Welcome to the second edition of City Chats, Innovation Through Housing & Urban Design, where we explore how innovative thinking, design-led delivery, and collaborative approaches are shaping housing and cities.
Our feature story sees Justin Kearnan sharing insights on modular housing, planning, Tribute Rising, and the intersection of architecture, urban design, and delivery. We also speak with Jordan Jones from Integral Group about mixed-income housing, community-focused development, and their partnership with City Collective. Finally, a spotlight on the upcoming UDIA National Congress 2026 in Adelaide, where Justin and Jordan will deliver a keynote on the future of housing and urban development.
Author: Justin Kearnan, AIA
For media inquiries, email citychats@city-collective.com
Modular Mixed-Income, Mixed-Use Manifesto
America does not have a housing shortage. It has a production crisis. We build housing too slowly, in the wrong locations, and at insufficient scale. Each project is treated as a prototype. Each approval is a negotiation. Each building is optimised for a single site and then forgotten.
Meanwhile, families wait. Cities sprawl. Opportunity calcifies. The goal is not incremental reform. The goal is efficient, rapidly deployed, mixed-income, mixed-use housing at scale, delivered where infrastructure already exists, where jobs already cluster, where communities have historically been excluded from investment.
This is not theory. It is a blueprint. It requires aligning three industry innovations into one coordinated system:
- Volumetric Modular Construction: repeatable, scalable, precise.
- Public-Private Partnerships: unlocking land in marginalised communities.
- Tailored Conventional Financing: delivering cross-subsidised, mixed-use housing at market-quality standards.
When integrated, these three forces create something rare in American development:
Speed. Scale. Dignity. Inclusion.
Innovation #1: Volumetric Modular Construction
Today, housing delivery is artisanal when it needs to be industrial.
Every site begins from zero. Every structural grid is reconsidered. Every bathroom is drawn again as though plumbing were a novel invention. Efficiency is wrung from hyper-optimising a single project, and then lost when the next parcel presents a slightly different setback.
Volumetric Modular Construction reverses the source of efficiency. It asks a radical question: what if we optimised not for one site, but for the universal condition? A kitchen is a kitchen is a kitchen. A bathroom is a bathroom is a bathroom. When these spaces are engineered as repeatable volumetric units, fabricated in controlled environments, quality improves and time collapses. Foundations are poured while modules are built. Weather ceases to dictate schedule. Labor variability shrinks. Waste plummets.
For years, we have worked alongside modular manufacturers, including Vantem, to refine a system that balances repetition with architectural integrity. We developed four standardised modular boxes that assemble into studios, one-, two-, and three-bedroom units, calibrated to market expectations. These are not theoretical diagrams. They are buildable, financeable, livable products.
We designed building cores and back-of-house systems to be dimensionally aligned with modular grids, what we call “modular-ready” infrastructure. This ensures flexibility: a building can be fully modular, hybrid, or partially site-built without redesigning from scratch.
We deliberately separated what should scale from what should differentiate. Modules deliver structural logic, kitchens, baths, and interior fit-out. Façades and exterior wall systems are site-built, allowing architecture to respond to context, climate, and culture.
This is not uniformity. It is disciplined clarity. We advocate for statewide module permitting, universal approvals that allow identical modules to be deployed across jurisdictions. If we can certify automobiles nationally, we can certify housing modules regionally.
And this system is not confined to one building type. It scales across eight typologies, from single-family homes to missing-middle housing, to mid-rise corridors, to high-rise concrete frames.
In Tribute Rising, we will crane and set 12 to 24 modules per day. What once took years can now move at the speed of assembly.
Speed is not the enemy of design. It is the ally of access.
Innovation #2: Public-Private Partnerships
Across America, cities and housing authorities own land in the most strategic locations, near transit, near employment, near civic life. Much of it sits underutilised in historically marginalised communities that were systematically disinvested or displaced.
The land is public. The opportunity is enormous. The delivery capacity is limited.
Public-Private Partnerships align these realities. For more than six years, we have worked with cities, housing authorities, and development partners like Integral Group to refine P3 structures that are financially viable and socially meaningful.
The model is pragmatic. Cities lease land through capitalised ground leases, lowering upfront development costs while preserving public ownership. Housing authorities participate as minority General Partners, maintaining long-term equity stakes and revenue streams that can be reinvested in broader affordability goals. Project-based vouchers are integrated into mixed-income communities, not isolated buildings.
The result is not “affordable housing projects.” It is shared neighbourhoods.
The developer builds at a market-rate standard, same materials, same amenities, same architectural ambition, while income diversity is achieved through structured financing and subsidy alignment.
P3s are not charity. They are shared accountability. They transform dormant public land into economically productive, socially integrated districts.
Innovation #3: Tailored Conventional Financing
Too often, housing is financially fragmented.
Specialised tools, Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, New Markets Tax Credit, housing bonds, serve vital missions but are narrow by design. They optimise for compliance, not integration. They encourage segmentation rather than cohesion.
Mixed-income, mixed-use neighbourhoods demand something broader.
Conventional financing, structured intelligently, enables a full spectrum of income levels within a single development. It allows ground-floor retail, childcare, and community-serving amenities to coexist with residential units. It ensures the entire project meets a consistent quality standard.
Affordability is not achieved by lowering design standards. It is achieved by lowering the financial burden on residents.
When conventional debt and equity are paired with strategic public participation, cross-subsidisation becomes embedded, not improvised. The financial structure becomes as intentional as the architectural one.
Case Study: Tribute Rising
Explore the project: Tribute Rising
Tribute Rising is a $300 million, 1,000-unit redevelopment on 15 acres in Hayti, Durham, North Carolina, a historic Black community displaced decades ago by a federal highway.
It is a Public-Private Partnership between Durham Housing Authority and Integral Group. The land is capitalised through a ground lease. DHA retains minority General Partner ownership. One hundred project-based vouchers are integrated into the community.
Phase One delivers 350 units through Volumetric Modular Construction. Thirty percent of residents will be income-restricted. Seventy percent market-rate.
There are no visible distinctions.
On site: a 150-seat childcare center, a local coffee shop, two transit stops, one block from downtown.
It is not an affordable project. It is a neighborhood.
Read more: Hundreds of New Affordable Housing Units Coming to Downtown Durham as Part of Durham Housing Authority’s Three-Site Redevelopment Project
A Call to Action
The housing crisis will not be solved by sentiment. It will be solved by systems, aligned, industrialised, and deployed with urgency. When modular precision, public land, and conventional capital converge, housing becomes infrastructure.
And cities begin to build again.
Build faster. Build together. Build inclusively. Build at scale.
Author: Josephine Cooke
For media inquiries, email citychats@city-collective.com
Integral Group has long been recognised as one of the firms that helped establish and advance the modern mixed-income community development model in the United States, reshaping how complex urban neighbourhoods are planned, financed, and delivered. For more than three decades, the firm has operated at the intersection of real estate development, public policy, and community revitalisation.
At the forefront of this work is Jordan Jones, a development executive helping extend Integral’s model into new communities through disciplined partnerships and execution. We spoke with Jordan about the philosophy driving the firm’s work and what the future of mixed-income development looks like.
Redefining Mixed-Income Housing
For Integral, mixed-income housing is not a trend. It is the organising principle behind the firm’s work.
In the United States, housing was once formally and legally segregated by race, a system that persisted until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. While those legal barriers were dismantled, housing today continues to be segregated in practice, largely along income lines, concentrating poverty and limiting access to quality education, healthcare, employment opportunities, and community resources.
Integral’s founder, Egbert Perry, grew up in the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda in a genuinely mixed-income environment, where families across the income spectrum shared access to the same schools and institutions. Despite growing up in a household with very limited income, Perry and his siblings benefited from the same public institutions available to wealthier families.
That experience shaped Integral’s mission: to replace isolated, concentrated-poverty housing with mixed-income neighbourhoods that connect families to opportunity.
Beginning in the early 1990s, Integral became one of the firms that helped demonstrate how distressed government-sponsored housing sites could be transformed into economically integrated communities that include both market-rate and income-restricted housing.
The results are measurable. Research from Harvard economist Raj Chetty found that children raised in mixed-income communities experience dramatically improved life outcomes, including higher lifetime earnings, increased college attendance, and reduced incarceration rates.
Projects That Changed the Model
Centennial Place in downtown Atlanta remains one of the defining early demonstrations of this model in practice.
Built on the site of Techwood Homes, the first public housing development constructed in the United States in 1936, Integral helped reimagine the area as a mixed-income, mixed-use neighborhood that includes rental apartments, for-sale townhomes, college student housing, a charter school, a YMCA, and neighborhood retail.
The redevelopment, known as Centennial Place, replaced a distressed housing community with a stable neighbourhood serving residents across multiple income levels.
Just as importantly, as the first of its kind in the nation, Centennial Place facilitated the legal, regulatory, and financial framework that has since been used to support mixed-income redevelopment more than 300 times across the country.
In Durham, North Carolina, Veranda at Whitted demonstrates Integral’s responsiveness to community voice. Originally conceived as affordable senior housing within a historic Black high school, the program evolved after community leaders asked that education remain part of the building’s legacy.
Integral redesigned the Durham project to incorporate early childhood classrooms alongside senior housing, preserving both the building’s history and its role in the community.
Partnership as a Delivery Engine
Public-private partnerships are central to Integral’s model.
Transformational redevelopment cannot occur without alignment between public or elected leadership, community stakeholders, and private investment.
Public land in strategic locations, combined with targeted investment and thoughtful planning, enables deeper affordability and long-term sustainability.
Integral sees itself as a development partner focused on solving complex urban challenges, but one that recognises those outcomes require collaboration across sectors.
This approach extends to its partnership with City Collective.
Innovation and the Next Frontier
Innovation has defined Integral since Centennial Place, where the firm helped establish the legal and financial frameworks that underpin mixed-income redevelopment nationally.
Today, that mindset extends to rethinking how housing is delivered, including factory-built and modular construction.
After delivering a modular project in Sacramento in 2016, Integral saw firsthand the potential for factory-built housing to improve construction efficiency while maintaining high-quality design. The project later achieved a record-setting sales price per unit in the Sacramento market.
“We have to rethink how we deliver housing, faster, more efficiently, and at a scale that reflects the demand communities are facing.”
Looking ahead, success for Integral lies not simply in innovation, but in scaling ideas that work.
Development conditions are unlikely to become easier, but through learning, adapting, and collaborating, Jones believes the firm can expand its model into more communities over the next decade.
Author: Silvio Francisco
For media inquiries, email citychats@city-collective.com
In this edition of City Chats, the spotlight turns firmly to Adelaide, as industry leaders gather to discuss the future of cities and housing, at the UDIA National Congress 2026. Adding to the excitement, some familiar faces will take centre stage.
We’re proud to share that longtime project partner and client, Jordan Jones from Integral Group, and our very own Justin Kearnan, will present a joint keynote at the Congress, bringing together deep development insight and design-led thinking in a session that speaks directly to the challenges and opportunities shaping today’s cities.
A Shared Stage, A Shared Vision
Jordan and Justin represent two forces that are redefining how cities are planned and delivered. Jordan’s work at Integral Group builds on a legacy of pioneering mixed-income and community-focused housing models, with a clear emphasis on social impact, feasibility, and long-term value. His perspective transcends just housing, it is grounded in delivery, and understanding what it takes to turn ambitious ideas into real, lived outcomes.
Justin brings a complementary lens grounded in both urban design and housing delivery. As a leader in urban design and strategic master planning, his work focuses on how places function, evolve, and support communities over time, with a strong emphasis on residential, mixed-use and housing-led regeneration. Having led complex housing projects across urban renewal, infill and growth-area contexts, Justin is known for bridging policy, design excellence, and commercial realities, ensuring ambitious housing and place visions are matched with practical, deliverable pathways to implementation.
Together on stage, their keynote will explore how collaboration between development and design disciplines is critical to unlocking more resilient, inclusive, and economically viable urban outcomes. Expect a candid discussion on housing, development, urban identity, and the leadership required to respond to evolving urban pressures.
UDIA National Congress 2026
Hosting the UDIA National Congress in Adelaide reflects the city’s rising influence in national urban discourse, and its position at the forefront of housing reform. Recent South Australian Government initiatives, including the Housing Roadmap, planning reform and accelerated infrastructure delivery, are translating policy ambition into homes on the ground across urban renewal and growth areas. Flagship developments such as Southwark Grounds demonstrate how inner-city regeneration, density and mixed-use outcomes are being delivered at scale. This momentum aligns with Australian Government housing acceleration measures, including the national target to deliver 1.2 million new homes by 2029. For Congress delegates and international speakers, Adelaide offers a live case study of how coordinated policy, industry leadership and design excellence are shaping the next generation of Australian cities.
Justin and Jordan will be presenting on Wednesday, 18 March, 11:10 AM – 12:00 PM, at the Adelaide Convention Centre. If you would like to get in contact with Justin and or Jordan, please contact citychats@city-collective.com
The UDIA National Congress 2026 will be held in Adelaide, 16–18 March. Tickets are on sale, with a full program and ticketing details available at: https://udiacongress.com/
Join us in person for City Chats, where you will see an exclusive keynote presentation by Justin Kearnan and Jordan Jones, ahead of their appearance at the UDIA National Congress. RSVP below.
Event Details
Monday, 16 March 2026
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
City Collective Studio
Level 1, 28 Grenfell Street, Adelaide SA 5000
