Jois on Affordable Housing and Civic Participation

Goutam U. Jois (Harvard Law School) has posted Affordable Housing and Civic Participation: Two Sides of the Same Coin on SSRN.  Here's the abstract:

Over the past several decades, America's inner cities have deteriorated socially, economically, and politically. Simultaneously, civic engagement, almost by any measure, has been on the decline: Americans vote less and volunteer less, go out to dinner with friends less and attend PTA meetings less.

In this Article, I argue that the two phenomena are linked, at least from the perspective of remedies. Specifically, by rebuilding our inner cities to promote mixed-use, mixed-income development, we can revitalize some of the most impoverished neighborhoods in our country while simultaneously engendering the mechanisms to foster increased civic engagement in our participatory democracy.

Ben Barros

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