NSF DISES Proposal: Building regional climate resilience and social equity through housing and land use policy

Two interrelated crises – climate change and housing affordability – are dramatically impacting the health and well-being of urban communities in the United States. Transit-oriented communities (TOCs), which aim to produce diverse urban housing types that are denser, intermingled with other daily uses and support multiple modes of sustainable transportation present a promising strategy to support climate resilience, and greater housing equity through expanding the supply of affordable housing in accessible locations.

State legislatures in the United States have begun to recognize this potential through mandates, standards, and incentives for local governments, but these state actions have limits due to local opposition. This research examines urban designs and policies that can support climate-resilient and equitable TOC development. Specifically, the research aims to understand the conditions that enable or constrain policies that support dense, affordable, and green TOCs.

Second, it enables new analytical tools and data to help policymakers and stakeholders understand the effects of TOCs on climate resilience and housing equity. Third, the research tests how different decision-making processes can help diverse stakeholders explore and visualize potential benefits and tradeoffs associated with TOCs in urban areas. This research helps to identify policy, planning, and decision-making pathways that support housing equity, while advancing critical urban climate resilience goals such as extreme heat mitigation.

Knowledge regarding approaches that address the dual goals of housing affordability and climate resilience under varying political and environmental conditions is often limited, leaving policymakers to design policies based on limited knowledge or assumptions. Whether TOCs can live up to their promise is open to scientific debate and often TOCs face significant local opposition, impeding the capacity for regional approaches.

In theory, when combined with green site design, TOCs may provide greater climate resilience by lowering urban temperatures. Yet, both TOCs and green site design can result in reduced housing equity depending on the unique policy conditions that support their development. Policies that are designed to enable both climate resilient and equitable TOCs are one way to minimize their potentially negative effects.

The main question this research addresses is: How can decision makers simultaneously promote greater climate resilience and housing equity through TOCs under varying conditions? In addressing this question, this project has three interrelated research aims: 1) understand what enables or constrains climate resilient and equitable TOC housing policies; 2) characterize the biophysical impacts of TOCs on climate resilience and housing equity; and 3) build transformative capacity for TOC development through knowledge co-production.

The empirical context involves multi-scalar comparisons and multiple levels of data granularity. We assess conditions that drive state-level policies across the US that target climate-resilient and equitable urban housing. Using a sample of policies in five states we provide an in-depth analyses of stakeholder opposition/support for TOCs and housing equity implications.

To analyze the climate resilience outcomes and the potential for building transformative capacity through knowledge co-production, we focus on the Denver metropolitan region. This region of 59 local governments and 78 rail transit stations, has a range of land-use mixes, housing, and TOCs to allow for comparability to other rapidly growing western regions.

The methods include biophysical modeling of urban thermal comfort at neighborhood and site scales, along with the development of policy-driven scenarios that will be evaluated in stakeholder co-production workshops to assess learning and transformative capacity. The co-production workshops are grounded in an integrated modeling protocol, which connects multiple scales of modelling from the streetscape to the urban region.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.