. We just need to think about the delivery of services for this other period of time that often gets overlooked and forgotten.

I talk about arts and culture, but nightlife is a big part of it too. This is a fun city, and I think the most thriving nightlife in New England to be sure, with some pretty impressive statistics. On a per capita basis, Providence has more nightclubs than New York City. In terms of percentage of our population, we’re a more diverse city than Los Angeles. There’s something for everyone here and we know for a fact that people come down 95 to go out in Providence from the much bigger neighbor to our north, Boston.

Our reputation as a place of theater, live music, a growing comedy scene, a really vibrant Spanish language club scene, there is really something for everyone here and we want to make sure that not only do people have a safe, fun time, but that that really important contributing part of our economy continues to thrive.

AF: Given the experience of a major bridge having to be closed because of structural integrity issues, what is your vision for investing in infrastructure, particularly now that cities might be looking at a different framework from the federal government?

BS: Part of the story of the Washington Bridge on I-95, which is a major artery here in the city—it’s a state-owned bridge and a Rhode Island DOT-funded project—was inadequate maintenance. The lesson I draw from that is the importance of ongoing maintenance to avoid the much bigger price tag that comes for replacement.

We need to make sure that we’re all taking care of this infrastructure, particularly after four years of significant investment in some real big infrastructure projects here at home and all around the country. Secondly, we need predictable revenue to be able to pay for these projects [such as user fee tolls on heavy trucks]. You can repair it today or replace it tomorrow, and the replacement is always the worse investment.

AF: Similarly, are you worried about the health of the “eds and meds” anchor institutions, which continue to be a critical component of the Providence renaissance, amid the disruptions in federal funding?

BS: I’m very worried about the financial stability of the eds and meds. The change of the indirect cost recovery for NIH grants is affecting Providence already. Both our hospitals and our primary research institution, which is Brown University, depend on those funds. To change the rules of the road midstream is hugely disruptive.

Our largest employers are the hospital and the colleges. It will find its way into our community one way or another with these cuts, whether it’s job losses, depressed real estate values, diminished investment. And all of the good things that might not come as a result of this—the cures to diseases that may not be discovered and solutions to real problems none of us get to benefit from, if the research never happens. It’s a real problem and a real shame. It’s no way to treat really critical partners.

AF: You’re a different kind of politician compared to some past leaders in Rhode Island who might be described as more old-school. How would you rate yourself in terms of engaging with constituents? In a recent interview, you said, “There are times when public leaders need to say, pencils down, we’ve heard enough. This is what we’re doing.”

BS: I think about things in two ways. One is around priorities, and the other is around style. With respect to priorities, I didn’t know him, but the late Boston Mayor Tom Menino talked about being an urban mechanic, [and that] has always been a phrase that resonated with me. I’ve tried to set my priorities on core quality of life issues, things that impact people’s daily lives, and try to make them better. Just try to fix the problems that people actually care about.

I think there’s going to be a huge erosion in trust in government in general. The antidote to that is to show competence and efficiency and effectiveness, particularly at the local level, because our residents know us by name. They’re not shy to tell us what they think isn’t working well. I try to stay focused on those things and not on solving all the world’s problems, but solving a neighborhood’s problems.

In terms of style, I’m a pretty low-key person, and I don’t have high highs, I’m not bombastic, I try to listen to people. We do a lot of community engagement. We’ve tried to do community engagement in some new ways [like Zoom and online surveys]. There does come a moment where the leader just needs to make a decision and move on. That’s what I got elected to do. I’ll be on the ballot again next year. If the voters of Providence don’t like it, they can pick someone else.

I feel like it’s my job to say, “Okay, we’ve heard everyone’s feedback. We’ve made modifications where we think it makes sense. We can agree to disagree on other things. This is what we’re doing moving forward and the day of accountability is election day.” I’m entirely comfortable with that. I think that’s what it takes to get things done. That’s what I think our residents actually want us to do, is to get things done. Inaction is the enemy of progress. It’s something I don’t want to fall victim to.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Lead image: Mayor Brett Smiley. Credit: City of Providence.