I feel like every city needs its own program; austin wouldnt benefit from rent control, too many students would take up space for workers in the city, landlords wouldn't keep up properties... those turning austin into a silicon valley (the developers, etc) should pay a premium for the people of all backgrounds they're pushing out, and this means more than just sidewalks.
true
that said i was mostly speaking to what very little i know about portland's housing crisis with that statement
(that said having been said to what I would like to counter in this post that is a response to another post, Gentrification has only kiiiinda hit Albuquerque so far, so the situation isn't the same. The best pre-emptive answer in my opinion IIF that's going to become a problem would be to enact rent control laws to make sure people and families and people with families already living near major metropolitan centers don't get booted out by greedy landlords selling overpriced, decaying housing space to people with enough money to throw around to shove out the people already living there
(additionally, it would be nice to try enacting laws preventing realty companies with tons of money to throw around to buy out the current (slum lords/realty agents/rich people who bought houses for their kids to live in while they were in college and are now renting it out to other people because that kid has long since moved on)... just in order to drive up the cost of living in order to make more money from the employees of tech companies building campuses in the area who want to live in a house "closer to the action" of the downtown and uptown areas of the city.
(the thing is that the houses in these sorts of areas are already barely kept up and aren't really worth any more than they are now. if they WERE better kept up, they already would be going for more on the market here. artificial price inflation on houses like that would be a fucking terrible for the people already living there who don't own their own homes, which I imagine is a lot of them.
(so at least for Albuquerque, in the very realistic scenario that it faces a similar housing crisis as portland and california, the answer wouldn't be to stop "you people" from moving here to work in companies setting up shop here, it would be to prevent predatory land prospectors from driving rent prices above reasonable rates for current local residents living in already shitty housing)
But yeah that tangent aside, you're absolutely right, the best urban planning strategy really does depend on the city. I can only really speak to the places I have lived in and have heard about vaguely from people who have lived there.
