What makes a town or city desirable? What makes a neighborhood a great place to raise a family or start a new job? And what characteristics drive local economic growth and drive the real estate market? It all starts with walkability, according to a recent Washington Post story. A Texas native, Rogers put a premium … Continued
Washington, DC’s Yards Park in the Capital Riverfront neighborhood. Photo via Flickr.
Office renters, apartment seekers and shoppers are all vital parts of creating a great, economically resilient neighborhood. What development strategies attract these people? As Christopher B. Leinberger’s new research explains, walkable streets and transit choices are increasingly important in Washington DC and across the country.
Leinberger, President of LOCUS and Research Professor at The George Washington University School of Business, sat down with the Washington Post recently to discuss his most recent research, “The WalkUP Wake-Up Call,” and the future of development in the Washington DC region.
A new report from The George Washington University’s Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis, in partnership with LOCUS: Responsible Real Estate Developers and Investors and ULI Washington, reveals how walkable urban places and projects will drive tomorrow’s real estate industry and the U.S. economy, and outlines what actions are needed to take advantage of these market trends.
The report was released at an event yesterday in Washington, DC. Governor Parris Glendening, President of Smart Growth America’s Leadership Institute, gave the kickoff keynote of the day-long event. Glendening discussed the megatrends shaping the real estate market today, including changing demographics, new demand among consumers and emerging economic factors. These trends are all influencing the real estate market, Glendening explained, and are shaping how developers think about the built environment and economic development.
Visitors at the Chattanooga, TN farmers’ market. Chattanooga is one of the smaller cities seeing a rise in walkable urban neighborhoods. Photo by Flickr user Larry Miller.
Chrisopher Leinberger, President of LOCUS and coauthor of the new report “Walk this Way:The Economic Promise of Walkable Places in Metropolitan Washington, D.C.” sat down with NPR’s Marketplace‘s David Brancaccio and Stacey Vanek Smith earlier today to talk about the report’s findings and the rising popularity of walkable neighborhoods. Listen to the audio or read a full transcript after the jump.
The most valuable real estate today is in walkable urban locations – and that’s a stark change from only a decade ago.
That is one of the principal findings of a new report from the Brookings Institution. Walk this Way:The Economic Promise of Walkable Places in Metropolitan Washington, D.C. is an economic analysis of the neighborhoods in and surrounding our nation’s capital.
“Emerging evidence points to a preference for mixed-use, compact, amenity-rich, transit-accessible neighborhoods or walkable places,” the report explains, noting that consumer preferences have shifted and that demand for walkable housing is outpacing supply, thus contributing to higher property values.
Changing demographics and shifting consumer demands have deeply impacted the real estate market, causing developers to put a greater emphasis than ever before on the creation of smart growth neighborhoods within easy distance to jobs, shops and schools. From millenials to baby-boomers, Americans are moving away from large-lot suburban housing and looking to take up … Continued
The U.S. housing market has begun to recover, and homes with amenities within walking distance will be those most in demand in coming years, according to a new report from the Demand Institute, a division of the U.S. Conference Board.
The Shifting Nature of U.S. Housing Demand, released May 15, examines the state of the U.S. housing market and the new trends emerging as real estate prices begin to recover from the recession.
Notably, the report predicts that areas with homes within walking distance of amenities and public transportation will recover more quickly and more strongly than those without these features. The report authors refer to these communities as “Resilient Walkables”:
About 15 percent of the population lives in this segment, which comprises populous urban or semi-urban communities well served by local amenities. House prices here fell by less than the national average between 2006 and 2011, in some cases by much less. The same is true of local employment…These localities will be the first to recover. We expect house prices here to rise by an average of 3 percent in 2013, and by up to 5 percent a year between 2014 and 2017.
LOCUS President Chris Leinberger recently sat down with the Wall Street Journal to discuss the rising popularity of living near public transit.
Suburban Swap: Trading a Backyard for a Train Station [Wall Street Journal – May 1, 2012]
Tom and Pat Kelly spent 22 years living what many people consider the American dream: They owned a four-bedroom home with a pool and a big yard in Turnersville, N.J. They traded that in to live near a train station.
With two of their three children living on their own, the couple no longer wanted to spend time raking leaves, shoveling snow and doing other maintenance their large home required. So they moved to LumberYard, a mixed-use condominium development near their son’s and daughter’s homes and within walking distance of the local train station.
Now, instead of spending two or more hours commuting daily in his red Volkswagen Beetle, Mr. Kelly, 56, hops on the Patco high-speed train line and gets to his Philadelphia law-firm job across the Delaware River in about a half-hour. “It’s just a much more enjoyable life,” he says.
LumberYard is a transit-oriented development, or TOD, one of a growing number of mixed-use developments that combine town houses or condominiums with retail shops, hotels and other businesses—all perched near a train station.
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Transit oriented development—a term some credit to urban planner Peter Calthorpe—started to take off in the mid-1990s. But, the financial crisis slowed TOD projects along with other residential developments, says Christopher Leinberger, a Washington, D.C. urban land-use strategist and partner in developer Arcadia Land Co. Now, developers say they are dusting off old plans and starting new ones.
Read more: Suburban Swap: Trading a Backyard for a Train Station [Wall Street Journal – May 1, 2012]
Smart Growth America’s President and CEO Geoff Anderson and Vice President of Policy and Research Bill Fulton sat down last week with the San Diego Union Tribune‘s Roger Showley to talk about places using smart growth strategies in a tough economic climate and the state of the smart growth movement. From ‘Smart Growth’ gaining traction in downturn:
Q: What is the state of smart growth at a time of slow growth and economic stagnation?
Geoffrey Anderson: Smart growth is gaining traction, particularly if you look over a 15-to-20-year perspective. If you think back to the mid-’90s when cities were almost assumed to be dead — relics of a past age that were overtaken by the domination of auto-oriented suburbs — the contrast between that view of walkable neighborhoods, of smart growth and what we see today, is striking by any measure, and nowhere more so than how the market views it. There was a lot of skepticism among the private sector that this was something people wanted, and now it’s practically a given by a lot of the development community.
Q: What’s driving this change?
Anderson: We’d be fools to discount the impact of changing demographics. The difference between the 1960s, when half the households had kids and today’s (is that) it’s 30 percent and headed downward — you can’t overstate that difference in the population. We’ve built up a regulatory, financial and development infrastructure to serve that market. Look away for a second and it’s changed, and we forgot to change with it.
Q: How has smart growth played out in the real estate recession?
Anderson: Part of what we’ve learned is where we have really overbuilt. Virtually every place around the country forms a concentric circle. Moving out, values have been dropping. You see center areas and walkable areas holding values best, and large-lot, drive-only places are losing value.
Read the full article: ‘Smart Growth’ gaining traction in downturn (San Diego Union Tribune, February 13, 2012).
The following op-ed was crossposted from Roll Call.
President Barack Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke seem enamored with renting foreclosed properties to blunt price decreases and to stir economic recovery, but that’s a bandage for symptoms as opposed to a real cure.
Instead, we need to learn from the problems that landed us in this mess in the first place, working to bring government policies in line with good business sense and to incentivize market-driven development.
Or, in the words of investor Warren Buffett, “Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”