Economic Development, Housing and Zoning: A Tale of Two Cities

Extensive economic development and central business district expansion generate both positive and negative public impacts; assessing those impacts is a major challenge for urban social and economic analysts. For students of urban politics and policy processes, the strategies and conflict patterns surrounding the generation and distribution of these impacts are of central interest. This paper examines exactive zoning/housing trust fund programs in San Francisco and Boston … the most far-reaching examples of emerging policies adopted by cities to shift pan of the public costs of private economic development back to the developer. The paper suggests that two conditions must be present for exaction programs to be implemented: (1) CBD demand so high that monies can be “creamed off” for redistribution without causing developers to “exit,” and (2) the mobilization of community and neighborhood interests to counter pro-CBD-growth advocates. The exaction programs in both cities, though not panaceas, appear to be generating substantial funds for housing.