Cityscape: Collecting 25 Years of Housing and Community Development Research

Cityscape: Collecting 25 Years of Housing and Community Development Research

The most recent issue of Cityscape highlights the importance of the Fair Housing Act and presents research describing some remaining challenges to realizing its original mandate.

For 25 years, HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) has furthered research on housing and community development issues through its journal Cityscape. HUD created Cityscape to foster research and discussions that would inform the policymaking community and strengthen PD&R’s position as a source of reliable and objective research on housing and community development issues. Published three times a year, each edition of Cityscape disseminates original, high-quality research on a particular topic to scholars, government officials, and practitioners. Cityscape is multidisciplinary; interested parties in all relevant disciplines, including architecture, consumer research, demography, economics, engineering, ethnography, finance, geography, law, planning, political science, public policy, regional science, sociology, statistics, and urban studies, are welcome to submit papers.

The inaugural issue of Cityscape, Proceedings of the Regional Growth and Community Development Conference, November 1993, Washington, D.C., focused on growth in cities and metropolitan areas and discussed the role of the central city in national, regional, and metropolitan economic growth. This first issue was published in August 1994 with Michael A. Stegman, then the assistant secretary for policy development and research, serving as the editor. Since that time, PD&R has published 57 additional issues of Cityscape, including 3 double issues. Over the years, many issues of Cityscape have examined housing-related topics such as housing discrimination, outcomes of housing assistance, mixed-income housing, residential mobility, rental housing, and homeownership. But the focus of Cityscape has also varied widely, from brownfields to gentrification. The Cityscape website includes an archive of past Cityscape topics with a link to each issue.

The most recent issue of Cityscape, The Fair Housing Act at 50, features a symposium with 5 contributions guest-edited by Vincent J. Reina and Susan M. Watcher of the University of Pennsylvania. The contributors to this issue highlight the importance of the Fair Housing Act and present research describing some remaining challenges to realizing its original mandate.

Cityscape’s current managing editor is Mark Shroder, associate deputy assistant secretary for research, evaluation, and monitoring, and Michelle Matuga serves as the journal’s associate editor. PD&R consults with a prestigious board on journal policy; biographies of each advisory board member are available on this page. Recent releases of Cityscape feature a symposium on the issue’s primary topic, a refereed papers section, and selected departments. The departments section of the journal includes several specialized subsections such as Affordable Design, Data Shop, Evaluation Tradecraft, Foreign Exchange, Graphic Detail, Impact, Industrial Revolution, Policy Briefs, and SpAM (Spatial Analysis and Methods). Descriptions of each subsection are provided in the individual issues of Cityscape in which they are featured. Some issues of Cityscape also feature a Point of Contention section, where scholars knowledgeable about a particular topic are asked to argue for or against a stated proposition.

Submissions are always accepted for Cityscape’s refereed papers section and the departments section. Papers that appear in the journal’s refereed papers section must undergo a thorough double-blind review process by Cityscape’s many highly qualified referees. Because the symposium and the Point of Contention sections focus on a different topic every issue, they are not continuously open for submissions. Instead, PD&R may publish calls for entries with information about the topic and specific submission deadlines.

Papers published in Cityscape must adhere to the journal’s submission guidelines, which provide information on where to submit manuscripts, what information to include, and how to format references. Authors should review the Statement of Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice before submitting manuscripts.

To learn more about Cityscape and access all of the important research found within PD&R’s journal, visit the Cityscape page on HUD User. To subscribe to the journal, sign up on the HUD User subscription page.