Anyway, for your reading pleasure, the column in full, after the jump...
Now Coveted: A Walkable, Convenient Place
By CHRISTOPHER B. LEINBERGER
Published: 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.
The rise in bike-sharing systems in Minneapolis, metropolitan
Washington, and soon New York City makes it possible to imagine a future
in which a third of a city’s population gets around primarily by
bicycle. The popular Web site Walk
Score has just added Bike
Score to let people know which neighborhoods are most bikable.
Demand for walkable urban space extends beyond city centers to suburbs;
in metropolitan Washington, more than half of the walkable places are in
the suburbs, like Reston Town Center, 22 miles from downtown
Washington; Ballston, in Arlington County; and Silver Spring, in
suburban Maryland. Residents can easily get to grocery stores, cafes,
libraries and work by rail transit, biking and walking.
Why is there an urbanization of the suburbs? Some baby boomers want to
sell their large suburban houses and move to a walkable urban place but
stay close to friends and family. Young families want the advantages of
walkable urban life but also high-quality suburban schools. This trend
is about both the revitalization of center cities and the urbanization
of the suburbs.
To address the affordability challenge, a sensible strategy would
include changes like zoning that allows homes with units in the back or
over the garage. But the long-term solution is encouraging the building
of more walkable places, which will reduce the price premiums by
creating more supply.
(Disclosure: I am the president of Locus, a coalition of real estate
developers and investors, and a project of Smart Growth America, which
supports walkable neighborhoods and transit-oriented development.)
Different infrastructure needs to be built, including rail transit and
paths for walking and biking. Some research has shown that walkable
urban infrastructure is substantially cheaper on a usable square foot
basis than spread-out drivable suburban infrastructure; the
infrastructure is used much more extensively in a small area, resulting
in much lower costs per usable square foot.
It’s important that developers and their investors learn how to build
places that integrate many different uses within walking distance.
Building walkable urban places is more complex and riskier than
following decades-long patterns of suburban construction. But the market
gets what it wants, and the market signals are flashing pretty
brightly: build more walkable, and bikable, places.
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