The cover story of this issue, “How to Bid Better for the Olympics: A Participatory Mega-Event Planning Strategy for Local Legacies,” describes 2 years in the ill-fated history of Boston’s (MA) bid to host the 2024 Olympics; Eva Kassens-Noor and John Lauermann argue that Boston is a perfect example of the worldwide change in the political climate surrounding decisions to host mega-events. Boston’s first—and initially successful—bid to be the U.S. host for the games was generated by a limited group of political and sports elites with no input from the public, let alone professional planners; the budget was kept secret and the organizers promised vague legacies with no reference to ongoing planning objectives for developments in the city. Protests began early and built rapidly, as the cover photo suggests. It quickly became clear that the original budget was totally unrealistic and that hosting the Olympic Games would expose local taxpayers to significant revenue shortfalls and cost overruns. The organization submitting the initial successful bid, Boston 2024, promised a second revised bid that would better represent the city’s ongoing comprehensive planning process, incur no public costs, and involve genuine stakeholder participation. The authors show, however, that none of those objectives was possible; the public participation efforts were stylized and involved only communication from the staff to the public about planned efforts. The mayor of Boston, in the face of mounting public opposition, ultimately refused to sign the agreement accepting financial responsibility for the games, and the U.S. Olympic Committee withdrew its invitation to host the games. The authors conclude that cities considering hosting mega-events in the future should involve city planners who have the skills to ensure that mega-event bids are the result of fully participatory processes integrated with ongoing comprehensive planning efforts; doing so will not guarantee a successful bid or any bid, but the authors counsel that only fully involving all stakeholders can produce a bid that is likely to succeed and produce the outcomes sought from hosting the mega-event.
Ajay Garde and Cecilia Kim question whether form-based codes better address sustainability goals than the conventional zoning codes that they replace or more modern zoning codes that are often designed to address sustainability objectives as well. In “Form-Based Codes for Zoning Reform to Promote Sustainable Development: Insights From Cities in Southern California,” the authors review the differences between traditional zoning codes and form-based codes and then evaluate how well 13 cities in Southern California (where most form-based codes in the nation have been adopted) incorporated the 41 sustainability criteria in the LEED-ND (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development) standards. They also compare form-based codes in those cities with the traditional zoning codes that they replaced and comparable codes in a matched set of 13 cities that did not adopt form-based codes. The researchers find considerable variation in the extent to which the form-based and conventional zoning regulations integrated sustainability criteria: Form-based codes did not always incorporate more sustainability criteria than the conventional zoning regulations that they replaced or those in the matched cities. They do find, however, that the strongest form-based codes incorporated more of those criteria than the codes they replaced. The researchers also find that the two types of codes varied in the sustainability criteria they included: Form-based codes were more likely to include criteria on walkable streets, street networks, and mixed-income diverse developments, whereas newer conventional zoning focused more on compact development. Garde and Kim suggest that the strongest codes in their study can serve as best practices for cities considering zoning reform to meet sustainability objectives.
In “The Maker Movement and Urban Economic Development,” Laura Wolf-Powers, Marc Doussard, Greg Schrock, Charles Heying, Max Eisenburger, and Stephen Marotta examine the maker movement—small-scale and often artisanal manufacturing—that is capturing substantial press attention as a possible antidote to declining manufacturing employment in many urban areas. The authors interviewed a variety of makers and those in supportive organizations in Chicago (IL), New York (NY), and Portland (OR), finding that there are three distinct types of maker enterprises: micromakers, who contribute to a city’s artistic and cultural vibrancy; global innovators, who provide innovations in products, processes, and materials; and emerging place-based manufacturers, who make products locally and are the only type of maker to contribute directly to employment growth. The researchers suggest that economic development planners must differentiate the three types of makers and link each type to specific and reasonable development goals.
Matthew Palm and Deb Niemeier evaluate the potential of a voluntary regional planning organization to affect the location of affordable housing planned under a state affordable housing mandate. In “Achieving Regional Housing Planning Objectives: Directing Affordable Housing to Jobs-Rich Neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area,” the authors evaluate what happened after the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) changed the way localities in the region were required to allocate affordable housing. ABAG shifted from a fair share allocation model, in which each locality was required to plan for a specific number of affordable units, to a method that distributed the region’s allocation to those areas with the highest number of jobs in an attempt to better balance homes and jobs. The authors compare the actual location of low-income housing produced after the policy change with a) where comparable housing had been located before in the Bay Area; and b) results for Los Angeles (CA) and San Diego (CA), regions subject to the same state mandate but that had kept the fair share allocation policy. Palm and Niemeier find that ABAG’s policy shift was associated with a 104% improvement in the balance of housing and jobs at the local level; affordable housing units were more likely to locate in jobs-rich areas after the policy change than in San Diego and Los Angeles (both of which actually experienced a decrease in the jobs-housing balance). The authors conclude that voluntary regional planning agencies can affect the production and location of affordable housing. They recommend that planners in those states with affordable housing mandates or those that require an affordable housing element in local comprehensive plans (half of all states) require localities to direct affordable housing to jobs-rich neighborhoods.
In a Review Essay, Mahbubur Meenar, Alfonso Morales, and Leonard Bonarek assess the literature on how cities regulate urban agriculture and summarize the results of a survey of the state of regulation in 80 cities across the nation. In “Regulatory Practices of Urban Agriculture: A Connection to Planning and Policy,” the authors focus on a topic that has recently emerged as central to planning practice but that cities are unevenly addressing: They find that many cities respond by adopting enabling ordinances, regulations, and/or fiscal policy instruments, but that many operate in a planning and policy vacuum. The authors conclude that planners can use their review to address local regulatory needs, whereas scholars can identify important knowledge gaps. The authors find that planners need a typology of regulatory policies and approaches; a better understanding of how various levels of government can or do affect local urban agriculture; and data on the actual economic, social, and environmental impacts of urban agriculture, given that the literature suggests a number of potential outcomes with limited empirical proof. The authors recommend that planners assess existing regulatory frameworks to ensure that they meet local objectives and norms, deploy current and innovative land use tools to foster urban agriculture, and promote inclusive decision making and community engagement in the development of urban agriculture policy and regulations.
In the latest entry in the Perspective series, “Mobility Niches: Jitneys to Robo-Taxis,” Robert Cervero, professor emeritus of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, reflects on a transportation topic that has engaged him for most of his career: allowing the free market to provide transportation and mobility options. His views are based on his extensive research on the topic in the United States and abroad. He focuses his piece on how the private market would respond to what he calls “a rich mix of mobility niches,” which he argues would reduce congestion, waste, and environmental pollution. Cervero offers insightful and often provocative observations on a variety of long-established and emerging transport options and operators.