This book re-examines the role of urban policy and planning in relation to the housing market in an era of global uncertainty and change. The relationship between planning and the housing market is a contested problem across research, policy, and practice. Problems with housing supply and affordability in many nations have been linked to planning system constraints, while the global financial crisis has raised new questions about the role of urban planning regulation and processes in responding to housing market trends. With reference to international cases from the United Kingdom, the United States, Ireland, Hong Kong and Australia, the book examines how different systems of urban planning and governance address complex and dynamic housing market trends. It also offers practical guidance on how urban planning can support an efficient supply of appropriate and affordable homes in preferred locations. A detailed study, which explains and decodes the workings of the planning system and housing market, this book will be of particular interest to scholars of human geography and urban planning, as well as housing policy makers and practitioners. To view Nicole Gurran’s related TEDx talk please visit: Housing Crisis? How about housing solutions. TEDx Sydney 2018 (http://bit.ly/2psfpMw)

Although Japan and the United States are the world's leading economies, there are significant differences in the ways their wealth is translated into living standards. A careful comparison of housing markets illustrates not only how living standards in the two countries differ, but also reveals much about saving patterns and how they affect wealth accumulation. In this volume, ten essays discuss the evolution of housing prices, housing markets and personal savings, housing finance, commuting, and the impact of public policy on housing markets. The studies reveal surprising differences in housing investment in the two countries. For example, because down payments in Japan are much higher than in the United States, Japanese tend to delay home purchases relative to their American counterparts. In the United States, the advent of home equity credit may have reduced private saving overall. This book is the first comparison of housing markets in Japan and the United States, and its findings illuminate the effects of housing markets on productivity growth, business investment, and trade.

Using rich and detailed data, this groundbreaking book explains why homelessness has become a crisis in America and reveals the structural conditions that underlie it. In Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern seek to explain the substantial regional variation in rates of homelessness in cities across the United States. In a departure from many analytical approaches, Colburn and Aldern shift their focus from the individual experiencing homelessness to the metropolitan area. Using accessible statistical analysis, they test a range of conventional beliefs about what drives the prevalence of homelessness in a given city—including mental illness, drug use, poverty, weather, generosity of public assistance, and low-income mobility—and find that none explain the regional variation observed across the country. Instead, housing market conditions, such as the cost and availability of rental housing, offer a far more convincing account. With rigor and clarity, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem explores U.S. cities' diverse experiences with housing precarity and offers policy solutions for unique regional contexts.

Housing finance structures and Institutional and regulatory/fiscal aspects in housing have changed significantly in recent years. This book examines the development in housing markets in Europe and the US, and looks at ways to make housing more affordable and housing market developments more stable.

That America entered a profound housing crisis in 2008 is well known. The wave of foreclosures that began to sweep the nation has had radical economic effects. But the force, ramifications, and implications for communities across America have never been spelled out as clearly and thoroughly as they are in this volume. As he did in Tomorrow's Cities, Tomorrow's Suburbs, the author has taken a clear-eyed and meticulous look at the latest data and found lessons that the mainstream discussion has overlooked - particularly with regard to the spatial and demographic implications of the housing crisis. The housing market did not collapse uniformly, and the pain has not been felt equally in all age groups. Planners, public officials, activists, students, and others will benefit from the author's's analysis of the real shape of the crisis, for what happens next will reflect these inequities. The author pulls no punches in this taut, readable assessment of what the crisis will mean for the shapes of our exurbs, older suburbs, and central cities.