Promoting Sustainable Communities Through Infill

Book excerpt: Infill development, as an alternative to sprawl, can promote socio-economic sustainability as well as environmental sustainability by realizing more compact urban form and ensuring economic vitality and diversity. Compact development and more diverse housing options realized through infill can alleviate spatial segregation and promote social diversity in communities by attracting diverse new residents into the neighborhood. However, as infill housing reflects neighborhood conditions, the impacts of infill housing on neighborhood income diversity vary depending on neighborhood types. Specifically, providing assisted rental housing in economically distressed neighborhoods may further concentrate the poor. Gentrification derived from infill can displace lower income households and lead to new residential sorting. Also, moderate or more expensive infill housing, which is similar to what exists, in middle or higher income neighborhoods will only attract households with a similar level of income as existing residents. Accordingly, a mixture of incomes in these neighborhoods may not be achieved through infill.