Okay, continuing my running theme about how housing affordability is driving an increasingly political approach to zoning reform and land use.  To wit:

In May, the Strong Towns organization held its Second National Gathering in Cincinnati.  It was held in conjunction with and just before the Congress for the New Urbanism’s big national conference, CNU32.  According to a piece about the joint effort in Bloomberg’s City Lab website, this year’s focus of both organizations is:

… right now, all (Chuck) Marohn (Strong Towns founder) wants to talk about is housing, a topic he posits as this generation’s hallmark issue. “When we ask people ‘Are we in a housing crisis?’ The answer we get is, ‘Yes, absolutely,’” he said recently to a packed Cincinnati hotel ballroom.

Marohn’s remarks, pulled from his new book Escaping the Housing Trap (written alongside Daniel Herriges), kicked off a conjoined pair of conferences put on in May by two of the most prominent planning groups in the country. Strong Towns was joined by the Congress for the New Urbanism, or CNU.

The difference in the discussions about housing and zoning reform at this conference from many of the other forums and organizations talking about this, now that it is an increasingly visible political issue, is the community-based, collaborative approach advocated.

The housing crisis attracts ideologically complex congregations, as rural Republicans have found common cause with coastal progressives on issues like zoning reform. Strong Towns and CNU are nonpartisan, but they share an enthusiasm for market-based solutions. In Cincinnati, debates stayed within unspoken political boundaries, with little talk about building public or subsidized housing.

… one was more likely to hear developer-speak about floor area ratios and five-over-ones than hymns to “placemaking” amongst Jane Jacobs fans — speaks to the scale of the US housing gap. For those who made it here, this was a chance for the practice to learn how to chip away at that deficit, and maybe even do it well.

The location of the conference, Cincinnati, was prescient as well, as the city council was right in the middle of substantive discussions about its own zoning reform efforts, which were subsequently approved in early June.

Cincinnati City Council passed the Connected Communities zoning overhaul 6-3 Wednesday afternoon.  The council vote came after the city’s Equitable Growth and Housing committee also passed the zoning overhaul 6-3 on Tuesday.  The legislation is now set to become law.

The plan is aimed at increasing housing supply near business districts and along major bus routes. The goal is to cut red tape so developers can build more “middle housing,” units like duplexes, townhomes and small mixed-use apartment buildings.

The conference was full of practical discussions about how to catalyze change in communities to achieve the goal of more affordable housing and better community character.

“Don’t call starter houses ‘tiny homes.’ They’re not tiny homes. A tiny home is like a fetish,” (Mahron) said. “It’s like this cute thing, like, ‘Oh, look at the cute little tiny home.’ This is a starter house. And any civilization in all of human history would have recognized it.”

Rob Parker, who chairs the National Town Builders Association, prefers the term “attainable housing.” In an ideal setting, developers like himself would be able, if not incentivized, to produce settings of all types, attractive to a wider net of buyers or renters. “Right now, we’re working against market forces doing that,” Parker told me.

The bottom-up, collaborative, non-mandated approach was what appeared to be the overriding tone of the gathering.

Like many attendees, Parker is a devotee of “incremental development.” It’s a philosophy pitched by groups like the Inc Dev Alliance, where development happens at a much more granular scale. Rather than a massive real estate company backed by private equity swallowing up tracts of land on your block, the change is being led by your neighbors, who are building ADUs, launching neighborhood businesses and patching up and improving properties around you.

The name reflects a key tenet of this crowd: Gradual progress, through local pilots and demonstrations that build trust (and results) along the way, is better than top-down transformations. It’s an approach that emphasizes small-scale projects led by average citizens who have a passion for community development and prioritizes removing the regulations that might thwart them, so that someone who is, say, constructing a cottage in their backyard doesn’t have to go through the same process as a mega-developer. As critics of Strong Towns have noted, there’s a libertarian streak to the movement: If the government simply got out of the way, individuals with ideas could thrive. The words “red tape” made an appearance at practically every seminar I attended.

The bottom line of all this for me is, this shows the increasing engagement by people at all levels and of all backgrounds in land use and zoning.  Planners, we’ve never been so front and center on the national political stage before.  Hope we’re ready for it!