Cityscape: Volume 16 Number 2 | Article 7

The goal of Cityscape is to bring high-quality original research on housing and community development issues to scholars, government officials, and practitioners. Cityscape is open to all relevant disciplines, including architecture, consumer research, demography, economics, engineering, ethnography, finance, geography, law, planning, political science, public policy, regional science, sociology, statistics, and urban studies.

Cityscape is published three times a year by the Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

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Form Follows Families: Evolution of U.S. Affordable Housing Design and Construction

Volume 16, Number 2

Mark D. Shroder

Michelle P. Matuga

Getting Children Out of Harm's Way

Alexander Polikoff
Business and Professional People for the Public Interest

Point of Contention: Poverty Deconcentration
For this issue’s Point of Contention, we asked four observers with substantial knowledge of the topic to answer this question—“Should the deconcentration of poverty become one of the core objectives of federal housing policy?” Please contact alastair.w.mcfarlane@hud.gov to suggest other thought-provoking areas of controversy.

Society has long thought about poverty, at least since Charles Dickens indelibly pictured Oliver Twist’s searing experiences. Focused thinking about “concentrated poverty,” however, did not really begin until the 1987 publication of William Julius Wilson’s The Truly Disadvantaged, which “revolutionized stratification research” (Clampet-Lundquist and Massey, 2008). In the ensuing years, we have learned much about the effects of concentrated poverty, especially on young children. That learning should inform our response to the present point of contention.