The Atlantic Cities: 

“The Case for Age-Friendly Suburbs

Several trends are conspiring to challenge America’s ability to house and care for its senior citizens. Utilizing successful examples, architect and planner Eric C.Y. Fang examines how the suburbs can be adapted to support an aging population.

Eric C.Y. Fang. April 5, 2013

America’s established framework for housing and caring for its senior citizens addresses a range of needs, from those with independent and active lifestyles to those requiring more intensive levels of care. What each of these models has traditionally had in common is they are typically housed in discrete, standalone facilities with an extensive – and expensive – array of on-site services. The focus is on services and amenities, rather than place.

Despite the demonstrated success of this framework, several trends may challenge its ability to continue as the dominant paradigm for housing America’s senior citizens. The first is the sheer number of people poised to cross the threshold into retirement age. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the anticipated tide of Baby Boomer retirees will double America’s senior population by 2030, increasing its ranks by 35 million [PDF]. The changing lifestyle preferences of seniors will also play a role, as increasing numbers continue working into their 70s and living in their own homes. Finally, the drop in property values resulting from the Great Recession has significantly impacted the retirement choices available. Together, these developments have begun to reverberate in how seniors choose to live, with a dramatic drop in the migration to Sunbelt states, and an increase in the average age of those moving into assisted-living facilities. The need for a greater range of attractive living options for this rapidly growing age cohort has never been more apparent.”

Photo: Eric Fang

“Walkable Neighborhoods Can’t Just Be For Rich People

Sarah Laskow. May 31, 2012

Most Americans want to live in walkable neighborhoods, but only a fraction can afford it. Housing in places with easy access to stores, restaurants, jobs, and public transit is in short supply, and only about a third of those who say they want to live in walkable neighborhoods actually do. Aaccording to a new study, the people lucky enough to live in the most walkable neighborhoods are often also be the most well-off.

Brookings Institution researchers Christopher Leinberger and Mariela Alfonzo set out to create metrics for judging a neighborhood’s walkability and monitoring its progress. They picked a sample of neighborhoods in the Washington, D.C., area and, by examining several aspects of each one, assigned each a walkability score between one and five. 

Once each neighborhood received a score, the researchers began exploring what distinguished high performers from low ones. They found that the most walkable communities boasted the strongest economies—and the most costly housing. Moving up one walkability point came with a $300 monthly bump in rent. Those living in the most walkable communities spent a greater portion of their income on housing and tended to be wealthier. As Leinberger told Atlantic Cities, “Only the wealthiest among us can afford to live in [these neighborhoods].”

Leinberger and Alfonzo say this trend poses “a serious social equity issue.” Living in walkable neighborhood brings a slew of health and economic benefits. It also means life takes less time: commutes are shorter, trips to the grocery store are easier, going to the park requires almost no effort. Often, living in a more “walkable” neighborhood actually requires less walking: Everything a person needs might be located within a two- or three-block radius instead of a 10-block one. Life is just easier.

There’s no reason that these benefits should be reserved for wealthier Americans. Revitalizing urban centers won’t mean much if lower-income people are simply displaced to the suburbs. There is a simple way to start reversing this trend before it takes hold: Build more affordable housing in neighborhoods already full of walkable amenities and public transit options. People of all income levels want to move into these places. They should be able to. “

Via: GOOD Magazine

Photo: via (cc) Flickr user t-bet

“Now Coveted: A Walkable, Convenient Place

By CHRISTOPHER B. LEINBERGER. May 25, 2012

WALKING isn’t just good for you. It has become an indicator of your socioeconomic status. 

Until the 1990s, exclusive suburban homes that were accessible only by car cost more, per square foot, than other kinds of American housing. Now, however, these suburbs have become overbuilt, and housing values have fallen. Today, the most valuable real estate lies in walkable urban locations. Many of these now pricey places were slums just 30 years ago. 

Mariela Alfonzo and I just released a Brookings Institution study that measures values of commercial and residential real estate in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, which includes the surrounding suburbs in Virginia and Maryland. Our research shows that real estate values increase as neighborhoods became more walkable, where everyday needs, including working, can be met by walking, transit or biking. There is a five-step “ladder” of walkability, from least to most walkable. On average, each step up the walkability ladder adds $9 per square foot to annual office rents, $7 per square foot to retail rents, more than $300 per month to apartment rents and nearly $82 per square foot to home values. 

As a neighborhood moves up each step of the five-step walkability ladder, the average household income of those who live there increases some $10,000. People who live in more walkable places tend to earn more, but they also tend to pay a higher percentage of their income for housing.

Although we have not studied all urban areas to the same degree, these findings appear to apply to much of the rest of the country. In metropolitan Seattle in 1996, the suburban Redmond area, home to Microsoft, had the same price per square foot as Capitol Hill, a walkable area adjacent to downtown, based on data from Zillow. Today, Capitol Hill is valued nearly 50 percent above Redmond. 

In Columbus, Ohio, the highest housing values recorded by Zillow in 1996 were in the suburb of Worthington, where prices were 135 percent higher than in the struggling neighborhood of Short North, adjacent to the city’s center.  Today, Short North housing values are 30 percent higher than those of Worthington, and downtown Columbus has the highest housing values in that metropolitan area. 

In the Denver area, Highlands Ranch, an upscale, master-planned community 20 miles south of downtown, had housing in 1996 that cost on average 21 percent more than housing in Highlands, a troubled neighborhood adjacent to downtown Denver. Today, Highlands has a 67 percent price premium over Highlands Ranch. 

People are clearly willing to pay more for homes that allow them to walk rather than drive. Biking is part of the picture, too. Biking and walking are part of a “complete streets” strategy that public rights of way should be for all of society — not just cars.”

Via: The NY Times

Image: Josh Cochran

“Los Angeles Seeks Pedestrians

The automobile is undoubtedly the dominant mode of travel in Los Angeles. But to write off the city as made up entirely of car-driving, bumper-to-bumper rush hour commuters is clearly an over-generalization. A growing group of Angelenos is finding ways to make transit, cycling, and walking (and, often, a combination thereof) relevant and viable in their daily lives.

A physical example of this transition opened this weekend in the city’s Silver Lake neighborhood. On a short strip of street bordering a small triangular park within a vibrant commercial area, officials from the city’s departments of planning, transportation, and public works partnered with the county’s public health department to close the street off to car traffic and convert it into an outdoor plaza. On 11,000 square-feet, the roadway has been effectively removed form the automobile grid with the simple application of paint (in glowing neon green polka-dots), bike racks and planters around the edges and seating in the middle. The project was inspired by similar street plazas created in New York City and San Francisco.

“In L.A., 60 percent of our land area is devoted to streets and parking lots. So the real hope here is that we can take that and transform it into something really different than just spaces for cars,” says Bill Roschen, president of the city’s planning commission.

Roschen helped spearhead the street-to-plaza project, part of an effort called Streets for People. His intention is to spread projects like this one throughout the city.

“It’s about culture change,” Roschen says. “It’s looking at streets as not always for cars, but a real shared effort around mobility.”

At least a hundred people were milling around the plaza for its opening day ceremony this past Sunday – an especially warm and sunny day. A line trailed out of the door of a café right on the plaza’s edge, and people moved chairs to find some shade underneath the umbrellas sprinkled throughout the area. Kids ran around, while adults and community members crowded around local officials to talk about – and congratulate each other on – the project.”

Via: The Atlantic

Photo: Nate Berg

“What Neighborhoods Need to Succeed at Walkability

Kaid Benfield. Jan 11,2012

New research from Southern California has found that residents of neighborhoods with a central core of shops and services – a pattern typically found in older, traditional communities – walk nearly three times more often than do residents of neighborhoods whose nearest shops and services lie along a major arterial roadway, a pattern typically found in newer suburban development.  Residents of traditionally styled and centered neighborhoods also drive less than their counterparts residing in the newer pattern.

This is true even when the data are controlled for individual and household economic and demographic characteristics. The study was led by Marlon Boarnet of the University of California at Irvine, assisted by several other researchers from southern California, Texas A&M and UNC-Chapel Hill. It is published in the Fall 2011 issue of Access, the magazine of the University of California Transportation Center.

Notably, the residents of the centered neighborhoods were found to take shorter trips, suggesting that walkable proximity – both closeness and a safe, direct walking route – to shops and services is also important. It may not do much to encourage walking, for example, if the dry cleaner’s is a quarter mile away as the crow flies but you have to travel two or three times that far navigating busy roads around the subdivision to get there.”

Via: The Atlantic

Photo: Reuters

“Retrofitting the Suburbs to Increase Walking
by Marlon G. Boarnet, Kenneth Joh, Walter Siembab, William Fulton, and Mai Thi Nguyen

During the last half of the 20th century, cities and towns across America were built primarily for one transportation mode: the automobile. Much of this development occurred on the urban periphery, creating the suburbs that are now home to more Americans than either traditional central cities or small towns. Today, while federal transportation policies and urban planners have shifted toward promoting a more multimodal form of development, the legacy of the postwar era remains: thousands of suburban neighborhoods poorly served by any mode of transportation other than the automobile.

Researchers have spilled much ink debating the feasibility of alternatives to car travel, but have focused less on how suburbs built for the car might be transformed to accommodate other modes. Seven years ago, communities in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County decided to focus on this question. They found that walking is the gateway mode for alternative transportation. The 2009 National Household Travel Survey shows that 10 percent of all trips in the US are taken on foot. Relatedly, an American Public Transportation Association analysis of over 150 on-board transit surveys from 2000 to 2005 showed that walking is the access mode for about 60 percent of all transit trips.

Walking travel and land use patterns vary substantially within the South Bay. Analyzing the correlates of walking in that area provides insight into ways to retrofit auto-oriented suburbs for more pedestrian travel.

The California Context

The opportunities for retrofitting suburbs to increase transit use and walking are especially golden in the Golden State. While the proliferation of auto-oriented suburbs has continued largely unabated in sprawling metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Houston, and Phoenix, in California there are several reasons why suburbs will be retrofitting to increase walking. The first is geography: the major coastal metro areas (Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco) are hemmed in by mountain ranges or desert, with little room for new development. While population density has declined in most US cities for over a century, Western cities, including greater Los Angeles, saw densities increase in recent decades. The second reason is economics: the collapse of the recent housing bubble dampened the market for new single-family residential units, particularly on the exurban fringe of California’s metropolitan areas. The past few years have seen marked shifts in building from inland to coastal counties and from single-family to multi-family units. The state’s planning and policy context is the third, and perhaps most important, reason why suburbs will be retrofitted to increase walking. The place that popularized car culture is now at the forefront of linking transportation planning, land use policy, and climate change concerns. California Senate Bill 375, passed in 2008, requires metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to develop “sustainable communities strategies” including infill development.

This combination of geography, market forces, and public policy will limit the expansion of California’s urban areas, providing consistent pressure for infill development in the coastal counties. Adding more people to already congested places such as San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles will increase the political pressure to reduce the resulting car traffic on arterial streets. Communities will look for relief valves—ways to move some of the traffic from infill development to alternate modes of travel. This context prompted the South Bay Cities Council of Governments to study how to accommodate growth in an area built for the car a half century ago.”

Via: ACCESS Magazine