Anyone who’s been at home with small children for more than a few days in a row knows the truth–it’s boring as hell. Despite the popular cultural myth that parenthood (especially motherhood) is an all encompassing blissfest, it actually is sheer drudgery most of the time. Some of this mythos has fortunately been dispelled by mommy bloggers who tell it like it is, but the fact remains–many new moms and dads who stay at home with their kids are shocked at how boring and isolating it can be.
This is where a new urbanist neighborhood comes in handy. Getting kids loaded and unloaded into a car (especially if you have more than one) is a pain in the ass, but if you live in most of suburbia, you have to do this ulcer inducing act multiple times a day because you can’t walk to anything. In a new urbanist neighborhood, you can toss the kids in a stroller, and walk outside to get a cup of coffee, or buy flowers, or just get outside around other people so you don’t feel so isolated. Or you can walk easily to a pocket park and let the kids run around or dig in the dirt, greeting neighbors along the way.
Once the kids get a little older, they can have some freedom kids in a sprawldivision don’t have–they don’t have to rely on mom and dad taxi service to get somewhere interesting. Older kids in Bradburn can easily walk to get ice cream, to 10 different parks, to school, to stores to buy candy and other sundries. In an isolated subdivision, kids can’t get anywhere on their own–it’s too dangerous because the place is designed for people in cars, not on foot or bicycles. They can’t get anywhere except another street of endless similar beige houses, this deprives them of the ability to develop some independence and skills they will need as an adult.
Now, there is a caveat the this. New urbanist neighborhoods are perfect for families IF they contain single family homes. This isn’t to say that families can’t live happily in townhomes or condos, but the fact is most couples with kids want a single family detatched home with a yard (even a small yard)–the majority of construction in the U.S. housing market is single family homes for a reason: demand. Many new urbanist neighborhoods contain single family homes, but I’ve noticed lately that many new ones coming up–especially transit oriented developments–have only townhomes and condos, no single family. While the market needs these too, there should be a balance between these and new urbanist developments that offer single family homes–believe me, people will buy them, and once they experience how great it is living in a new urbanist neighborhood with kids, they won’t ever go back to a sprawldivision.
Before Bradburn Village was built, our developer, Continuum Partners, had a company conduct a marketing study on what demographics would be attracted to a higher density, walkable mixed-use neighborhood smack dab in the middle of standard Denver suburban sprawl. This study apparently concluded that families wouldn’t really be into Bradburn (I’m unsure who they thought would be–DINKs and retirees I guess). This is a common misconception about new urbanisim–families don’t want it, they only want single family homes on huge lots seperated from their neighbors, with a backyard that will fit a full size trampoline and play set their kids will use a few times a year.
Bradburn Village certainly refutes this theory, after sales started our developer realized the market study was wrong–90% of the single family homes (all with much smaller yards than a standard subdivision) were purchased by families, mostly families with young kids. Continuum–to their credit–altered the plans for our community pool to include a kid pool in response to the surprising demographics of the new urbanist neighborhood they created.
As I–and all my neighbors with kids–have found, new urbanist neighborhoods are the IDEAL place for kids for several reasons. First, the design of the neighborhood fosters social interaction so you know your neighbors, and they know you and your kids. I know that if my daughter is out playing, there are a bunch of other adults out there she can trust, and who would help her during an emergency (and all who have my phone number), or who would chastise her if she were doing something she shouldn’t be–and yes, I want my neighbors to correct her if she does something she shouldn’t.
An extension of the social nature of my new urbanist neighborhood–I have help and support from other parents whenever I need it. When I lived in a standard sprawldivision my daughter was an infant. I felt stranded on the moon, I didn’t know any of my neighbors and felt so isolated and depressed, I felt like I was all on my own. It sucked. Here, if my kid is driving me nuts, we can just walk outside and find other people to have fun with, or I can walk to a neighbor’s house who also has kids so they can play. In an emergency, the social capital here really comes into play.
Last year a neighbor’s husband was out of town for work and she was at home with her 3 kids (all under 5). With the uncanny timing all kids seem to have, two of her kids became very sick with rotovirus and had to go to the hospital. I got a phone call from another neighbor who was watching kid #3 saying my neighbor with kids in the hospital needed her cell phone charger because she had left it at home. So, I went over to another neighbor’s house, left my kid with them, took the cell phone charger to the hospital, and stayed to help out until my neighbor’s parents could get there. After it was over the kids were all fine, and I counted five neighbors who had helped during this emergency. This is the kind of thing families really, really need, and which is so sorely lacking today in the alienation of standard sprawl (especially since so many people now live far away from relatives).
This post is getting long, so I’ll stop here and continue on this thread next week.
How do you estimate the value of community?
In the United States, we know how to appraise houses. We can figure out what they are worth based on their physical characterisics: so many square feet, so many bathrooms, so many bedrooms. The value of individual assets is easy for Americans to figure out and understand. In every home magazine on the shelf, you see countless fabulous homes with meticulous decorating. What you don’t see-pretty much ever–is the neighborhood the home is in. The reason? Most neighborhoods aren’t anything special because they were built the cheapest/fastest/easiest way possible. Individual houses are fabulous because their owners care about them, and pour love, money, and attention into them. This almost never happens on a public scale. The focus in U.S. real estate market is on the individual home, not the wider public sphere in which it exists. That’s why real estate porn–the shelter mags–sell so well.
I recently read a great book “It’s a Sprawl World After All” by Douglas E. Morris which is primarily about the human social costs of sprawl. There’s a section that talks about the often unrecognized burden of being around strangers all day long. Because uses are so separated in sprawl, you have to visit many different places (by car of course) to get your daily needs, which means you can be around people all day who don’t know you. We’ve created a physical landscape that makes us a nation of strangers. Being recognized the book says, has a positive effect on our sense of well being and our sense of who we are in the world. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve noticed this dramatic effect in my own neighborhood. I walk out the door to do anything and I always see and talk to many people who know me, and I know them. It provides a sense of satisfaction and safety that pervades my life in this new urbanist neighborhood. I firmly believe the thoughtful design of my neighborhood made this possible, there’s a real sense of place here. (The only negative of this? If you walk anywhere to do anything in Bradburn Village it will take 1 hour longer than you planned because you stop to chat with your neighbors).
This “sense of place” is composed of a variety of things: a design focus on people not cars, many well designed public spaces in my neighborhood where people go frequently to interact, the fact that all the homes are different so everyone has a strong sense of their space, and others–not just another beige house in a sea of sameness. This is a priceless asset of my neighborhood, but realtors don’t know how to sell it, people who are used to seeing the same beige sprawl often don’t understand it, and thus the value of this is sometimes lost on people who don’t live here.
I bought that book in the new urbanist neighborhood of Celebration (in Florida) in a little independent bookstore owned by people who live in the community. While I was sitting there reading, a customer walked in and purchased a book. The owner of the store said “If you like I can just deliver it to your porch when it comes in”. That kind of person to person connection, which is lost in sprawl for the most part, is more valuable than all the extra square feet in a standard McMansion subdivision.
A 2,000 sq foot home with 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms in Bradburn Village: $360,000. Knowing all your neighbors: Priceless.
I have an odd sense of humor. There are two people in the world that share it completely. One is my brother (apparently sense of humor is genetic), and one is my husband. How do I know we have an odd sense of humor? Because when we go to movies there will invariably be certain parts when we are the only people in the theater laughing. We all share a very, very dark sense of humor. A good example of this would be the remake of “War of the Worlds” with Tom Cruise.
Tom and his kids in the movie have just escaped a horrific Martian attack and they have found a small town on the edge of a river (or lake, can’t tell) where a bunch of people have gathered. They are bedraggled and spent. Then they hear the sound of normalcy….a train whistle. Ah, at last something is normal right? The gates come down and the train rushes past. It’s on fire. The three of use broke out in loud laughter to the horrified stares of other movie patrons. Here’s my top 15 list of funny movies/shows
1. Tie. The Simpsons. Selma’s Choice. The episode where the name for this website came from. And Raising Arizona “Ed’s father set us up in a home in suburban Tempe”–it’s in the middle of nowhere (I’m from Arizona).
2. MXC. Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. Pure Brilliance.
3. Futurama. Space Pilot 3000. The brick.
4. Robot Chicken. The Star Wars Special.
5. South Park. The save the rainforest episode.
6. Evil Dead 2. When Ash sits on the chair and it breaks underneath him
7. Heavy Metal. “She had beautiful eyes”.
8. A Fish Called Wanda. Kevin Klein. “Dissapointed!”.
9. Blazing Saddles. “Let’s play chess”.
10. Young Frankenstein. “Get me the hell outta here!”.
11. Ace Ventura. “Your gun is digging into my hip….oh god….”
12. Monty Python. “Would you shut that bloody dancing up!” and “It’s just a harmless little bunny rabbit“.
13. Chasing Amy. “Black RAGE!!!”.
14. Airplane. “You ever seen a grown man naked?”.