Public participation in the housing permitting process empowers unrepresentative and privileged groups who participate in local politics to restrict the supply of housing.

Community Justice discusses concepts of community within the context of justice policy and programs, and addresses the important relationship between the criminal justice system and the community in the USA. Taking a bold stance in the criminal justice debate, this book argues that crime management is more effective through the use of informal (as opposed to formal) social control. It demonstrates how an increasing number of criminal justice elements are beginning to understand that the development of partnerships within the community that enhance informal social control will lead to a stabilization and possible a decline in crime, especially violent crime, and make communities more liveable. Borrowing from an eclectic toolbox of ideas and strategies - community organizing, environmental crime prevention, private-public partnerships, justice initiatives – Community Justice puts forward a new approach to establishing safe communities, and highlights the failure of the current American justice system in its lack of vision and misuse of resources. Providing detailed information about how community justice fits within each area of the criminal justice system, and including relevant case studies to exemplify this philosophy in action, this book is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of subjects such as criminology, law and sociology.

This book examines local zoning policies and suggests reforms that states and the federal government might adopt to counter the negative effects of exclusionary zoning In this book, Robert Ellickson asserts that local zoning policies are the most consequential regulatory program in the United States. Many localities have created barriers to the development of less costly forms of housing. Numerous economists have found that current zoning practices inflict major damage on the national economy. Using Silicon Valley, the Greater New Haven area, and the northwestern portion of Greater Austin as case studies, Ellickson shows in unprecedented detail how the zoning system works and recommends steps for its reform. Zoning regulations, Ellickson demonstrates, are hard to dislodge once localities have enacted them. He develops metrics to measure the existence and costs of exclusionary zoning, and suggests reforms that states and the federal government could undertake to counter the detrimental effects of local policies. These include the cartelization of housing markets and the aggravation of racial and class segregation.

A landmark volume about the importance of housing in social life. In 1947, the president of the American Sociological Association argued for the importance of housing as a field of sociological research. Yet seventy-five years later, the sociology of housing has not developed as a distinct field, leaving efforts to understand housing's place in society to other disciplines, such as economics and urban planning. This volume intends to change that, solidifying the place of housing studies as a distinct subfield within the discipline of sociology, showing that housing is both an important element of sociology and a significant component of social life that deserves dedicated attention as a distinct area of research. To do so, the book takes stock of the current field of scholarship and provides new directions for study. The contributors showcase the very best traditions of sociology--they draw on diverse methodological approaches, present unique field sites and data sources, and foreground sociological theory to understand contemporary housing issues. The Sociology of Housing will be a landmark volume, used by researchers and students alike as an introduction to this crucial field and a map of its future potential.