Is the new anti-gentrification legislation in Louisville a model for global cities?
The housing crisis is often framed as a straightforward shortage of housing of any type, meaning any new supply is seen as good. But in Louisville, Kentucky as in many other places, the picture is really more nuanced. Every type of development does not benefit every type of resident.
How Louisville plans to keep residents from being priced out of their neighborhoods
A tool aimed at preventing public dollars from funding developments that could displace residents received unanimous support from the Louisville Metro Council on Thursday, to cheers of support in the crowd from members of the Louisville Tenants Union.
Louisville Advances the Country’s Strongest Planning Tool to Mitigate Displacement
Led by the Initiative on Cities at Boston University, Loretta Lees (Boston University), Kenton Card (University of Minnesota and Boston University) and Andre Comandon (University of Southern California) developed a new tool to be implemented by the Louisville Metro Government to guide decisions about residential investments. The tool is the result of a collaboration with a tenant union, government officials, and Councilmember Jecorey Arthur to implement the policy.
Louisville Metro Council close to passing anti-displacement tool after years of efforts
Louisville Metro Council could vote on a new tool Thursday that aims to help prevent residents from being priced out of their neighborhoods. The council unanimously passed legislation a year ago requiring the city to create an anti-displacement assessment tool.
After months of delays, the finished product is now publicly available and on the verge of becoming a groundbreaking example for city governments that want to tackle unwanted displacement and gentrification.
A Teen’s Murder, Mold in the Walls: Unfulfilled Promises Haunt Public Housing
The year before Desaray died, President Joe Biden called for the federal government to spend tens of billions of dollars to fix dilapidated public housing that he said posed “critical life-safety concerns.” The repairs, Biden said, would mostly help people of color, single mothers like Gilliard who work in low-income jobs, and people with disabilities.
In studying business gentrification, of course size matters
Our recent study measured business closings and openings in Central Square between 2013 and 2023 as a way to understand commercial gentrification – the replacement of lower-value businesses with higher-value ones. In the study, we categorized businesses by their size: independent businesses or local, regional, national and international chains.
Gentrification study of Central Square finds independent spirit that’s being sorely tested
Moving from London to Cambridge, two cities that are struggling with rapid gentrification, I’ve long been concerned about how the pace of change disrupts communities’ abilities to survive and thrive. Just last year, Cambridge Local First’s inaugural State of Small Business report confirmed that the national picture for small businesses was reflected in Cambridge – and in short, it is not a good time. Though Cambridge’s independent spirit remains strong, particularly in Central Square, and I am inspired by the power of community to defy, resist or adapt to the seemingly inevitable churn and change of urban life, the headlines make for concerning reading. Multiple independents, restaurants and arts institutions, many long-standing fixtures in the community, have closed their doors to an increasingly frustrated community.
The complexities of gentrification and its planetary dynamics
An international conference about gentrification gathered scholars, activists, and practitioners to discuss worldwide urban changes displacing poorer residents to develop upscale areas.
Tensions in the ever-changing nature of cities
Over millennia, cities have evolved into new versions of themselves. This issue of Nature Cities explores pressing urban alterations in this moment of history, including conflicts wrought by gentrification and the unfolding iterations of climate change.
Loretta Lees and Elanor Warwick: Defensible space
In Episode 26/3 of A is for Architecture, Loretta Lees and Elanor Warwick speak about their book, Defensible Space on the Move: Mobilisation in English Housing Policy and Practice, published with Wiley in 2022. We discuss a few of its themes, including the emergence of the concept in America with Oscar Newman and others, its transference to Britain and its articulation and deployment by geographers, architects and policymakers, not least Alice Coleman, in the later twentieth century.