Straw, Sticks or Bricks: Urban Housing Issues From Two Points-of-View

Last Friday, two mayors from opposite sides of the country sat on a South by Southwest Interactive panel called “Straw, Sticks or Bricks: The Urban Housing Challenge” to discuss the peculiar character of the issues they face and the solutions they’re pursuing.
Mesa mayor John Giles noted his attendance in Austin on March 11 with this tweet:
A great downtown incs. innovative vibrant housing @sxsw w/ @Jorge_Elorza @jldailey618 & @MICDdotORG Trinity Simons

Curbed Managing Editor Jessica Dailey* moderated the chat with a panel featuring:

• John Giles, mayor of Mesa, Arizona
• Jorge Elorza, mayor of Providence, Rhode Island
• Trinity Simons, director of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, a Washington, D.C.-based group with a goal of preparing mayors “to be the chief urban designers of their cities.”

Giles said that his city of approximately 450,000 people has enticed developers to build what he called “capital-A Affordable housing” – that which is subsidized for its residents – by expanding a light rail route the city shares with its metropolitan neighbors, including Phoenix.

Giles said that up to 800 new units for low-income families have come online in the past year-and-a-half.

Jessica Dailey is Curbed's managing editor. She came to Curbed in 2012 and spent three years editing Curbed's New York site, where she gained extensive experience covering new residential developme...
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Ongoing Issue: “That has created some pushback from some of the neighbors,” said Giles.

Solution: He explained that one way to overcome that opposition is to encourage high-quality design and to partner with committed groups to manage the developments.
[Blogger's note: most notably at Encore on First for design, and La Mesita, Escobedo at Verde Vista and Rancho del Arte]
Both Giles and Simons talked about the importance of openly communicating with residents and business owners who might stand athwart new urban infill projects.
[blogger's note: both images from Twitter.
Top image is the entire panel. Image above is U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx giving Mesa mayor Johan Giles a pat on the shoulder]

Key Players & Topics In This Article
Affordability: A multi-faceted discussion that centers around the relative cost-of-living in a given municipality. In Austin, this debate has returned discussions on such divers concepts as land use, density, living wages, and public transportation.

Jessica Dailey came to Curbed in 2012 and spent three years editing Curbed's New York site, where she gained extensive experience covering new residential development, the housing market, urban planning, and architecture. As managing editor, she now works with writers and editors across the country to make connections between Curbed's 14 local markets. She previously wrote about sustainable design for Inhabitat, covered the arts for publications in her hometown of Pittsburgh, and contributed to a variety of local New York outlets.