Housing and cities — C2

US housing and urbanism became a mainstream political topic in the 2020s in a way they had not been since the Jacobs-Moses era. The trigger was a national housing-affordability crisis (Phoenix to Boston, Austin to Boise, the entire West Coast), the YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) political movement that grew out of San Francisco in the mid-2010s, and a generation of urban-policy writers — Matthew Yglesias, Jerusalem Demsas, Annie Lowrey, Conor Dougherty, Emily Hamilton, M. Nolan Gray, Daniel Herriges of Strong Towns — who turned zoning reform into a popularized political vocabulary. By 2026 the housing-policy register has migrated from the planning journals to Slow Boring, Vox, The Atlantic, and the New York Times.

The C2 reader handles the legacy Jane Jacobs / Robert Moses / William Whyte canon, the contemporary Strong Towns / Sightline / Brookings / Mercatus policy literature, the Charles Marohn / Chuck Marohn infrastructure-finance critique, the Donald Shoup parking economics work, and the Edward Glaeser / Richard Florida / Richard Rothstein academic-popular hybrid. You can read a zoning code abstract, follow the discourse around single-family zoning, parse floor area ratio and minimum lot size, and understand what a land-value tax does.

This lesson maps the working vocabulary of 2026 US housing and urbanism — from the typology of cities and suburbs through the zoning and transit register to the political-discourse vocabulary.

The settlement typology — urban, suburban, exurban, and beyond

• the urban core — the central city and adjacent dense neighborhoods.
• inner-ring suburbs — pre-WWII or early-postwar suburbs adjacent to the core; often denser, more diverse, and more transit-served than outer suburbs.
• outer-ring suburbs — postwar auto-oriented suburbs.
• the exurb — the ring beyond the suburbs; semi-rural, large lots, long commutes.
• the ex-suburb — a recent coinage; a suburb whose character has changed (e.g., gentrified or shrunk) so much that the old “suburb” label no longer fits.
• the bedroom community — a suburb whose primary function is residence (workers commute elsewhere).
• edge cities (Joel Garreau) — large suburban employment centers, often at highway interchanges.
• the boomburb (Lang & LeFurgy) — large, fast-growing suburb that has surpassed traditional city size.
• the inner city — historically used for poor urban areas; now somewhat dated and racialized; urban core or central city is the more neutral term.
• gentrification — neighborhood demographic and economic change involving displacement of lower-income residents.
• disinvestment — the prior condition of decline that often precedes gentrification.
• urban renewal — postwar federal program of slum clearance and redevelopment; mostly catastrophic (Pruitt-Igoe, the I-95 destruction of urban neighborhoods).
• redlining — federally and privately sanctioned mortgage discrimination that mapped Black neighborhoods as ineligible for federally backed loans (HOLC maps, 1930s-1960s).
• the FHA-redlining legacy — the structural foundation of the racial wealth gap (Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law, 2017).
• white flight — postwar movement of white households out of central cities.
• the suburban ideal — the cultural and policy framework privileging single-family detached housing on large lots.

“Rothstein’s The Color of Law did the historical work of making explicit what scholars had known but the public had often denied: American residential segregation was a government project, not an accident of preferences.” — Atlantic, 2018.

Zoning — the doctrinal and political vocabulary

US land-use law is overwhelmingly local. Zoning codes are where most US housing policy actually happens.

The basic zoning categories

• R-1 / single-family residential — the dominant US zoning category; one detached house per lot.
• R-2 / R-3 — multi-family residential at varying densities.
• mixed-use — combining residential and commercial; the New Urbanist staple.
• commercial (C-1, C-2, C-3) — retail and offices.
• industrial (I-1, I-2, I-3) — manufacturing and heavy use.
• agricultural — farming and large-lot rural.
• PUD (Planned Unit Development) — flexible negotiated district.
• TOD (Transit-Oriented Development) — designated higher density around transit.
• conditional use — uses allowed only with case-by-case approval.
• non-conforming use — pre-existing uses no longer allowed under current code; grandfathered.
• variance — case-specific relief from code requirements.
• rezoning — changing the underlying zoning category.

The dimensional standards

• FAR (Floor Area Ratio) — total building area divided by lot size; the primary density measure.
• minimum lot size — smallest allowed parcel.
• lot coverage — % of lot covered by structure.
• setbacks — required distance from lot lines (front, side, rear).
• height limits — maximum building height.
• density limits — maximum dwellings per acre.
• dwelling unit (DU) — a self-contained residence.
• dwelling units per acre (DUA) — density measure.
• parking minimums / parking requirements — required off-street parking per unit/sqft.
• parking maximums — the rarer opposite; caps on parking.
• impervious surface coverage — paved/built area limit (stormwater rule).
• frontage — lot’s facing dimension along the street.

Reform vocabulary

• single-family zoning — the political target of YIMBY reform.
• single-family upzoning — allowing more units on lots zoned for one.
• upzoning — allowing more intense use/density.
• downzoning — reducing allowed density (usually NIMBY).
• eliminating exclusionary zoning — the policy program.
• by-right development — allowed without discretionary approval.
• as-of-right — same.
• ministerial approval — staff-only, no discretion.
• discretionary approval — planning commission / council judgment.
• the discretionary review (San Francisco’s notorious DR) — local-veto mechanism.
• community input — code for the process where existing residents object to new construction.
• NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) — opposition to development near oneself.
• YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) — pro-housing movement.
• BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) — extreme NIMBY label.
• CAVE (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) — same.
• the homeowner veto — the structural advantage existing homeowners have in local politics.

“The YIMBY movement’s central insight is procedural, not substantive: that the housing shortage is downstream of local political institutions designed to amplify existing residents’ voices and silence those of the people who would move in if they could.” — Slow Boring, 2024.

Missing middle housing — the typology

Daniel Parolek’s framework, now central to US housing-reform discourse.

• missing middle housing — the housing types between single-family detached and mid-rise multifamily; missing from most US new construction since c. 1940.
• the single-family detached house — one unit, one lot.
• the duplex — two units, side-by-side or stacked.
• the triplex / the fourplex — three or four units.
• the courtyard apartment — small multifamily around a shared courtyard.
• the townhouse / the rowhouse — attached single-family units sharing walls.
• the live-work unit — combined residence and workspace.
• the cottage court — small detached units around a shared green.
• the small apartment building — 5-20 units, 2-4 stories.
• the ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) — secondary unit on a single-family lot.
• the JADU (Junior Accessory Dwelling Unit) — smaller ADU, typically within the existing house.
• the granny flat / the in-law unit / the back house — colloquial terms for ADUs.
• the casita — same, often in Southwest usage.
• a tiny home / a tiny house — small detached unit, often under 400 sqft.

“California’s ADU law, by stripping the local-discretion barriers, did in three years what twenty years of advocacy hadn’t — a hundred thousand backyard cottages went up, mostly without protest, almost all to rent to people who would otherwise have been priced out of the metro.” — NYT, 2024.

Transit-oriented development and the streets vocabulary

• TOD (Transit-Oriented Development) — higher-density, mixed-use development around transit stations.
• transit stop / transit station — bus stop / rail station.
• the half-mile circle — walkable catchment around a transit station.
• the first-mile / last-mile problem — getting people between transit and final destination.
• bus rapid transit (BRT) — high-frequency, often-dedicated-lane bus.
• light rail transit (LRT) — streetcar-derived rail systems.
• heavy rail / rapid transit / the subway / the metro — fully grade-separated rail.
• commuter rail — peak-oriented suburban rail.
• the streetcar — slow surface rail, often nostalgic.
• the trolley — same.
• headway — interval between vehicles.
• frequent service — 10-minute or better headway.
• mode share — % of trips by each mode.
• complete streets — streets designed for all users (peds, bikes, transit, cars).
• road diet — reducing lanes to improve safety and other-mode access.
• traffic calming — design measures to slow vehicles.
• the protected bike lane — physically separated from traffic.
• the painted bike lane — paint only; minimal protection.
• the shared lane / sharrow — marked but unseparated.
• bike infrastructure — broader umbrella.
• the daylighting of intersections — removing parking near corners for visibility.
• pedestrian-scale lighting — lower-mast lighting designed for walkers.
• the 15-minute city (Carlos Moreno) — neighborhoods where most needs are within 15 minutes’ walk.
• the streetcar suburb — historic streetcar-built dense suburb (Brookline, Cleveland Park).
• the strong town (Marohn) — financially-resilient incremental urban form.

“The complete-streets framing has moved from advocacy slogan to engineering practice; in city after city, the question is no longer ‘should we redesign for pedestrians?’ but ‘how aggressively?’” — Streetsblog, 2024.

Housing economics and policy vocabulary

• the housing crisis / the affordability crisis — the 2020s framing.
• housing supply vs housing demand — the supply-side YIMBY framing emphasizes the former.
• the housing shortage — the supply-frame term.
• the housing deficit — same.
• price-to-income ratio — affordability proxy.
• the 30% rule — housing costs above 30% of income is cost-burdened; above 50% is severely cost-burdened.
• cost-burdened / severely cost-burdened — HUD terms.
• rent-burdened — narrower, rent-only.
• the median home price — the canonical metric.
• first-time homebuyer — policy-relevant category.
• the starter home — affordable entry-level home; now largely missing from US new construction.
• affordable housing — typically defined as housing for households below some % of area median income (AMI).
• AMI (Area Median Income) — HUD’s reference income.
• 30% AMI, 50% AMI, 80% AMI — the standard cut-offs.
• deeply affordable — at lowest income tiers.
• workforce housing — middle-income, often 80-120% AMI.
• inclusionary zoning (IZ) — requirement that new developments include affordable units.
• inclusionary requirements — same.
• density bonuses — extra allowed density in exchange for affordable units.
• the land trust / the community land trust (CLT) — nonprofit holding land; long-term affordability.
• deed-restricted housing — restrictions in the title limiting future sale price.
• HUD — Department of Housing and Urban Development.
• Section 8 — federal housing-voucher program.
• the Housing Choice Voucher — same, formal name.
• the project-based voucher — voucher attached to a unit, not a tenant.
• public housing — government-owned, low-income housing.
• LIHTC (Low-Income Housing Tax Credit) — the dominant federal tool for affordable-housing finance since 1986.
• the tax credit — shorthand for LIHTC.
• the 9% credit vs the 4% credit — competitive vs non-competitive LIHTC.
• AMI bands — income tiers in affordable housing.
• rent control — legal cap on rent increases.
• rent stabilization — softer version, typically with vacancy decontrol.
• vacancy decontrol — rents reset on turnover.
• rent regulation — umbrella.
• Mom-and-pop landlords — small-scale; vs institutional landlords.

“LIHTC is the strange creature of US housing policy: it works, by the standards of US programs, and it produces roughly all the new affordable housing in the country, but it does so by routing federal subsidy through corporate tax law in a way that pleases nobody on either flank of the housing debate.” — Brookings, 2023.

Homelessness — the policy vocabulary

• homelessness — lacking stable, adequate housing.
• the homeless population vs people experiencing homelessness — the latter is person-first.
• PEH (People Experiencing Homelessness) — the HUD acronym.
• the unhoused — the activist/journalistic term.
• chronic homelessness — long-term or recurring; HUD-defined as one year + or four episodes / three years with a disability.
• transitional homelessness — brief, episode-driven.
• episodic homelessness — repeated episodes without chronicity.
• veterans homelessness — VA-served subset.
• family homelessness — sheltered families.
• the encampment — outdoor settlement of unhoused people.
• the sweep — encampment clearance by police/city.
• camping bans — local ordinances; subject of Grants Pass v. Johnson (SCOTUS, 2024).
• housing first — the dominant evidence-based approach: provide housing without preconditions, then add services.
• treatment first — the older approach requiring sobriety/treatment before housing.
• continuum of care (CoC) — HUD’s local coordinated system.
• emergency shelter — short-term sheltered.
• transitional housing — time-limited supportive.
• permanent supportive housing (PSH) — long-term housing with services.
• rapid rehousing — short-term subsidy + case management.
• point-in-time count (PIT) — annual single-night HUD homelessness count.
• the HMIS (Homeless Management Information System) — administrative data system.

Urban design and place-making

• place-making — Project for Public Spaces’ framing of deliberate public-space design.
• the public realm — collective space (streets, parks, plazas).
• streetscape — the physical and visual character of a street.
• public space vs private space vs POPS (Privately Owned Public Space) — NYC’s regulated subset.
• the sidewalk ecology — Jacobs’s term for active street life.
• mixed-use — combining residential, commercial, office, civic.
• fine-grained development — small parcels, many uses, many owners.
• coarse-grained — large parcels, big-box uses.
• the human-scale — designed for walking and small-group interaction.
• the auto-scale — designed for car movement.
• the superblock — large car-free interior block (Barcelona).
• the woonerf — Dutch shared-street design; vehicles allowed but slow and yielding.
• the pedestrian street / the auto-free zone.
• the parklet — small public space converted from parking.
• the pop-up — temporary commercial or public space.
• tactical urbanism — small-scale, often unauthorized urban interventions.
• the demonstration project — pilot of a redesign.
• the road-diet pilot.

AmE-specific housing vocabulary

Collocations

• a vibrant neighborhood / streetscape / corridor
• a walkable neighborhood / downtown / commute
• a transit-rich corridor / neighborhood / city
• a car-dependent suburb / region / lifestyle
• a leafy suburb / street / neighborhood
• a gritty neighborhood / vibe / aesthetic
• a quaint main street / downtown / village
• a sterile development / streetscape / plaza
• a thriving downtown / Main Street / commercial corridor
• a struggling business district / downtown
• a hot market / neighborhood / corridor
• a booming city / metro / region
• a shrinking city / region (Detroit, Cleveland)
• a Rust Belt city / region
• a Sun Belt city / region
• to gentrify / to displace / to revitalize
• to upzone / to downzone / to rezone
• to pencil (of a project) — to be financially viable; the project doesn’t pencil
• to break ground — start construction
• to top out — reach maximum height
• to come on line — be completed and occupied
• to stabilize (a property) — reach planned occupancy
• a single-family lot / house / zone / neighborhood
• a multi-family building / structure / zone
• a teardown — house bought for the land, to be demolished
• a tear-down-and-rebuild — practice of demolishing for larger replacement
• the McMansion — outsized suburban house; pejorative
• the cookie-cutter subdivision — pejorative for uniform houses

Phrases and locutions

• build, baby, build — YIMBY slogan
• the homeowner’s veto — structural critique of local politics
• the third place (Ray Oldenburg) — not home, not work; café, bar, plaza
• the eyes on the street (Jacobs) — informal surveillance as safety mechanism
• mixed-use and human-scale — the New Urbanist double mantra
• good bones (of a house or neighborhood) — solid underlying structure
• fixer-upper — needs significant work
• move-in ready — needs nothing
• the curb appeal — visual attractiveness from the street
• the view / the corner / the corner lot — premium features
• driving until you qualify — buying further out to afford a mortgage
• house-poor — overspending on housing leaving little for else
• the rent is too damn high (Jimmy McMillan, 2010 NY gov race) — meme
• NIMBYs gonna NIMBY — internet shorthand
• the politics of place — broader umbrella

Common Russian-speaker mistakes

1. *Apartment* vs *flat*. Russians often default to flat (BrE / Russian квартира maps to either). In US English, apartment is unmarked; flat sounds British. I’m looking for a flat signals BrE-trained speaker; I’m looking for an apartment is native AmE.
2. *To rent* with the wrong direction. Russian снимать/сдавать uses different verbs for “rent from” vs “rent to”. English rent covers both. I rent an apartment from a landlord (I’m tenant) vs I rent out my apartment (I’m landlord). The particle out marks the lessor direction. Russians often drop out and ambiguity follows.
3. *District* for any sub-city area. Russian район maps broadly. AmE distinguishes: neighborhood (informal, residential character), district (administrative or commercial — the financial district, the warehouse district, the historic district), the area (vague, casual), the part of town (very casual). I live in a nice district sounds non-native; I live in a nice neighborhood is native.
4. *Sleeping district* / *sleeping area* for bedroom suburb. Calque of спальный район. AmE has no direct equivalent. The phrase bedroom community describes the function (commute-out, residential-only). Sleeping district will not be understood; bedroom community, commuter suburb, or the suburbs is right.
5. *Living* for residential. Russian жилой maps to residential in zoning contexts, not living. A living building / a living district are wrong; a residential building / a residential neighborhood is right. Living in English is adjectival (“alive”) or part of compounds (living room, standard of living).
6. *Yard* / *garden* distinction. Russian сад is a garden (cultivated), двор is a yard (general outdoor area). AmE: yard = outdoor area around a house (front yard, back yard); garden = a deliberately cultivated planted area (often a subset of the yard). Russians say I’m in the garden meaning their backyard; native AmE says I’m in the backyard unless they mean a cultivated planted bed. Garden in AmE often connotes flowers or vegetables specifically.
7. *Cottage* for vacation home. Russian дача doesn’t map cleanly. AmE: cottage = small, usually-rural house (often a vacation home, especially in New England, Lake regions); cabin = rustic small house in woods/mountains; the second home = generic; the lake house / the beach house / the mountain house — location-specific; the summer house — seasonal. We’re going to the dacha will not be understood; we’re going up to the cottage / the cabin / the lake is native.

Summary

• Typology: urban core, inner/outer suburbs, exurb, ex-suburb, edge city, boomburb, bedroom community.
• Zoning: R-1 / R-2 / R-3, FAR, setbacks, parking minimums, by-right, upzoning, discretionary review.
• YIMBY/NIMBY: build, baby, build; the homeowner’s veto; community input; CAVE, BANANA.
• Missing middle: duplex, triplex, fourplex, courtyard apartment, ADU/JADU/granny flat.
• TOD and streets: half-mile circle, BRT, LRT, frequent service, complete streets, road diet, the 15-minute city.
• Housing economics: AMI, 30% rule, cost-burdened, LIHTC, inclusionary zoning, rent stabilization.
• Homelessness: Housing First, chronic homelessness, continuum of care, PIT count, the sweep, Grants Pass.
• AmE specifics: apartment vs condo, HOA, closing, realtor, first floor = ground floor.

Next theme: Personal finance — C2 — capital gains and qualified dividends, marginal tax brackets, AMT, IRA conversion ladders, tax-loss harvesting, mega-backdoor Roth, asset allocation, rebalancing, and sequence-of-returns risk.