Data-Driven Approach to Meet Community Housing Needs

If available, participants should bring a laptop to enhance their session experience.

Issues of housing affordability, availability, and accessibility are nearly universal in communities across the United States. Many municipalities recognize the problem but struggle to identify where additional housing would be most appropriate in the community. Several, often contradictory factors, must be considered and weighed, based on community values and preferences. These include availability of infrastructure and utilities; access to transportation, healthy foods, education, and job opportunities; environmental justice; maintaining community character; and protecting and preserving the natural environment.

Participants work in groups to identify housing opportunity sites for a fictional community. Groups must accommodate the same number of units, but each one receives a different description of the community’s values and housing needs, thereby stimulating various approaches to site identification. Groups use ArcGIS Online software to identify potential sites, select sites based on suitability outcomes, and calculate housing-unit yield. Groups publish outcomes on a dashboard to share results and compare and contrast approaches.

NPC Peer Reviewers assigned this presentation a learning level of Advanced. For more on learning-level descriptions, visit our General Information Page.