Where 2024 Presidential Candidates Stand on 12 Issues Important to Urban Planners | Planetizen Blogs

Whether you’re yet undecided or have already cast your early vote, here is a roundup of the key positions of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump on important urban planning policies.

12 minute read

October 31, 2024, 4:27 PM PDT

By Planetizen

lukbar / Adobe Stock

We’re less than a week out from the 2024 Presidential Election on November 5, and its results will likely have a major impact on the direction that federal policies and agencies will take in the next several years. The two major party candidates, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, offer very different visions for the future.

While both agree on the urgency of the housing crisis and the need to address aging infrastructure, their views on renewable energy, climate change, and environmental policies are in stark opposition. Their plans to fund (or defund) transportation, infrastructure, and climate initiatives and choices in how the federal government runs in the coming years will shape the work planners do and have long-lasting effects on the communities they serve.

This is by no means a comprehensive analysis of the candidates’ positions. However, we have outlined some of the planning-related policies that the federal government can have the biggest effects on.

While housing supply and zoning regulations are usually considered local issues, the breadth and depth of the nationwide housing crisis has brought the issue to national attention like never before. State governments and federal officials are now looking for ways to support increased housing production and reduce the rapidly rising cost of housing squeezing the majority of American families.

While both candidates have addressed the housing crisis, each proposing some ways to assist renters and homeowners and create more housing where it’s needed, the Harris campaign has issued specific proposals, while the Trump campaign omits housing but links to the Republican Party’s platform, which suggests the party wants to lower mortgage rates for homebuyers. Trump, who made his fortune in real estate, has sent mixed messages about housing policy. He once called zoning “a killer” but has also vowed to protect American suburbs by standing up for single-family zoning laws. Rhetorically, at least, Trump seems to side with more protectionist, regulatory policies, according to Michael Lens, a professor of urban planning and public policy.

On the Republican side, former President Donald Trump has blamed the housing crisis on immigrants, a theory debunked by most economists. In fact, home builders say Trump’s proposed mass deportation would deplete their workforce and drive up housing costs. According to the New York Times, rents began surging well before the current rise in immigration. “Across many booming housing markets, particularly in the South, the recent flow of migrants has helped residential builders meet demand for both skilled trades and relatively unskilled laborers, industry groups say and job market data suggest.” Trump and the Republicans are focusing their promises on reducing mortgage rates for homebuyers.

Vice President Harris has vowed to help build three million new affordable housing units in the next four years supported by tax incentives for builders and other federal policies, but this goal could be stymied by local zoning and building regulations that limit how much can be built and raise the costs of construction for developers. The federal government has little say over these laws, but could create incentives to motivate cities and states to reform their zoning codes and make room for more housing production. Harris says she plans to “penalize firms that hoard available homes,” acknowledging the impact of institutional investors on the housing market but not elaborating on the mechanism she would create to limit speculative purchases. Harris has promised to create programs that support first-time homebuyers with down payment assistance, as well as a $40 billion tax credit to make affordable projects feasible for builders.

To make room for new housing and limit the cost of land, some lawmakers are proposing opening up federally owned public lands for housing development. However, housing advocates point out that building housing in previously undeveloped areas means building new infrastructure and potentially placing housing far from job centers and central cities, further increasing sprawl and perpetuating car dependency.

Trump has vowed to open up swaths of federal land for large-scale housing construction, and is even proposing to build 10 high-tech “freedom cities,” brand-new communities on the newly opened acreage. While Trump’s plan is light on details, it seems to include a focus on flying vehicles. An article in Forbes points out that this plan ignores how cities actually form and prosper. According to Christian Britschgi, “cities tend to emerge naturally where they make sense. They require some matchmaking between geographic advantage, available resources, pre-existing industry or infrastructure, and more to really get going.” Meanwhile, building new cities from scratch would directly contradict the Republican principle of small government.

In the meantime, Harris has signaled her willingness to consider using federal land for affordable housing. Earlier in October, the Biden-Harris administration announced the sale of 20 acres of public lands for just $100 per acre for the construction of critically needed affordable housing projects in Southern Nevada.

As the largest oil producer and the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, the U.S.’s energy and climate policy is hugely important not just within the country but for the world, particularly as scientists sound the alarm that global temperatures could rise at least 4.5 degrees F and ocean currents in the Atlantic could collapse within the next few decades, which would have catastrophic impacts.

While neither candidate has released a detailed outline of their plans for U.S. climate, energy, or other environmental policies, they have addressed various points during speeches, interviews, and press conferences. On some topics, like fracking and opening up public lands for mining, there is commonality. The differences everywhere else are rather stark, particularly on climate change, renewable energy, and air and water quality regulations.

Harris is on record as saying climate change is “very real” and has called it an existential threat that the United States urgently needs to address. As a senator from California, she was an early sponsor of the Green New Deal. As vice president, she helped pass the Inflation Reduction Act, has been called the most ambitious climate legislation in U.S. history and has said she intends to continue the climate policies implemented under the Biden administration.

Trump, on the other hand, is a climate change skeptic. While he has backed away from calling it a hoax, as he did for many years, he has repeatedly downplayed risks associated with it and questioned whether the warming is driven by human activity. He has officially stated that, if elected, he will once again withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. He has also vowed to slash a lot of federal spending aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump has repeatedly spoken out against renewable energy, calling it a scam, and has a particular beef with wind turbines. He has said renewable energy is too expensive for the output and has announced that he plans to fully repeal the IRA tax incentives aimed at driving the deployment of renewables.

Harris supports the continuation of renewable energy policies implemented under the Biden administration, which have promoted the acceleration of solar and wind projects, and the continued implementation of the IRA. According to the Harris-Walz website, her administration will seek to improve IRA spending by cutting regulations “so that clean energy projects are completed quickly and efficiently in a manner that protects our environment and public health.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has repeatedly expressed his belief that drilling for more fossil fuels will bring financial benefits for Americans and drastically cut their energy bills. In a September 5 speech, he said his administration would issue a National Emergency Declaration to “blast through every bureaucratic hurdle to issue rapid approvals for new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, and new power plants and reactors.

During the September 10 presidential debate, Vice President Harris said, in addition to renewables, she would continue to support domestic drilling and that she would not ban fracking — a reversal of her policy position during the 2019 presidential election. “My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy, so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil,” she said.

Neither candidate have released official statements around environmental policies, but based on their records, it appears to be the classic cage match of regulation vs. deregulation.

For example, Harris has stated she believes "every person in America has a right to clean water," which suggests she will likely continue to pursue the strides the Biden Administration has made toward safeguarding drinking water, including $5.8 billion in federal funds for water infrastructure projects across U.S., announced in February, and the country’s first national drinking water standard passed by the EPA in April to limit PFAS in drinking water, which would allow polluters to be sued for cleanup.

On the other hand, during his first term, the Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations, including repealing a critical part of the Clean Water Act and loosening limits on emissions from power plants and vehicles. His three Supreme Court justice appointees also overturned Chevron doctrine, which essentially gutted the federal government’s ability to enforce environmental protections.

High County News’s Anna V. Smith and Erin X. Wong give an excellent overview of what a Harris administration might mean for public lands: “Harris’ term as VP hasn’t produced many significant policy outcomes of her own, but her experience as a California senator and attorney general, as well as her 2020 presidential campaign, point to a consistent record of pro-climate, pro-environmental policies and an evolved understanding of tribal land issues. Should she eventually assume the Oval Office, her career to date signals a likely continuation of the West’s Biden-era gains in the protection of public lands, water and wildlife as well as support for tribal sovereignty.” The Biden administration has put more than 42 million acres of land into conservation and appointed the nation’s first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior.

In 2020, Trump signed the Great American Outdoors Act into law to boost funding for the country’s historically underfunded national parks and public lands. However, later in his presidency, he enacted the largest slash of federal land protections in history when he shrank two national monuments in Utah to open the land up for oil and gas development — something Trump says he will support in his second term. The Trump-Vance campaign’s official Platform 47 says, “President Trump will free up the vast stores of liquid gold on America’s public land for energy development” and “remove all red tape that is leaving oil and natural gas projects stranded.”

In her bid for president in the 2024 election, Harris has also expressed support for continuing oil and gas production on public lands and increased mining of precious metals like copper and lithium to help with the green transition.

With many segments of the country’s infrastructure receiving a near-failing grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers, infrastructure should be top of mind for both candidates. And while both promise massive improvements in infrastructure and transportation, their public statements offer two different approaches.

Vice President Kamala Harris has been a strong supporter of the Biden administration’s infrastructure bills, which are pumping billions into infrastructure and transportation projects around the country including modernizing passenger rail, replacing lead pipes, and repairing dangerously aging roads and bridges. Harris has signaled support for continued federal investment in improving and modernizing infrastructure, as well as domestic renewable energy production.

On the Republican side, former President Trump has indicated he would rely on public-private partnerships to secure funding for infrastructure and focus on domestic energy production including oil and gas. While there are few details on how Trump plans to “make cities and towns more livable,” it seems that Trump wants to slash federal infrastructure spending and make local and state governments more responsible, putting many projects at risk.

When it comes to transportation, the Republican platform includes a brief promise to “revive the U.S. Auto Industry by reversing harmful Regulations, canceling Biden’s Electric Vehicle and other Mandates, and preventing the importation of Chinese vehicles.” Trump strongly supports revoking electric vehicle regulations, calling current targets unrealistic. Ending federal support for the electric vehicle industry could have harmful impacts on some Republican-leaning regions where new factories are being built.

The Biden/Harris administration supported expanding electric vehicle charging infrastructure and credits for EV buyers as well as the adoption of electric buses and trains and greenhouse gas emissions reduction mandates. The Harris campaign calls for continued support for the Low or No Emission Grant Program, including training for mechanics to prepare the transportation workforce for new technology.

The Biden/Harris administration awarded billions in federal funding to upgrades for Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor and other lines around the country, as well as private high-speed rail projects in California, Nevada, and Texas.

In the past, Trump attempted to revoke funding allocated to high-speed rail projects — so the money that the Biden administration has injected into Amtrak and other passenger rail projects could be in jeopardy under a second Trump administration. Project 2025 emphasizes private transportation such as self-driving vehicles and air taxis over public transit.

While the vast majority of planning happens at a local level, a presidential administration has significant control over who runs those agencies and how, which can have a huge domino effect down the line, affecting decisions on federal funding to states, the types of state and local projects that receive funding, and the stipulations on that funding.

Trump has pledged to reform the federal bureaucracy, which he often villainizes and refers to as “the deep state.” In his first term, the former president issued an Schedule F, an executive order stripping civil service protections, making them easier to let go. According to Project 2025, a 900-page set of proposals from the Heritage Foundation intended to “pave the way for an effective conservative Administration,” the goal is to replace high-level federal employees with loyal, conservative appointees, which could have drastic implications for not only federal policies in agencies like HUD and EPA but also programs important to planning. Trump has repeatedly disavowed project 2025, but he has repeatedly praised its authors, leaving questions about what roles they might play in a future administration.

Harris and her running mate have campaigned extensively against Project 2025. But, as reported by Whyy, under the Biden administration, she is also already taking steps to make mass firings of civil servants more difficult. In April, the Office of Personnel Management issued a new rule that would ban federal workers from being reclassified as political appointees or other at-will employees — a reversal of Trump’s Schedule F, which Trump has vowed to reinstate in his second term.

In the weeks after Hurricane Helene, which devastated communities in multiple states as far north as North Carolina, Trump repeatedly made debunked claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency spent disaster relief funds on sheltering migrants that they brought into the country to vote illegally in the 2024 election. And in September 2020, then-President Trump withheld $37 million in federal disaster aid from the state of Washington for the final four months of his term because of a beef he had with Gov. Jay Inslee, despite the fact that the wildfires easily met the federal damage threshold for disaster aid, according to FEMA investigations. Biden ultimately approved the request.

Vice President Harris called Trump’s false claims about the distribution of FEMA funds after Helene “irresponsible.” She did a White House briefing on federal response to the storm and on a visit to August, Georgia, announced that the Biden Administration had approved Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s request for 100 percent reimbursement of local response costs, including services like food, water, and shelter provided by local governments, debris removal, and emergency services.

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