Being walkable – living close to services – is a hot button for buyers these days, especially among the older set. Here’s an article that backs it up – and may cause you re-think the McMansion in the ‘burbs. Thanks daytrip!
Few people in America walk to work. Most of us drive to the supermarket. But more older people these days are looking for a community where they can enjoy a full life without a car.
Ben Brown and his wife, Christine, say they weren’t thinking about retirement when they moved to Franklin, N.C., a small, lovely town nestled in the Smoky Mountains near Asheville, a haven for many East Coast and Midwest retirees.
“We loved the idea of living in a small town in a rural mountain area,” Mr. Brown recalled. “And we converted a summer house to a year-round home to suit our tastes.”
Yet Mr. Brown, a 70-year-old writer, and his 66-year-old wife said they had second thoughts as they made the transition toward retirement.
“We realized ‘aging in place’ means a lot more than just a comfortable house,” Mr. Brown said. “So we began thinking more about ‘aging in community.’ That means an urban neighborhood where you can walk or take transit to just about everything you need.”
Then they discovered West Asheville, a vibrant, urban neighborhood that is brimming with trendy new restaurants, inviting shops and a number of bus routes into the larger city next door. Nearly every place they wanted to go was within walking distance, a major benefit for those who don’t want to drive everywhere as they get older.
“We always thought we’d end up in an urban environment,” Mr. Brown added. “We’re in one of the few places where you can comfortably live without a car in a growing, mixed-use neighborhood.”
In the age of the Fitbit and a growing cohort of active, engaged retirees eager to take their daily 10,000 steps, retirement communities have been slow to change. Eighty percent of retirees still live in car-dependent suburbs and rural areas, according to a Brookings Institution study.
Developments for independent retirees typically come in two flavors: isolated, gated subdivisions or large homes on golf courses, often in the same bland package of multiple cul-de-sacs. Both require driving everywhere, which is a problem for those who either don’t want to drive or can’t.
Enter a new paradigm: the walkable, urban space.
It may range from existing neighborhoods in places like Brooklyn or San Francisco to newly built housing within city and suburban cores from coast to coast. Though not primarily for retirees, places like Reston, Va., and Seaside, Fla., were early examples of the new urbanism built from the ground up. Among senior housing projects, examples include Waterstone at Wellesley along the Charles River in the Boston area and The Lofts at McKinley in downtown Phoenix. The theme is simple: Get out and walk to basic services.
Walkability, though, is much more than a hip marketing pitch. It’s linked to better health, social engagement and higher property values.
Read full article here:
Although, with self-driving car technology advancing at an alarmingly fast pace, very soon folks living in the burbs will be able to be driven anywhere and they won’t even need to touch the wheel! And the car parks itself!
Watch this video and have your mind blown away!
http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/20/13343828/tesla-fully-autonomous-test-video
“Very soon” is not very true. Horrific accidents will put a damper on the popularity of this technology. Tesla already has some to their credit. There’ll be more heads rolling about the freeway before the debate is over. And good luck getting insurance. Car complexity and human stupidity creates a potent mix. I wouldn’t get into one, unless the passenger compartment featured a sturdy roll cage:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/self-driving-tesla-fatal-crash-investigation.html?_r=0
@ Daytrip
As I know for a fact that Mercedes is incapable of manufacturing something electrically as simple for an s class as a window winder, my confidence in them (or anyone else for that matter) building a reliable self drive system is 0.
After all if they put a really really fault tolerant and reliable one in an aircraft where the available budget is much higher they would not need pilots would they? They have installed them and they do (need to wake the pilots up when something goes wrong……..good luck with Joe six-pack, besides how would you prosecute DWI?
daytrip and andrewa: every new vehicle safety feature has been accompanied by dire predictions of gruesome failure: seat belts would trap you in a burning wreck, airbags would crush your skull, anti-lock brakes would make you drive too fast and follow too close. And they have all been wrong. Development of self-driving vehicles are not only rapidly improving, but also their data collection is exposing how much worse human drivers are than we realize (see https://backchannel.com/the-view-from-the-front-seat-of-the-google-self-driving-car-46fc9f3e6088#.6pz43gxlv)
Back to the “walkability” topic: an unspoken appeal of “walkable” neighborhoods is exclusivity. Walkability necessitates higher densities (row houses, mid-rise apartments and condos) but in relatively small numbers of units (hence “higher property values”). If a developer were to dump 20,000 new residents into a “walkable” neighborhood, exclusivity would be lost, and appeal especially to image-conscious urban professionals, would greatly diminish. This tends to happen to any popular area over time anyway. The great unwashed move in, and the class of folks who like to be on the cutting edge of location fashion must find new neighborhoods to espouse.