Urban Reform Institute

The principles of Opportunity Urbanism:

-The primary organizing principle of cities should be the creation of opportunity and social mobility.

-People should have a range of neighborhood choices (including suburban), rather than being socially engineered into high-density, transit-oriented developments beloved by overly prescriptive planners.

-Restricting housing supply unreasonably through regulation drives up costs and harms the middle class.

-Education impacts housing choices, forcing parents to overpay in the few good school districts or move further out of the core city. Making educational alternatives available for working and middle class families is essential to upward mobility and long-term urban growth.

-Supporting the needs of middle-class families should be just as important, if not more, than the needs of the childless creative class. Children, afterall, represent the future of society.

-Successful economies need a broad spectrum of industries. Solid middle-class and blue-collar jobs are just as important as the much celebrated high-tech industries aimed at white-collar professionals. Educational choices should be made to address these varied needs.

-Concentrations of power – whether through political or economic structures – undermine social mobility and the creation and pursuit of new opportunities. Decision-making power, therefore, should be as widely dispersed as practical.

-Transit investments should be based in large part on serving cost-effectively those who most need it, to provide a reasonable alternative for those (the disabled, elderly, students) for whom auto transit is difficult. It should not be primarily a vehicle for real estate speculation or indirect land use control. The use of bus transport, including rapid bus lanes, as well as new technologies, including firms like Uber and driverless cars, need to be considered as potential answers to the issue of urban mobility.

-In general, cities are better off with more market-oriented land-use policies than prescriptive central planning.