Local leaders across the Midwest deserve real credit. After years of mounting pressure from rising home prices, declining housing production, and growing affordability gaps, local policymakers across the Great Lakes Region are recognizing the hard truth that we cannot solve a supply crisis without making it easier, faster, and more predictable to build.

By expanding “missing middle” housing, streamlining approvals, and reducing regulatory barriers, many communities are working to take meaningful steps toward unlocking new housing opportunities across the region. These changes go to the heart of why housing has become increasingly difficult to build and afford. As planners, we know that in particular, our zoning ordinances and permitting procedures are so often standing in the way of our housing ambitions, and have historically eliminated housing options for marginalized community members.

But we also know that community character matters, and local knowledge matters. We want to cherish social, environmental, and cultural assets, enable local decision making about the future, and frankly, co-create places where people actually want to live.

When addressing the housing crisis, we must ensure that new housing is not only plentiful and attainable, but placed thoughtfully. In other words, the Midwest has the opportunity to lead not just in how much housing is built, but in how well it fits into the communities it serves.

Place Matters

Housing solutions must be grounded in place-based planning, or the idea that growth should align with each community’s unique infrastructure, character, and long-term vision.

We aren’t in the business of slowing development or reintroducing unnecessary barriers, but as we build more housing, it is imperative to think about how that housing fits into the bigger picture of a place by using existing infrastructure efficiently, supporting mobility and local economic vitality, protecting natural resources and open space, and strengthening community cohesion.

In other words, why not build faster and smarter?

The good news is that communities can put strong planning tools in place, including master plans, capital improvement plans, and regional frameworks and planning coalitions. By including housing reforms more explicitly in these existing tools, communities can reinforce their progress and avoid unintended outcomes like infrastructure mismatches and disenfranchised community voices.

What Place-Based Housing Looks Like in Practice

A place-based approach, by definition, is not one-size-fits-all. It involves tailoring solutions to the realities of different types of communities. Consider a few high level community types:

Rural Communities

In rural areas, we find that the goal is often to add housing without compromising character as well as agricultural land or natural landscapes. In many cases, these communities are seeking housing and infrastructure solutions for an aging population. Examples of context-sensitive solutions that we often explore include:

• Clustered housing developments that preserve open space while offering expanded housing options
• Small-scale infill around commercial areas or community centers
• Attached or detached accessory dwelling units (ADUs) for multigenerational living

These approaches maintain rural character while providing new housing options for local workers, families, and aging residents, but of course, must be applied in the right areas, with the guidance of the community.

Suburban Communities

Because suburbs are where so much housing demand is concentrated, in our opinion, this is where incremental change can have the biggest impact. Some of the housing solutions we explore with our clients include:

• Appropriately designed duplexes, triplexes, and townhomes integrated into existing neighborhoods
• Redevelopment of underused commercial corridors or adaptive reuse of historic buildings into mixed-use housing
• Transit-oriented development where infrastructure already exists
• Gradual increases in density near schools, parks, and community services to promote equitable access to daily amenities

When directed into areas designated for smart growth, this type of “middle housing” adds supply in a way that feels compatible and sustainable within the natural progression of a suburban place.

Urban Communities

Larger cities often already have the infrastructure and demand to support more intensive development, making them great candidates for increased density. However, we still need to plan this thoughtfully. Opportunities for housing readiness might include:

• Mid- and high-density housing near transit, job centers, and downtowns
• Adaptive reuse of vacant or underutilized buildings
• Mixed-income developments that preserve affordability while encouraging reinvestment
• Form-based design standards that invite quality urban design and faster approvals

In urban areas, the challenge is less about whether to grow, and more about fostering the right type of growth that strengthens neighborhoods and improves livability.

Place-based Housing Requires Resources

Ongoing efforts to expand housing supply and removing unnecessary hurdles in the development process deserve recognition. But as decades of community planning experience have taught us, speed cannot be the only goal here. Maintaining trust with and confidence in our local decision makers is paramount.

Communities have long-standing knowledge of the appropriate housing solutions for their current and future residents, and our local leaders should be empowered to make those decisions, not only with political will, but with financial backing. We cannot ignore the fact that the cost of housing development is astronomical; many communities across the Great Lakes Region desperately want to densify, but developers cannot justify the per-square-foot cost to do so within many markets.

In this way, beyond zoning legislation, state governments are best suited to offer funding in support of local housing development so that community-led solutions can finally be realized. In Michigan, MSHDA’s Housing Readiness grants and predevelopment assistance services are a great start, as is the Housing Brownfield TIF program. Illinois’ Build Up Illinois Developments (BUILD) program, among other reforms, calls on the state to invest $250 million in homebuyer assistance and housing and site infrastructure development. And at the federal level, on the side of funding, the 21^st Century ROAD to Housing Act strengthens the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and HOME programs to expand affordable housing, creates competitive grants for zoning and planning reforms to help states and localities lower barriers, and offers other financial supports for housing readiness in all community types. We hope to see these and new investments expand in the coming years.

And even if the funds are there to build, we still need the hands to do the work. In this way, state and even federal programming should also seek to strengthen the local home building workforce through the expansion of trades and apprenticeship programs. Offering accessible pathways for these in-demand, good paying jobs across sectors like plumbing, electrical, and carpentry is necessary to meet the housing shortage.

The Midwest’s Chance to Lead

By incorporating place-based principles into housing solutions and by focusing on allocating the resources necessary to get housing solutions out of plans and into practice, communities across the Great Lakes Region can trailblaze, demonstrating that they do not need to choose between affordability and good planning, speed and quality, nor growth and sustainability.

Let’s use data and planning tools to channel gentle density to identified growth areas and encourage housing where infrastructure capacity already exists. Let’s reinforce the value of local master plans and community input instead of bypassing them and breaking trust. And above all, let’s address the housing crisis in ways that respect diversity of community character, geography, and thought.