Departmental Papers (City and Regional Planning)
The Department of City and Regional Planning is more than fifty years old, and among its faculty are researchers of international repute. They are authors of landmark monographs, journal articles and working papers focused on several subfields especially community and economic development, transportation, environmental policy and growth management, and urban design and development.
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Publication Who Received Loans? Home Owners' Loan Corporation Lending and Discrimination in Philadelphia in the 1930's(2003-02-01) Hillier, Amy EThe lending record of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) has received little attention compared with HOLC’s residential security maps. Specifically, the extent to which HOLC practiced racial and ethnic discrimination in the process of making and servicing more than a million loans to homeowners during the Depression has not been carefully examined. Using primary sources including HOLC publications, newspaper articles, 1930 census data, and mortgage records from Philadelphia, this research shows that HOLC did make loans to African Americans, Jews, and immigrants. Evidence suggests, however, that HOLC supported racial segregation in the process of reselling properties acquired through foreclosure.Publication Spatial Analysis of Historical Redlining: A Methodological Explanation(2003-01-01) Hillier, Amy EDespite widespread belief that redlining contributed to disinvestment in cities, there has been little empirical analysis of historical lending patterns. The lack of appropriate data and clear definitions of redlining has contributed to this void. This article reviews definitions and methods that have emerged from research on lending in recent years and considers how they can be applied to research on historical redlining. Address-level mortgage data from Philadelphia from the 1940s are analyzed using spatial regression, “hot spot” analysis, and surface interpolation. Employing multiple definitions of redlining that focus on process and outcome, as well as spatial and statistical relationships in lending, the analyses result in a series of map layers that indicate where redlining may have occurred. In addition to providing some evidence of lending discrimination, this article promotes an explicitly spatial view of redlining that has conceptual and methodological implications for research on contemporary and historical redlining.Publication Predicting Housing Abandonment with the Philadelphia Neighborhood Information System(2003-01-01) Hillier, Amy E; Culhane, Dennis P.; Smith, Tony E; Tomlin, C. DanaSeveral large US cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia, have developed information systems to distribute property-level housing data to community organizations and municipal agencies. These early warning systems are also intended to predict which properties are at greatest risk of abandonment, but they have rarely used statistical modeling to support such forecasts. This study used logistic regression to analyze data from the Philadelphia Neighborhood Information System in order to determine which properties were most likely to become imminently dangerous. Several different characteristics of the property, including whether it was vacant, had outstanding housing code violations, and tax arrearages as well as characteristics of nearby properties were identified as significant predictors. Challenges common to the development of early warning systems - including integrating administrative data, defining abandonment, and modeling temporal and spatial data - are discussed along with policy implications for cities like Philadelphia that have thousands of vacant and abandoned properties.Publication Removing Barriers to the Use of Community Information Systems(2005-01-01) Hillier, Amy E; Wernecke, Mary L; McKelvey, HeatherCommunity information systems (CINS) are emerging as important tools for community, government, and educational organizations. This paper considers the training, evaluation, and outreach efforts relating to the Philadelphia Neighborhood Information System (NIS), a collection of online applications that integrate and distribute housing and demographic data. It presents an overview of the types of NIS users and uses and some specific examples of how the NIS is being used for individual property inquiries, community surveys, needs assessments, and research. Finally, the paper discusses the barriers to more analytical uses and offers recommendations for social work education aimed at preparing social workers to support community organizations in their efforts to harness the potential of CINS for social change.Publication Classifying Opportunity Zones- A Model-Based Clustering Approach(2022-01-01) Green, Jamaal; Shi, WeiObjective: Opportunity Zones (OZs) are the first major place-based economic development policy from the federal government in nearly two decades. To date, confusion persists among planners and policymakers in some places as to what features of OZ tracts matter for their inclusion, and, secondly, what features of OZ tracts make them attractive targets for potential investment. The authors developed a typology of OZ tracts in order to offer planners and policymakers alternative ways of organizing a highly variable set of tracts. Methods: This study employs model-based clustering, also known as latent class analysis, to develop a typology OZ tracts from the population of all eligible tracts in the United States. The authors use publicly available data from the US Census Bureau and Urban Institute in developing the typology. Descriptive statistics and graphics are presented on the clusters. Using Portland, Oregon as an example city, the authors present a cartographic exploration of the resulting typology. Results: OZs present with immense variation across clusters. Some clusters, specifically cluster 3 and 9, are less poor, have a greater number of jobs and higher development potential than other clusters. Additionally, these exceptional clusters have disproportionate rates of final OZ designation compared to other clusters. In Portland, these less distressed clusters make up the majority of ultimately designated OZ tracts in the city and are concentrated in the downtown area compared to the more deprived eastern part of the city. Conclusions: We find that OZ designation is disproportionately seen in particular clusters that are relatively less deprived than the larger population of eligible tracts. Cluster analysis as well as other forms of exploratory or inductive analyses can offer planners and policymakers a better understanding of their local development context as well as offering a more coherent understanding of a widely variant set of tracts.Publication Preserving Large Farming Landscapes: The Case of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania(2017-05-01) Daniels, Thomas L.; Payne-Riley, LaurenPreserving large farming landscapes is one of the main goals of farmland preservation programs. Other goals include protecting highly productive soils, maintaining and enhancing the local farming economy, and promoting locally produced fresh food. Farmland preservation programs take time, however, because of the hefty funding requirements and the detailed process of preserving farmland through the acquisition of conservation easements by purchase or donation. The standard measures of dollars spent and farmland acres preserved do not give an accurate picture of the spatial outcomes of preservation and preservation effectiveness. Three other measures better reflect the spatial effectiveness of farmland preservation: acreage and percentage of preserved farm parcels located in agricultural zones, number and acreage of preserved farm parcels in large contiguous blocks, and number and acreage of preserved farm parcels along growth boundaries. Scattered preserved farms and preserved farms not located in agricultural zones are likely to face more nonfarm development nearby as well as problems with non- farm neighbors. The farmland preservation effort in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, provides an important case study of the pattern of farmland preservation over time. Other counties and land trusts can employ geographic information systems (GIS) methods in this study to monitor and evalu- ate the progress of their farmland preservation efforts.Publication Integrating Forest Carbon Sequestration into a Cap-and-Trade Program to Reduce Net Carbon Emissions(2010-07-30) Daniels, Thomas L.Problem: Most research on planning to mitigate climate change has focused on reducing CO2 emissions from coal-fıred power plants or the transportation sector. The contribution of forests to lowering net CO2 emissions has largely been overlooked. U.S. forests already offset about one eighth of the nation's annual CO2 emissions and have the potential to offset more, all at a relatively low cost. It will not be easy to integrate forest carbon sequestration into a cap-and-trade program to reduce net CO2 emissions, however. Purpose: I explore what forest land use planning, forestry management practices, and land preservation strategies would be required to integrate forest carbon sequestration into a cap-and- trade program, and explain the role planning and planners can play in promoting forest carbon sequestration. Methods: The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is a 10-state cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fıred power plants in the northeastern United States. It provides a case study of how forest carbon sequestration can be included in a cap-and-trade program. Meanwhile, California has devised certifiable carbon credits from forestland. I analyze both approaches and generalize from them. Results and conclusions: To promote forest carbon sequestration through a cap-and-trade program will require ensuring the permanence of CO2 reductions, minimizing leakage from forestland conversion, and obtaining prices for carbon offsets that are high enough to induce forestland owners to participate in the program and offer them for sale. The capital needed to purchase and monitor permanent forest conservation easements as well as to provide a stream of annual income for timberland owners may require a national system of carbon credits. Ideally, the easements would be set up in advance through investments by government or non-profıts, so that landowners will be ready to sell credits when they are demanded. Takeaway for practice: A cap-and-trade system could be a cost-effective way to lower net CO2 emissions if it included certifiable, trade-able credits from forestland preservation and management, and if the price of carbon credits were high enough to induce forest landowners to offer credits. To promote forest carbon sequestration, planners in rural areas should work with the local, state, and federal governments and non-profıt land trusts to zone forestland at low densities, to preserve forest land through acquiring conservation easements, and to fashion forest management plans that ensure long cycles of timber harvesting. Planners in metropolitan areas should promote tree planting and tree retention ordinances to protect, expand, and manage urban forests to absorb greenhouse gases.Publication Residential Security Maps and Neighborhood Appraisals. The Homeowners' Loan Corporation and the Case of Philadelphia(2005-07-01) Hillier, Amy EAt the request of the Home Loan Bank Board, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) created color-coded maps for cities across the country between 1935 and 1940 that indicated risk levels for long-term real estate investment. Involvement in this City Survey Program marked a departure from the original mission of HOLC to provide new mortgages on an emergency basis to homeowners at risk of losing their homes during the Depression. This article considers why HOLC made these maps, how HOLC created them, and what the basis was for the grades on the maps. Geographic information systems and spatial regression models are used to show that racial composition was a significant predictor of map grades, controlling for housing characteristics.Publication WEB Du Bois and the "Negro Problem": Thoughts on Violence in Philadelphia(2007-07-22) Hillier, AmyThis sermon, delivered at First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, might also be called "Why a white girl from New Hampshire is studying The Philadelphia Negro." This essay/sermon connects Du Bois's 1896 survey of Philadelphia to the violence currently plaguing Philadelphia.Publication Reading rival union responses to the localization of technical work in the US telecommunications industry(2007-01-01) Wolf-Powers, LauraBetween the early 1970s and the late 1990s, the market repercussions of state deregulation, combined with technological change, sparked profound changes for employees in the heretofore highly unionized US telecommunications sector. The wholesale restructuring of the AT&T Bell System and the growth of competitor firms' market share led to declines in union density, yawning wage disparities among people doing similar work, and increased casualization and insecurity for holders of both customer service and technical jobs in the industry. However, these trends have manifested themselves somewhat differently for customer service and technical workers. While employers have typically followed a strategy of consolidating and regionalizing customer service and clerical labor, a significant amount of technical work, specifically the installation and maintenance of telecommunications infrastructure on customers' premises, has grown more fragmented, structured by local labor market conditions and institutions (see Batt and Keefe 1999, Keefe and Batt 2002).