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Walkable Neighborhoods Attracting Investments While Burbs Die

Walkable Neighborhoods Attracting Investments While Burbs Die

Jul 9, 2019

By Aaron Short

Read More: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/07/...ile-burbs-die/

Foot Traffic Ahead Report: https://smartgrowthamerica.org/app/u...compressed.pdf

Quote:

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Over the past decade, Americans are increasingly seeking out homes in places where they can get to their work and school, as well as their favorite stores, restaurants, and parks by walking and biking. These walkable urban places about 761 neighborhoods in the 30 largest metro areas in the country accounted for virtually all new office and rental multi-family construction while sprawling suburban districts around the country’s major cities have added no new development, or even lost occupancy, since 2010, a new report found.

- These neighborhoods comprise a meager 1 percent of these metropolitan regions’ total area, but are so desirable that people are willing to pay 75 percent more to rent residential, retail and office space there, and 90 percent higher to own property in those hoods, according to the report. — “These metros that have the most walkable urban real estate also have a tremendous premium for what people are willing to pay for rental estate and for sale,” said one of the study’s co-authors, GWU Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis professor Christopher Leinberger. “Not only are people willing to pay a tremendous price premium, but this is also where the majority of net absorption of new space is going.” — Rent prices in these neighborhoods rose 19 percent since 2010 and not just in cities like New York and Los Angeles. Property values in pedestrian-friendly urban areas grew in every metro region in the country while properties in the suburbs have been depopulating, the study’s authors found.

- New York, thanks to an astounding 149 “walkable” neighborhoods, topped the list with 37 percent of its occupied properties located in walkable areas. Denver was second with 35 percent, followed by Boston (31 percent), Washington D.C. (30 percent), San Francisco (29 percent), and Chicago (29 percent) At the bottom of the rankings was Las Vegas with only 3 percent of its real estate growth centered in pedestrian friendly neighborhoods, and only two walkable neighborhoods. Phoenix, San Antonio, Orlando, Tampa, San Diego, and Miami didn’t fare much better. — But there’s hope for cities looking to make a U-turn from catering too much to cars. Detroit, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Baltimore, Cleveland, Las Vegas, and even Los Angeles made significant strides in the past decade to make their regions more walkable. Residents are moving into homes and using office space in Detroit’s walkable neighborhoods at nearly six times the rate in 2018 as they were in 2010.

- Leinberger credits the knowledge economy for igniting job growth and a population boom in many of these regions, “All of these metros that are scoring high lead because they’re the centers of the knowledge economy where you can exchange that knowledge easily and quickly,” he said. “It allows rising companies to hire the people that they need to grow from existing companies that are there.” But those population shifts are displacing longtime residents from their homes and in search of more affordable places to live far from a region’s central business district. — Yet Foot Traffic Ahead found that several cities with reputations for high property values and rapid gentrification, such as New York, Washington D.C., and Boston, still offered a combined cost of housing and transit at a lower value relative to the surrounding suburbs. — In New York, for instance, 39 percent of the earnings in households at or below 80 percent the median income in the city went towards rent but only 9 percent was spent on transportation. In Washington D.C., 35 percent of earnings for similar families went toward housing, with 10 percent spent on transit.

- A similar family in Los Angeles, on the other hand, spent 42 percent of its earnings on housing and another 18 percent of its paycheck to get around making the region the least equitable place in the country to live. LA’s suburbs are slowly urbanizing thanks to its investment in expanded rail and bus systems. And other metro areas like Miami are making long-term investments in transit that could change how millions of Americans live and work in the 21st century. — “Cars are going to be around forever, but condemning people to having one choice is not what a capitalist society thrives on,” Leinberger said. “It is very important for local regions to invest in rail transit, bus rapid transit, and bike lanes to give people options, particularly low-income people. But it’s really for everybody.”

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Sprawl is nearly over in Boston, one of the most pedestrian-friendly cities in America.

https://i1.wp.com/usa.streetsblog.or...pg?w=800&ssl=1

The burbs are not dying, but getting stronger on a side note. The U.S. needs more walkable neighborhoods. Positive step if more are created. Outside a select few places, most of the country is not walkable (our urban areas). And its a shame.

But what should noted is that the burbs are not dying! At least the inner-ring burbs surrounding the core.

Maybe the burbs are only dying when it comes to attracting investment.

Nonsense. Another article written by silly people with a highly focused agenda.

This forum is 2 decades old and it will never end.

The suburbs aren’t dying. Never will. Ever.

Sprawl in Boston is over? You mean, all whopping 48 sq miles are built out? Yeah, it’s been that way for over 100 years. You mean the inner ring is built out? Pretty much, but there is still room for more TODs. But outside of the 128 loop? There are still plenty of Metro West and Norfolk County towns with silly caps and restrictions on multi-family units. I grew up in bucolic Boston suburbia.

Metro Boston is lucky to have one of the densest commuter rail systems in the country, and due to its age and history, the metro is made up of hundreds of towns 300 years old, most with relatively dense downtowns built around a Town Common. The commuter rail stations are usually there as well. Of course there are still cul-de-sac suburbia housing tracts, but there’s more variety in built form than you find in other parts of the country. Most of Bos-Wash is like this. It makes park-and-ride commuter rail feasible.

^ Right yeah. Possibly a preview of the suburbs' dying population-wise, but at this point, just a possibility.

I think saying "the suburbs are dying" is a bit of hyperbole.

Nonetheless, there's an issue that a lot of older, established suburbs in the U.S. have now, which is slow population decline due to falling household size and an average age that continues to rise as children grow up and their parents largely age in place, finding that there increasingly isn't a younger generation of prospective suburbanites to replace them - either because they want cheaper suburbia in the Sun Belt, or somewhere which is more walkable with more character.

It will be interesting to see what happens in a lot of these towns in 20 years. Some in Connecticut are projected to lose up nearly half their population by 2040.

America has fallen out of love with the suburbs

https://www.fastcompany.com/90374868...th-the-suburbs

Quote:

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- The Boston metro area may be the first region in America to claim that it’s put an end to sprawl. “There’s no leasing activity happening in the drivable suburbs,” says Tracy Hadden Loh, senior data scientists at the George Washington University School for Businesses’ Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis. “All of the new demand for retail, office, and multifamily rental space is going to walkable, urban places.”

- Those walkable, urban places, Loh adds, are not just located in downtown Boston. Adjacent cities, like Cambridge and Somerville, are well connected by transit and contain dense housing options, near shops and amenities, that people want to live in. Looking at the Boston metro area, Loh says, provides a window into what could be the landscape of America in the future: networks of dense, urbanized communities built out around core cities, and connected by non-car transit options like light rail, buses, and bike infrastructure.

- This trend is not just limited to Boston. A new report from GWU and Smart Growth America (Loh is a co-author) finds that on the whole, America is falling out of love with the suburbs. It’s not the location of these places that is the issue, Loh and her co-authors find, but rather their design: sprawling communities of single-family homes that require a car to navigate are not what’s drawing people anymore. What’s popular now are places where people can live in mixed-use, multifamily housing maybe an apartment building above a coffee shop—and walk, bike, or take transit to get around.

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https://images.fastcompany.net/image...he-suburbs.jpg

"but detached pulte homes in the middle of nowhere is the pinnacle of human civilization!" - Sunbelt

Quote:

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K (Post 8632082)

https://images.fastcompany.net/image...he-suburbs.jpg

The idea that the suburbs are dying was part of a dream some had, but within that dream, there is another dream in which the suburbs are not dying, and within that dreams' dream, there is another dream, a 3rd dream in a layer of 3 dreams deep where the suburbs are seeing folks head there due to high city prices.

https://media2.giphy.com/media/queGW...0&rid=100.webp

Then suburbs aren't dying, they're just being outpaced.

The Suburbs aren't dying they are just sprawling slower.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Obadno (Post 8633020)

The Suburbs aren't dying they are just sprawling slower.

This. Gone are the days when suburbs were the only option. The city is now an option for those that want it. 30+ years ago, it wasn't but suburbs aren't going anywhere anytime soon as there will always be a demand.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Obadno (Post 8633020)

The Suburbs aren't dying they are just sprawling slower.

Prices in far flung suburbs and exurbs are in the toilet. McMansions have lost 40% of their value in many places

I’m sure you agree this is good news

Quote:

Originally Posted by JManc (Post 8633131)

so as time goes by people get used to living in cities more? or back then people had more money to buy a car and a house? probably both. like my dad and everyone in the family before him lived in the country but me and my sister live in the suburbs. it would be nice living in the country but a city with lots of noise is just normal since most my life ive been around it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_denizen (Post 8633146)

Prices in far flung suburbs and exurbs are in the toilet. McMansions have lost 40% of their value in many places

I’m sure you agree this is good news

I don't think that's true. It was true in 2008-2012 but I think the exurbs are growing again. Even in the DC metro, they are building big houses out in places Fredericksburg and Manassas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCReid (Post 8633403)

I don't think that's true. It was true in 2008-2012 but I think the exurbs are growing again. Even in the DC metro, they are building big houses out in places Fredericksburg and Manassas.

It probably varies somewhat by region. In the NYC metro, the fringe sprawl basically stopped 15 years ago, and property values in those fringe areas have, generally speaking, dropped considerably.

I bet the DC area is largely the same, with property values in DC, Bethesda, Arlington and the like outpacing Frederick, Howard, Loudon, etc. The DC area might have more new sprawl because it's newer, sprawlier and faster growing and there are a lot of major federal job centers way out in the sticks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The North One (Post 8632085)

"but detached pulte homes in the middle of nowhere is the pinnacle of human civilization!" - Sunbelt

Well, also to be clear and to make absolutely sure everyone's on the same page about it, walkable neighborhoods are not what people want in the South, and the only reason anyone would ever live in such in the South is when their desired vinyl-sided crackerbox in The Townes at Olde Oake Harboure Pointe Mountaine Orcharde Viewe (Phase III) was already snatched up by a Northerner who shuns walkability. Such neighborhoods are scorned in the South.

"These neighborhoods comprise a meager 1 percent of these metropolitan regions’ total area"...

Meanwhile, the rest of the us, the 99% live elsewhere.

Suburbs aren't dying. Suburban districts in the alpha city of a metropolitan region aren't dying either.

"Sprawl is over in Boston..."

Even with a dense core, overall the Boston MSA has one of the lowest population densities in the country and sprawls pretty far into New Hampshire. The 495 corridor is horrific sprawl, not to mention the inner 128 corridor. No sprawl there. Nope.

"LA’s suburbs are slowly urbanizing thanks to its investment in expanded rail and bus systems."
Ridership numbers have been steadily deceasing. Suburban Los Angeles has always been full of walkable urban centers in a built environment many times that of other cities' suburbs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sun Belt (Post 8633448)

"These neighborhoods comprise a meager 1 percent of these metropolitan regions’ total area"...

That's probably not massively off, actually, but you have it reversed. It's the sprawl fringe that's a tiny proportion of the overall metro population. No more than a few million out of 24 million in the CSA.

Established suburbs, those with transit, amenities and city water/sewer are doing fine.