Tactical Moments of Creative Destruction for Affordable Housing

Abstract

The formation of a marketing system often reflects historical legacies that seek to protect and preserve longstanding community interests. These legacies encourage some patterns of adaptive growth, but they may also limit other avenues of productive change. In this essay, we focus on the United States housing system as an illustration of a marketing system with significant legacy structures. Historically, this marketplace system arose to provide safe shelter for citizens and was enacted through building codes. These codes arose for historically important reasons, many of which are still pertinent today. Other legacies, however, inhibit market innovations, such as the significant barriers that exist for developing affordable housing. We argue that change in legacy market systems may require tactical moments of creative destruction. We examine a multi-stakeholder approach across the macro, meso, and micro levels of the marketplace to enable novel solutions for systemic change.