Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This study draws on ethnographic field methods and social network analysis to better understand how an urban community land trust (CLT) solves housing affordability problems in New York City. I pursue this line of inquiry since prevailing scholarship in public and urban policy contends that urban regimes are difficult to penetrate and often do not adopt policy models outside of their dominant conventions. However, this study shows otherwise. First, I show how Cooper Square Community Land Trust crafts and hones a set of professional practices that enable them to advance their community’s interests while acting as a community-centered policy actor. Secondly, I show how they embed their organizational routines into NYC’s housing policy arena (i.e. routine-embeddedness). Based on these findings, I argue that urban CLTs can achieve regime disruption in pro-growth urban settings with well conceptualized organizational routines, network tie-strength, network cohesion, and network range as part of their housing affordability problem-solving strategy. Finally, I conclude this study with recommendations on ways to broaden the scholarly literature on regime disruption and policy innovation in public and urban policy scholarship.