As in many other parts of the country, prices are up astronomically: The cost of the median single-family home in the state has increased almost 40% over the past two years, due in part to a pandemic-fueled in-migration rate that is one of the highest in the country per capita. Actually, it has several housing problems. Levesque wants to bring people in by making Auburn a place they can actually live, and that means building homes. And that’s just fine: Auburn is fundamentally a blue-collar community that’s not setting out to impress new urbanist or smart growth thought leaders.ĭespite its robust economy and advantageous location, Auburn’s population has been essentially stagnant for 60 years, even as neighboring towns with less-restrictive land use policies have grown and the state’s populace has increased by a third. Levesque tells me that new restaurants and a bowling alley are moving into the city center soon, but even then Auburn is unlikely to make any lists of most vibrant downtowns. Image Credit: John Phelan/Wikimedia Commonsĭowntown Auburn has a smattering of restaurants and shops, but most of its commercial life is found along the four-lane state highways radiating out from the city center-what urban planners derisively call “ stroads ,” a portmanteau of streets (where buildings stand) and roads (thoroughfares). In many ways, Auburn feels like a quiet Midwestern town mainline churches and cupolaed Queen Anne-style homes dating to the 19th century line shady downtown avenues with names like “Spring Street” and “High Street.”Īuburn boasts cupolaed, Queen Anne-style homes dating to the 19th century. The city isn’t what you think of when you think of Maine: tourism is minimal, and the lobster-roll-and-saltwater-taffy aesthetic of the state’s coastal towns is nonexistent. It’s also that his approach fuses a populist pugnacity with a technocrat’s love of data-and a pragmatism that lets him actually get things done.Īuburn is the fifth-largest city in Maine when combined with Lewiston, its sister city across the Androscoggin River, it’s the state’s second-largest metro area behind Portland. What’s unusual about Levesque isn’t just his people-first approach to growing his community, in contravention of the commonplace that municipalities should put jobs first (frequently by poaching them from other places), plow resources into various branding boondoggles and amenities, or seek to attract only certain types of new residents. This realization has led Levesque to pursue a development strategy for Auburn that eschews the current fashions of urban planning, undertaking instead a quest to increase the city’s population by a quarter or more in the coming years by unleashing the private sector to build 2,000 new housing units by 2025. What Auburn needs is people to fill them. “We have jobs,” the mayor of the city of 24,000 explains.

Image Credit: City of Auburn, Maine.ĪUBURN, MAINE - Jason Levesque has a simple theory: His hometown needs more people.

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