Home / Current Issue / Paper 1712338
Urban Redevelopment Without Displacement: A Policy Framework for Equitable Growth in Society
Subject area: Science,Engineering and Technology · Area of research: Equitable Growth
Abstract
Urban redevelopment has historically been associated with the displacement of low-income populations, the erosion of social networks, and the deepening of spatial inequality. As cities expand and pursue economic modernization, traditional planning approaches often prioritize land-value maximization and investor-driven regeneration, resulting in the exclusion of vulnerable communities. This proposes a holistic policy framework for urban redevelopment without displacement, grounded in principles of equity, participatory governance, and inclusive economic growth. The framework emphasizes securing affordable housing, protecting tenure rights, and promoting community-led development models that preserve cultural identity and local livelihoods. It highlights the need for comprehensive strategies that integrate social housing mandates, land-value capture mechanisms, and inclusionary zoning to ensure that redevelopment benefits are fairly distributed. Additionally, the framework underscores the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration between governments, private developers, and grassroots organizations to strengthen accountability and co-create sustainable urban futures. Context-specific tools such as rent stabilization policies, community land trusts, and targeted financing instruments are evaluated as means to reduce displacement pressure while enabling vibrant, economically productive neighborhoods. By aligning infrastructure upgrades, green innovations, and job creation with strong social safeguards, cities can transition toward models of growth that enhance equity rather than reinforce segregation. Ultimately, this framework demonstrates that urban redevelopment can serve as a transformative pathway to improve living conditions and reduce poverty when policies are intentionally designed to keep existing residents in place and enhance their quality of life. The paper contributes to ongoing global discourse on inclusive urbanism and provides actionable insights for policymakers, especially in rapidly urbanizing regions where redevelopment pressures are intensifying.
Keywords
Urban Redevelopment; Non-Displacement; Inclusive Growth; Social Equity; Affordable Housing; Community-Led Development; Sustainable Cities
References
[1] Akash, H., 2015. Disturbing the Balance: Exploring the Implications of Employment Land Conversions in the City of Toronto.
[2] Altes, W.K.K., 2016. Forced relocation and tenancy law in Europe. Cities, 52, pp.79-85.
[3] Anguelovski, I., Brand, A.L., Chu, E. and Goh, K., 2017. Urban planning, community (re) development and environmental gentrification: Emerging challenges for green and equitable neighbourhoods. In The Routledge handbook of environmental justice (pp. 449-462). Routledge.
[4] Antwi-Agyei, P., Dougill, A.J. and Stringer, L.C., 2015. Impacts of land tenure arrangements on the adaptive capacity of marginalized groups: The case of Ghana’s Ejura Sekyedumase and Bongo districts. Land use policy, 49, pp.203-212.
[5] Barker, K., Berry, C.P., Coyle, D., Jones, R. and Westwood, A., 2017. Laying the Foundations: Industrial Strategy Commission.
[6] Bezdek, B., 2016. Putting community equity in community development: Resident equity participation in urban redevelopment. In Affordable housing and public-private partnerships (pp. 93-128). Routledge.
[7] Bornstein, L. and Leetmaa, K., 2015. Moving beyond indignation: Stakeholder tactics, legal tools and community benefits in large-scale redevelopment projects. Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 5(1).
[8] Caprotti, F., Cowley, R., Datta, A., Broto, V.C., Gao, E., Georgeson, L., Herrick, C., Odendaal, N. and Joss, S., 2017. The New Urban Agenda: key opportunities and challenges for policy and practice. Urban research & practice, 10(3), pp.367-378.
[9] Carrillo, L., Pattillo, M., Hardy, E. and Acevedo-Garcia, D., 2016. Housing decisions among low-income Hispanic households in Chicago. Cityscape, 18(2), pp.109-150.
[10] Chu, E., Anguelovski, I. and Carmin, J., 2016. Inclusive approaches to urban climate adaptation planning and implementation in the Global South. Climate Policy, 16(3), pp.372-392.
[11] Crawford, A., Dazé, A., Hammill, A., Parry, J.E. and Zamudio, A.N., 2015. Promoting climate-resilient peacebuilding in fragile states. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www. iisd. org/library/promoting-climate-resilient-peacebuilding-fragile-states.
[12] Crisp, R., Eadson, W. and While, A., 2016. Tackling poverty through housing and planning policy in city regions.
[13] De Jong, M., Yu, C., Joss, S., Wennersten, R., Yu, L., Zhang, X. and Ma, X., 2016. Eco city development in China: addressing the policy implementation challenge. Journal of Cleaner Production, 134, pp.31-41.
[14] Doshi, S., 2015. Rethinking gentrification in India: Displacement, dispossession and the spectre of development. In Global gentrifications (pp. 101-120). Policy Press.
[15] Drapalova, E., 2016. Good Apples on Bad Trees. Explaining Variation in Levels of Corruption in.
[16] Ernst, L., de Graaf-Van Dinther, R.E., Peek, G.J. and Loorbach, D.A., 2016. Sustainable urban transformation and sustainability transitions; conceptual framework and case study. Journal of cleaner production, 112, pp.2988-2999.
[17] Facer, K. and Enright, B., 2016. Creating Living Knowledge: The Connected Communities Programme, community-university partnerships and the participatory turn in the production of knowledge. Arts and Humanities Research Council.
[18] Fiala, N., 2015. Economic consequences of forced displacement. The Journal of Development Studies, 51(10), pp.1275-1293.
[19] Franklin, A.L. and Rickard, V.A., 2016. The role of citizen advisory boards during times of fiscal stress. Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, 28(1), pp.49-71.
[20] Gottschlich, D. and Bellina, L., 2017. Environmental justice and care: Critical emancipatory contributions to sustainability discourse. Agriculture and Human Values, 34(4), pp.941-953.
[21] Hogarth, K., 2015. Leveraging the private sector to enable the delivery of well-located affordable housing in Cape Town.
[22] Hossain, S., Scholz, W. and Baumgart, S., 2015. Translation of urban planning models: Planning principles, procedural elements and institutional settings. Habitat international, 48, pp.140-148.
[23] Huston, S., Rahimzad, R. and Parsa, A., 2015. ‘Smart’sustainable urban regeneration: Institutions, quality and financial innovation. Cities, 48, pp.66-75.
[24] Hyra, D., 2015. The back-to-the-city movement: Neighbourhood redevelopment and processes of political and cultural displacement. Urban Studies, 52(10), pp.1753-1773.
[25] Jarvis, H., 2015. Community‐led housing and ‘slow’opposition to corporate development: citizen participation as common ground?. Geography Compass, 9(4), pp.202-213.
[26] Karmakar, A. and Sahib, U., 2017. Smart Dubai: Accelerating innovation and leapfrogging E-democracy. In E-democracy for smart cities (pp. 197-257). Singapore: Springer Singapore.
[27] Kirbyshire, A., Wilkinson, E., Le Masson, V. and Batra, P., 2017. Mass displacement and the challenge for urban resilience. London: Overseas Development Institute.
[28] Kleinschmit, S., 2015. Addressing procedural bias in municipal planning governance: A case for incorporating citizen participation within technical advisory committees. International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior, 18(1), pp.1-20.
[29] Klink, J. and Denaldi, R., 2016. On urban reform, rights and planning challenges in the Brazilian metropolis. Planning Theory, 15(4), pp.402-417.
[30] Knight, J.M. and Gharipour, M., 2016. Urban displacement and low-income communities: The case of the American city from the late twentieth century. ArchNet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, 10(2), p.6.
[31] Kothari, M., 2015. The global crisis of displacement and evictions. Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, New York.
[32] Kreichauf, R., 2017. Between economic revival and social disruption: the redevelopment of Greater Downtown and the emergence of new socio-spatial inequalities. In Why Detroit Matters (pp. 75-94). Policy Press.
[33] Kundu, R., 2017. The ‘invisibles’ in new town Rajarhat: The politics of place-making by new migrants and the internally displaced refugees of urban development. Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG).
[34] Lai, Y. and Tang, B., 2016. Institutional barriers to redevelopment of urban villages in China: A transaction cost perspective. Land Use Policy, 58, pp.482-490.
[35] Lambert, C. and Oatley, N., 2017. Governance, institutional capacity and planning for growth. In Urban Governance, Institutional Capacity and Social Milieux (pp. 125-141). Routledge.
[36] Li, B.Y., 2016. Now is the time: challenging resegregation and displacement in the age of hypergentrification. Fordham L. Rev., 85, p.1189.
[37] Maggiori, M., 2017. Financial intermediation, international risk sharing, and reserve currencies. American Economic Review, 107(10), pp.3038-3071.
[38] Oni, O., Adeshina, Y.T., Iloeje, K.F. and Olatunji, O.O., ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MODEL FAIRNESS AUDITOR FOR LOAN SYSTEMS. Journal ID, 8993, p.1162.
[39] Osabuohien, F.O., 2017. Review of the environmental impact of polymer degradation. Communication in Physical Sciences, 2(1).
[40] Ossiannilsson, E., Williams, K., Camilleri, A.F. and Brown, M., 2015. Quality models in online and open education around the globe. State of the art and recommendations. Oslo: International Council for Open and Distance Education.
[41] P Yocom, K., Andrews, L., Faghin, N., Dyson, K., Leschine, T. and Nam, J., 2016. Revitalizing urban waterfronts: Identifying indicators for human well-being.
[42] Pancholi, S., Yigitcanlar, T. and Guaralda, M., 2015. Place making facilitators of knowledge and innovation spaces: insights from European best practices. International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development, 6(3), pp.215-240.
[43] Patel, S., Sliuzas, R. and Mathur, N., 2015. The risk of impoverishment in urban development-induced displacement and resettlement in Ahmedabad. Environment and Urbanization, 27(1), pp.231-256.
[44] Porter, L., Matunga, H., Viswanathan, L., Patrick, L., Walker, R., Sandercock, L., Moraes, D., Frantz, J., Thompson-Fawcett, M., Riddle, C. and Jojola, T., 2017. Indigenous planning: from principles to practice/a revolutionary pedagogy of/for indigenous planning/settler-indigenous relationships as liminal spaces in planning education and practice/indigenist planning/what is the work of non-indigenous people in the service of a decolonizing agenda?/supporting indigenous planning in the city/film as a catalyst for indigenous community development/being ourselves and seeing ourselves in the city: enabling the conceptual space for indigenous urban planning .... Planning Theory & Practice, 18(4), pp.639-666.
[45] Pouw, N. and Gupta, J., 2017. Inclusive development: a multi-disciplinary approach. Current opinion in environmental sustainability, 24, pp.104-108.
[46] Reckien, D., Creutzig, F., Fernandez, B., Lwasa, S., Tovar-Restrepo, M., Mcevoy, D. and Satterthwaite, D., 2017. Climate change, equity and the Sustainable Development Goals: an urban perspective. Environment and urbanization, 29(1), pp.159-182.
[47] Rieckmann, M., 2017. Education for sustainable development goals: Learning objectives. UNESCO publishing.
[48] Salamon, L.M., Sokolowski, S.W. and Haddock, M.A., 2017. Explaining civil society development: A social origins approach. JHU Press.
[49] Saleem, R., Vaswani, A., Wheeler, E., Maroney, M., Pagan-Ortiz, M. and Brodt, M., 2016. The effects of structural violence on the well-being of marginalized communities in the United States. Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice, 8(1), p.181.
[50] Satterthwaite, D., 2016. Successful, safe and sustainable cities: towards a New Urban Agenda. Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance, (19), pp.3-18.
[51] Shi, L., Chu, E., Anguelovski, I., Aylett, A., Debats, J., Goh, K., Schenk, T., Seto, K.C., Dodman, D., Roberts, D. and Roberts, J.T., 2016. Roadmap towards justice in urban climate adaptation research. Nature Climate Change, 6(2), pp.131-137.
[52] Smucker, T.A., Wisner, B., Mascarenhas, A., Munishi, P., Wangui, E.E., Sinha, G., Weiner, D., Bwenge, C. and Lovell, E., 2015. Differentiated livelihoods, local institutions, and the adaptation imperative: Assessing climate change adaptation policy in Tanzania. Geoforum, 59, pp.39-50.
[53] Stone, D. and Ladi, S., 2015. Global public policy and transnational administration. Public Administration, 93(4), pp.839-855.
[54] Turok, I., 2016. Getting urbanization to work in Africa: the role of the urban land-infrastructure-finance nexus. Area development and policy, 1(1), pp.30-47.
[55] Vandenbroucke, F., 2017. Risk reduction, risk sharing and moral hazard: A vaccination metaphor. Intereconomics, 52(3), pp.154-159.
[56] Vieru, M.J., Hietanen, S.L., Gestsson, H., Johansen, S.T. and Knútsson, Ö.H., 2016. Staying Local and Competitive: Northern SME´ s Construal of Community and Business Strategies–Reacting to Economic Crisis.
[57] Wolfram, M., 2016. Conceptualizing urban transformative capacity: A framework for research and policy. Cities, 51, pp.121-130.
[58] Wrigley, A., Dawson, A., Jonas, M., Haretuku, R., Vergès, C., Rodríguez, J., de Mock, R., Christopher, P., Dumont, D.M., Rich, J.D. and Bernard, C., 2016. Vulnerability and marginalized populations. Public Health Ethics: Cases Spanning the Globe, pp.203-240.
[59] Zhou, H. and Zhang, J., 2017. Towards a Society with Social Protection for All: A Concise History of Social Security Transformation in Modern China. Springer.
[60] Zuk, M., Bierbaum, A.H., Chapple, K., Gorska, K., Loukaitou-Sideris, A., Ong, P. and Thomas, T., 2015, August. Gentrification, displacement and the role of public investment: a literature review. In Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (Vol. 79).
How to cite this paper
@article{1712338,
author = {Babra Kyokusiima},
title = {Urban Redevelopment Without Displacement: A Policy Framework for Equitable Growth in Society},
journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
year = {2018},
volume = {2},
number = {1},
pages = {142-155},
issn = {2456-8880},
url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1712338.pdf},
abstract = {Urban redevelopment has historically been associated with the displacement of low-income populations, the erosion of social networks, and the deepening of spatial inequality. As cities expand and pursue economic modernization, traditional planning approaches often prioritize land-value maximization and investor-driven regeneration, resulting in the exclusion of vulnerable communities. This proposes a holistic policy framework for urban redevelopment without displacement, grounded in principles of equity, participatory governance, and inclusive economic growth. The framework emphasizes securing affordable housing, protecting tenure rights, and promoting community-led development models that preserve cultural identity and local livelihoods. It highlights the need for comprehensive strategies that integrate social housing mandates, land-value capture mechanisms, and inclusionary zoning to ensure that redevelopment benefits are fairly distributed. Additionally, the framework underscores the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration between governments, private developers, and grassroots organizations to strengthen accountability and co-create sustainable urban futures. Context-specific tools such as rent stabilization policies, community land trusts, and targeted financing instruments are evaluated as means to reduce displacement pressure while enabling vibrant, economically productive neighborhoods. By aligning infrastructure upgrades, green innovations, and job creation with strong social safeguards, cities can transition toward models of growth that enhance equity rather than reinforce segregation. Ultimately, this framework demonstrates that urban redevelopment can serve as a transformative pathway to improve living conditions and reduce poverty when policies are intentionally designed to keep existing residents in place and enhance their quality of life. The paper contributes to ongoing global discourse on inclusive urbanism and provides actionable insights for policymakers, especially in rapidly urbanizing regions where redevelopment pressures are intensifying.},
keywords = {Urban Redevelopment; Non-Displacement; Inclusive Growth; Social Equity; Affordable Housing; Community-Led Development; Sustainable Cities},
month = {July},
}