The 2025 Inspire Fund Awardees have been selected! See more information about their projects below. Project Title: “Enhancing Feasibility and Evaluation for the Housing Choice Voucher Homeownership Program in King County” Team: Vince Wang (Runstad Department of Real Estate), Zhongmin Evy Luo (PhD student, Built Environments), Kristin Pace (KCHA) Project Title: “Wildfire Smoke Readiness of Low-Income Households in Seattle” Amos Darko (Construction Management), Alvina Ekua Ntefua Saah (PhD Student, College of Built Environments) Project Title: “Equitable Public Electric Vehicle Charging…
Person: Vince Wang
Do inclusionary zoning policies affect local housing markets? An empirical study in the United States
Ruoniu (Vince) Wang, Wei Kang, Xinyu Fu, Do inclusionary zoning policies affect local housing markets? An empirical study in the United States, Cities, Volume 158, 2025, 105736, ISSN 0264-2751, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2025.105736.
Abstract
In the face of a housing affordability crisis, many cities have adopted inclusionary zoning (IZ) policies to increase the supply of affordable housing. Yet, IZ remains a controversial local policy due to its varied and inconclusive effects on housing market outcomes. This study investigates this debate by adopting a quasi-experimental design with a national dataset of IZ policies in the United States. We find that, on average, IZ policies did not affect municipality-wide housing permits or rents. However, the implementation of IZ resulted in an average of 2.1 % increase in home prices. Our results also underscore the connection between IZ policy design and market outcomes: more stringent IZ policies (i.e., those that are mandatory and apply to the entire jurisdiction) led to a higher impact on home prices while mitigating the rent effect. Additionally, IZ's market effects varied based on market conditions and the time elapsed since policy adoption. We discuss these findings in terms of implications for policy design and planning practice.
Keywords
Inclusionary zoning; Housing market outcome; Policy effect; United States; Staggered Difference-in-Differences
“All roads lead to Rome?” Performance evaluation across different types of community land trusts based on a large-scale survey
Wang, R., & Spicer, J. (2024). “All roads lead to Rome?” Performance evaluation across different types of community land trusts based on a large-scale survey. Journal of Urban Affairs, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2024.2371400
Abstract
Community land trusts (CLTs) seek to keep homes and other urban spaces permanently affordable and community controlled. As their number across the United States has increased, different iterations of the CLT model seem to have proliferated in practice, stoking scholarly debate as to their varying outcomes and benefits. There has, however, been little attempt to empirically measure the relationship between this institutional diversity and outcomes. Applying institutional theory to a national CLT dataset, we identify five main organizational sub-types of CLT: traditional CLTs, start-up CLTs, government-housed CLTs, nonprofits with a CLT/shared equity (SE) program, and adapted CLTs. Statistical tests confirm a high degree of similarity in operational scope, organizational capacity, and performance outcomes across the most prominent sub-types. The limited statistical differences which can be identified are consistent with known CLT and urban institutional development processes. Further studies might seek to determine how consequential such limited differences may be.
Keywords
Community land trust; permanently affordable housing; historical institutionalism; community control; shared equity housing
2024 CBE Inspire Fund Awardees Announced
The CBE Inspire Fund Awardees for the 2024 cycle have been selected! Their project names and team members are outlined below. Title: Mycelium Grow Lab for Student-led Research Team: Gundula Proksch (Associate Professor, Architecture), Tyler Sprague (Associate Professor, Architecture) Title: Exhibition of the works of OUR: Office of (Un)certainty Research Team: Vikram Prakash (Professor, Architecture) Title: Emergence, Resilience, and Future(s) of Urban Informality in Seattle Team: Julie Johnson (Associate Professor, Landscape Architecture), Manish Chalana (Associate Professor, Urban Design and Planning)…
Three CBE Researchers Awarded UW Royalty Research Funds
Three CBE researchers were awarded Royalty Research Funds. This cycle, 93 proposals were submitted to the University of Washington Office of Research. 25 were selected for funding, a success rate of 27%. Vince Wang, Assistant Professor in the Runstad Department of Real Estate and Dylan Stevenson, Assistant Professor in Urban Design and Planning were awarded funding for their project entitled “Exploring Transformative Solutions to Build Housing Security and Climate Resilience: The Community Land Trust Model” Narjes Abbasabadi, Assistant Professor in…
Can ChatGPT Evaluate Plans?
(2023). Can ChatGPT Evaluate Plans?, Journal of the American Planning Association, DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2023.2271893
Abstract
Problem, research strategy, and findings
Large language models, such as ChatGPT, have recently risen to prominence in producing human-like conversation and assisting with various tasks, particularly for analyzing high-dimensional textual materials. Because planning researchers and practitioners often need to evaluate planning documents that are long and complex, a first-ever possible question has emerged: Can ChatGPT evaluate plans? In this study we addressed this question by leveraging ChatGPT to evaluate the quality of plans and compare the results with those conducted by human coders. Through the evaluation of 10 climate change plans, we discovered that ChatGPT’s evaluation results coincided reasonably well (with an average of 68%) with those from the traditional content analysis approach. We further scrutinized the differences by conducting a more in-depth analysis of the results from ChatGPT and manual evaluation to uncover what might have contributed to the variance in results. Our findings indicate that ChatGPT struggled to comprehend planning-specific jargon, yet it could reduce human errors by capturing details in complex planning documents. Finally, we provide insights into leveraging this cutting-edge technology in future planning research and practice.
Takeaway for practice
ChatGPT cannot be used to replace humans in plan quality evaluation yet. However, it is an effective tool to complement human coders to minimize human errors by identifying discrepancies and fact-checking machine-generated responses. ChatGPT generally cannot understand planning jargon, so planners wanting to use this tool should use extra caution when planning terminologies are present in their prompts. Creating effective prompts for ChatGPT is an iterative process that requires specific instructions.
Keywords
ChatGPT; large language model; natural language processing; plan evaluation; plan quality
Vince Wang a Panelist with Federal Reserve Board of Governors to Discuss Rental Affordability
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors hosts the ongoing “Keys to Opportunity in the Housing Market” seminar series, and in September 2023 featured 2 panel discussions. CBE’s Vince Wang (Real Estate) participated in the panel discussion entitled “Regulatory and Programmatic Strategies to Increase the Supply of Lower-Cost Rental Units.” The other panel topic was “Challenges for Rental Affordability in the Pandemic Era and Beyond.” Assistant Professor Wang discussed inclusionary zoning (IZ) programs and their impact on creating affordable housing. Read…
Building a more just and beautiful future: CBE’s new faculty cohort makes strides on campus
The new cohort of faculty have made a big impact in their initial time on campus. Please see the full story here. The cohort includes: Dr. Narjes Abbasabadi, an assistant professor in the Department of Architecture and affiliate data science faculty UW eScience Institute, studies computation and decarbonization of the built environment. Dr. Amos Darko, an assistant professor in Construction Management, studies how digital technologies can help people better monitor, assess, understand, and improve the sustainability performance of the built…
Publication of the Largest National Study on Community Land Trusts and Nonprofits with Shared Equity Homeownership Programs
The Largest National Study on Community Land Trusts and Nonprofits with Shared Equity Homeownership Programs was recently completed. In partnership with the University of Toronto, Grounded Solutions Network has completed the largest and most comprehensive national census on community land trusts (CLTs) and nonprofits with shared equity homeownership programs (SEH) to date. The report was made possible through the support of Freddie Mac, and which was developed in partnership with and published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The…
Population Health Initiative awards multiple College of Built Environments teams planning grants
The Population Health Initiative announced 12 climate change planning grant awardees. Of those 12 teams, 4 include College of Built Environments researchers. Descriptions of their projects are below. Read the CBE News story here. Linking Climate Adaptation and Public Health Outcomes in Yavatmal, Maharashtra Investigators Sameer H. Shah, Environmental and Forest Sciences Celina Balderas Guzmán, Landscape Architecture Pronoy Rai, Portland State University Project abstract This proposal collects primary interview data with landed and landless agriculturalists in Yavatmal district in…