czb will also try to surface issues that we think aren’t appropriately understood in the field and attempt to clarify competing arguments. Whereas the previous section focuses on concrete efforts to tackle real problems, in this section we will focus on issues, especially those that are often misunderstood.

For example, in the previous section we may examine a particular city’s effort to solve a very specific problem, as was the case when the city of Seattle recently asked voters to pass a housing levy to raise funds to generate a greater supply of affordable housing for low and moderate income households. Specific problem. Specific response.

However, let’s take the case of Smart Growth. Smart Growth proposes to be a way of settling that would, among other things, reduce sprawl. Yet sprawl is many things. And, likewise, Smart Growth is many things. The complexity of both renders serious dialogue on the subject elusive. czb will attempt to provide insights into such issues from time to time.

Let’s take another example. Gentrification. This is perhaps the single most misunderstood element today in urban affairs. Frequently, journalists use the term flippantly. Many advocates for the poor misunderstand and misuse it. Even groups that focus on it marry their work with their own social agenda, and in the process corrupt the greater public’s comprehension of it. czb will attempt to provide insights here and elsewhere, as well.

We will try to raise issues in an organized, and accessible way.

	In common terms, what is it and what does it appear to be understood to be?
	In reality, what is it?
	If there is dissonance, what may account for the gap between appearance and reality?
	What is the implication in terms of work? In other words, where is the problem?

Example:

Common Terms: It is now commonplace to acknowledge we have a national affordable housing crisis, with 14 million Americans unable to afford decent and safe and sanitary housing.

Reality: Millions of Americans cannot afford to live either where they want to, or in millions of cases, anywhere near where they work. This results in a serious jobs-housing spatial mismatch.

Dissonance: Really what is happening is millions of households choose to live where they feel they can obtain the best combination of value for their money. In the process, our suburbs offer refuge to families unwilling to reside in older, urban neighborhoods, or in any case to live in cities with school systems they deem unacceptable.

For example, there are roughly 22,000 vacant houses in North Philadelphia at the same time that at least 22,000 Philadelphia households are willing to shoulder higher housing cost burdens to live someplace else.

It is true millions of Americans earn so little that any housing in the marketplace is beyond reach. What is important in this debate is separating out true affordable housing crisis language from the thornier issue of choice.

We have historically approached housing as a supply challenge, when for the most part, owing to the way we settle, our real work ought to instead be thought of as a neighborhood challenge.

Answering the question of why we persist in avoiding framing housing supply issues in a neighborhood context is at the center of the work czb does.