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.

My mom is the guest blogger today, she’s written a bit about the difference between my neighborhood–Bradburn Village in Westminster, Colorado where she spends her summers–and her retirement community, Pebble Creek, in Goodyear Arizona where she spends her winters.  Why they don’t have new urbanist retirement communities I don’t know.

 ————————————–

I’ve just returned from Colorado where I spent the summer in relative coolness – weather wise and major coolness neighborhood wise with my daughter, son in law and granddaughter.  They live in a new urbanist community and I spend winters in a retirement community in Arizona.  The difference is staggering.

While I have access to two spectacular clubhouses, pools, lap pools, workout rooms, tennis courts, bocce courts, golf courses, a state of the art theater, art studio,  in-house library, video rental and on and on, they have access to each other.

Any  day, I could  step out of the carriage house, my home away from home, and be greeted by a neighbor or two.  I never made it all the way to the pocket park, at the end of the block, without someone greeting me or joining me with their kids and/or dogs.  I loved it. Many times we walked to dinner at the local eatery or strolled to the local ice cream store.  Invariably we ran into neighbors enjoying their porches or just out walking the neighborhood kids and dogs in tow.

If only the developer of my community had thought about this in the planning stages, my community would have been perfect.  As it is, I love it, but I have to drive to the clubhouse to swim or play tennis or to participate in any activities.  I cannot walk to dinner or expect to see my neighbors sitting on their porch.  We don’t have any. We have very nice, beige houses that all look the same on very clean streets that all look the same – not a good idea when most of us don’t remember why we walked into a room, let alone a neighborhood.

I make sure my visitors have cell phones so they can call me when they get lost trying to find my house in the community or when they are out walking the neighborhood and can’t find the way home because every house looks the same.  I also tell them to knock on the closest door and ask the resident how to get back home. 

Without exception, all our residents are friendly and very helpful when a stranger shows up looking perplexed – we are all used to it.  Besides – that’s the only way to meet people in the neighborhood without getting in the car or golf cart.

Neighbor A had a crappy cheap builder sink that was chipped and she hated.  Neighbor B’s husband is a great contractor, can install/fix anything.  Neighbor A had Neighbor B’s husband install new sink, and he offered her a choice of caulking colors.  Not realizing caulking came in colors, Neighbor A selected black for her nice, new sink and was very happy with the results.  Neighbor A saw Neighbor B walking across the street and wanted to let her know what she thought of her husband’s great handiwork, so she opened her front door and yelled out across the street at the top of her lungs,

“I LOVE BLACK CAULK!”

————————————————————-

Said to me at a party:

“Yeah, I left the reservation for a birthday party the other day and I’m never doing it again”

 When you live this close to your neighbors, you better behave yourself

Let me start by saying 95-99% of people are nice, fun, reasonable and great neighbors.  Then there’s the rest.  Every neighborhood has them: the nutbags, the jerks, the clueless, the just plain unpleasant people who bitch about EVERYTHING.  The difference is, in a new urbanist neighborhood (well, at least mine), everyone knows who these people are.  Quickly.  Design that fosters social interaction means people are frequently out in public, assholes included.

My suspicion is, in a sterile, non-interacting subdivision, these people are relativley unknown (unless they are really extreme).  I was discussing this blog post with a neighbor at one of our events last night and she commented that “as long as they mow their lawn, no one will know what an asshole they are” in a non social neighborhood. They can hide in a way–not so in a community that interacts all the time.  I swear a pin can’t drop in my neighborhood without everyone knowing about it in short order.  There are pluses and minuses to this.  One of the pluses is that people who can’t behave themselves in a community move.  A community as social as mine (and other new urbanist neighborhoods I’ve heard) is somewhat self-selecting.  Sounds a little Orwellian, but frankly it works in our favor.  So, if you’re an asshole, do yourself (and us) a favor and move either to acreage, or to a faceless, anonymous beige subdivision where your jerkery will go unnoticed.

Dwell magazine stated in April of 2002, that Prospect New Town in Longmont, Colorado (30 min north of Denver) is the “coolest neighborhood in America”, a statement I wholeheartedly agree with.  Prospect is not just cool, it’s fucking COOL.  There is no place anywhere that looks like it, it’s unique.  There have been some articles written about Prospect, some I’ve written myself, and there’s a great chapter on it in Karrie Jacobs’ book “The Perfect $100,000 House”–(book is highly recommended and Karrie is also the author and editor of the Dwell piece on Prospect).

Prospect New Town is the strangest, most interesting, and most colorful neighborhood in the world I would hazard to say. Started in 1997 on what used to be a tree farm, Prospect is a new urbanist neighborhood that mixes neo-traditional architecture (Craftsman, Victorian, Praire, Farmhouse) with well, crazy bat-shit modern aspects.  Some houses are traditional, some are modern, some are a mix of both. Some defy description. You have to see the place to believe it.  This wonderful, crazy place wouldn’t exist without its developer, who has the perfect name to go with the place–Kiki.  Kiki Wallce. Kiki is, like Prospect, cool as shit. 

 Originally Kiki told me, Prospect was going to be a normal McMansion subdivision (which the city of Longmont turned down for some reason), but then Kiki saw a piece on Duany-Plater Zyberck and new urbanism in the Wall Street Journal when he was flying somewhere.  He said he knew right then that’s what he wanted to do with the land, so he called them up, and they did the planning for Prospect.

The first houses that went in were all neo-traditional and while beautiful, pretty safe.  Kiki and Mark Sofield, the town planner, decided to shake things up a bit and started introducing homes that were strikingly modern.  Apparently some of the original homeowners weren’t expecting to live down the street from angular, wild houses and threw a fit.  I’ve interviewed a lot of people who live in new urbanist communities and they were all passionate about their neighborhood, and all had ideas about what it should look like, so I can only imagine the racket that was raised about some of the new houses–and I can see their point in a way (although I love the modern houses, I can see how they might not be to everyone’s taste). But Kiki–which is one of the reasons I think he’s so cool–didn’t care, which is why Prospect is so awesome. Kiki, unlike most people in the high risk field of real estate, has balls with a B.

Up until that point for the most part, modern architecture and new urbanism did not mix.  There are a few modern homes and buildings in Seaside, but they are far outweighed by the neotraditonal.  Kiki says his mixing the modern in with the neo-traditional didn’t sit well with some members of the Congress for the New Urbanism, but again, he didn’t care much what other people thought, even the “experts”. And lucky for us, because now we have Prospect. So, to the review:

Downtown Portion: Excellent. Prospect’s downtown is a 5-10 minute walk from all homes in the development, and consists of a series of funky, modern, BRIGHTLY painted 3 story buildings (BRIGHTLY means yellow, orange, neon green, periwinkle).   First floor retail, 2nd and 3rd floor office and residential.  There are some very fun shops in Prospect, including my favorite–House Gifts and Decor, a fun home store.  The downtown also has Solar Village, which is neato–a mixed-use building 100% powered by renewable energy.

Architecture (how non-cookie cutter): Prospect is the hands down winner in this category, even counting every single new urbanist community in the U.S.. No house is the same, and many are spectacular colors. The older part of the neighborhood has more of the traditional architecture, and the newer part more of the modern. The only comment here really is the price.  Because the houses are unique, they are expensive.  Right now you can’t get into a single family home for less than $450K (and that’s down because the market sucks).

Parks: Prospect has a few parks and for the most part they’re OK, but nothing special.  They are putting in what looks like a really fun playground, but I have to go back up and check it out.  Knowing Kiki, it’s awesome.

Community: Excellent.  I interviewed lots of people in Prospect, and they all say how fun it is.  They have tons of events formal and informal, and everyone’s friendly.

In short: if you are at all into new urbanism and/or architecture, you must visit Prospect.  It’s at the intersection of 287 and Pike Rd. on the south side of Longmont.

I was talking with a neighbor the other day who is currently selling her house.  I asked her how it was going as the market in Denver is really crappy at the moment.  She sighed and explained many of the people coming to look at her home complained about several different things, and made the very astute observation “people either get it [new urbanism] or they don’t”, which is totally true. 

Purchasing a home is generally the largest investment people ever make.  Investing a large sum of money tends to make people (understandably) highly cautious, they often purchase a home with an eye towards resale: will other people like/buy my home in the future?  Hence the dominance of beige in the suburbs, it appeals to the widest variety of people and is non offensive (but, alas, also crushingly boring).  It takes someone with guts to make the biggest investment of their lives in something different.

I’ve been having a conversation via email for months with a couple who’s interested in my neighborhood, they drove in and loved it, but their real estate agent at the time advised them against it, apparently saying the schools in our area aren’t very good (not true at all) and that mixed-use developments don’t do well with resale (also not true at all, average price per square foot in my neighborhood is $40 higher than the bordering traditional beige neighborhood–that should tell you something!); this bias with real estate agents and new urbanism is encountered again and again–many of them just don’t get it.  The following things are the ones people have told me (or I’ve heard second hand from realtors) that freak potential buyers out about my new urbanist neighborhood.

1. Small Yards.

This is absolutely number one on the list.  Yes, our yards are smaller–most yards in new urbanist neighborhood are.  This is so there is more room for public green spaces such as parks, which you personally don’t have to maintain and in which you actually will interact with your neighbors.  Think about the yards you usually see in vast majority of suburbia, what do they look like, and how much of them really get used? 

Right now we’re in the process of looking at houses close to mine for my sister-in-law, yesterday we went to a couple of open houses in traditional, suburban subdivisions.  They all had huge front and back lawns, and of what?  A large swath of chemical and water sucking Kentucky blue grass lawn that will take ages and significant amounts of cash to mow, trim, water, and feed.  All the yards we saw pretty much looked like grass deserts, totally boring with no character save perhaps a few stunted shrubs or trees.  Now, I know not everyone is a gardener so I’m trying not to be snotty, but why spend a bunch of time and money on something you aren’t really going to use? 

In my prior home in a standard beige subdivision, we had a 12,000 square foot lot. When my husband and I thought about how much of our lawn got actually used, we had to admit the only thing that did get used on a regular basis was our 30 x 30 foot deck.  The rest of the enormous lawn just sucked money, time, and natural resources.  I am frequently asked if I miss having a large yard, and I can honestly answer Not. One. Bit.  Every neighbor I’ve asked about this has said the same thing–small yards free up time and money, and allow you to maintain wonderful little gardens with tons of character.  Bigger is not always better.

The small yard thing seems to always translate into: not good for kids, families won’t want to buy houses there.  Totally untrue.  My neighborhood is predominately families, the yards are plenty big enough for kids to play in, and they have the benefit of wonderful pocket parks all through the neighborhood.  Kids don’t need 10,000 square feet of half dead scraggly grass to have a place to play–I don’t have any grass in my backyard and my daughter entertains herself quite happily on our deck. If we want grass we go to the park which I don’t have to mow, trim, fertilize, or water (well, I do pay for a portion of that with our HOA fees, but I don’t personally have to do anything).

2. The houses are close together.

Houses are closer together in new urbanist communities because of smaller lots, and because of higher density.  This freaks people out.  Yes, my neighbor is close, and no, it’s never been a problem, the opposite in fact.  I actually want to see my neighbors, so it works for me.  However, I am the type of person who would leave their door wide open all day long for people to walk in and out (and this does happen here in the summer) and I love it, I like people around, all the time.  This is not to say I don’t have privacy, if I want it, I just go in the house.  If you aren’t social and don’t want to talk to your neighbors, a new urbanist neighborhood isn’t for you.  There are houses in my neighborhood that ostensibly have owners, but I’ve never actually seen evidence of them.  I don’t get that but it’s a free country.

3. The houses aren’t all beige.

One particularly adventurous neighbor here in Bradburn Village has painted their large farmhouse eye popping canary yellow.  I love it, but one of my favorite colors is chartreuse so that should tell you something. Bright, different colors don’t suit everyone’s taste, and it’s your American right to live in a bland, non-offensive, boring as hell 18 shades of beige neighborhood if that’s your preference, just like when you go to buy ice cream you can choose to order plain vanilla with nothing on it.  Many, but not all new urbanist neighborhood feature strong, bold colors–keeps things from being boring. And my house?  Screaming yellow.

Belmar is another Denver new urbanist community that’s appeared frequently in the press.  It’s an innovative redevelopment of an old greyfield mall in the Denver suburb of Lakewood, Colorado. 

Belmar is very urban, it’s like a downtown area built from scratch.  Most of the buildings are three stories or more, giving it a nice enclosed feeling.  The architecture is a mix of traditional and modern that works well, especially the lighting.  Belmar has really cool retro lights strung across the main drag, and a cool retro looking movie theater to match. There is also an enormous Whole Foods located in Belmar, which in my opinion, isn’t very well integrated into the pedestrian fabric of the neighborhood, but adjoining sections are not yet complete, so I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.

One very unique thing to Belmar is the Laboratory of Arts and Ideas, a think-tank/cultural center/gallery that is located across from the Foot Locker and Victoria’s Secret.  I can’t help but wonder how many people have wandered into the Lab, looked around, and wondered where all the thongs are. 

Downtown Area: Belmar has the largest and best downtown area of any new urbanist development in Colorado, and I’m willing to bet, probably the nation as well.  There are an incredible number of shops, restaurants, and activities (like a fun bowling alley) in Belmar, and a significant number of these places are independent (although there are quite a few chains as well). Many of the homes are seamlessly integrated into the business aspect–the movie theater for example hosts lofts above it, and one of the condo towers is smack in the middle of retail buildings.

Architecture-how non-cookie cutter?: Belmar currently contains no single family detached homes (a few “modern cottages”are planned but not yet built).  Housing in Belmar is predominately condos, townhomes, and apartments.  I’ve been in the townhomes which are very nice, but being townhomes, are identical, lending a bit of cookie cutter feel.  Overall I think the architecture is excellent in Belmar, and there are some really fun, interesting elements like a very industrial but cool glass elevator tower to one of the parking garages, the aforementioned lights, and a fun plant inspired covered walkway.

Open Spaces/Parks: Belmar has a few small parks integrated into the neighborhood which are very nice, especially in such an urban area.  The best is the area between some retail buildings and the new condo tower which houses an ice skating rink in the winter and concerts/evens in the summer.  It has a really neat fountain in it, and interesting sculptures–and the restaurants adjacent to this open area have really great open air patio areas. The place is always hopping and interesting.

Walkability: Excellent. There are very large sidewalks everywhere, and Belmar is all connected.  Parking is on the periphery in tall parking garages, although there is also on street parking that is metered.
Sociability: I haven’t interviewed anyone in Belmar so can’t really speak to this.  But I wondered if the lack of porches in Belmar would make it a bit less social but don’t really know.  The developer of my neighborhood, Continuum Partners, is also the developer of Belmar, and I’ve asked them if Belmar is as social as my neighborhood and they’ve said no. 

We are fortunate in the Denver area to have forward thinking and ecologically minded municipalities that have made the necessary changes to their outdated zoning codes to allow for mixed-use development.  Denver and surrounding areas have some great new urbanist communities, I’m starting a series where I critique each one of them and see how they live up to new urbanist ideals.

Stapleton

Stapleton is the Colorado new urbanist community that has appeared the most in the press.  I’ve seen articles on it in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Sunset magazine, and many others.  Stapleton is a HUGE mixed-use development located just east of downtown Denver at the site of the former Stapleton airport.  This development gets big points for revamping what could have been a very blighted site into a vibrant, mixed-use community.  Stapleton’s only drawback in my mind is its size: the place is enormous, and walking to a downtown area is not possible from many homes.  Also many of the streets are very, very long, giving the area a Byzantine feel, instead of the “outdoor room”and cozy feel many new urbanist planners strive for.  

Downtown Area: Stapleton has several retail areas, but only one of them currently is really like a small downtown area that residents can walk to.  The other retail areas in Stapleton are like an outdoor mall separated from homes, and a big-box strip mall (bowing I’m sure, to economic necessity, I don’t knock them for this). The one current downtown section however, has some excellent business in it, like a wonderful little independent flower shop that sets their flowers out on the sidewalk during warmer weather, and Udi’s Bistro, a supremely excellent restaurant that has to-die- for bread and wonderful, original food.

Even after living in my new urbanist community for three years, I am consistently amazed at how much it affects my daily life for the better.  I have a sense of security and community here I’ve never felt anywhere else.  I commonly think of the difference between my old, traditional suburban subdivision and my new, new urbanist community when I look at the difference between one emergency I had there and one I had here. 

I lived in my old neighborhood for 4 years and I was working full time as a research scientist at Colorado State University, which somewhat prevented me from noticing that I didn’t know anyone in my neighborhood (I did know my direct next door neighbors by name but that was about it).  It was only when I had an emergency–a miscarriage–that I realized: I don’t have anyone to call who lives close.  My husband worked an hour away at the time and couldn’t get to me quickly, my mother-in-law lived in Springs, 2 hours away, and my friends at work lived about 30 minutes away.  So I ended up driving myself to the hospital emergency room hemorrhaging behind the wheel of my Saturn (dangerous and stupid).

By contrast, in my new neighborhood, my daughter became very sick and was exorcist vomiting all over the house.  She had a really high fever but couldn’t keep anything down and a panicked call to the pediatrician revealed that I should go to the store and get her Tylenol suppositories.  My husband was out of town, how was I supposed to get a fountain vomiting 4 year old in the car and drag her to the store?!!!  I didn’t have to.  I called one of my neighbors and she was at my door in 5 minutes.  She went to the store for me and bought suppositories–now THAT’s a neighbor!  New Urbanism means not having to drag your vomiting, hysterically crying child to the store to get medicine to stick up her butt which will make her even more pissed–a neighbor will get it for you (the stick up the butt part, you’re on your own, part of the fun of being a parent–although two of my neighbors are nurses and in a pinch I bet I could get them to do it but would never ask). 

I’m all for everyone is entitled to their own opinion.  However, I do expect that opinions that are to be taken seriously are based on facts and logical reasoning.  This piece, published Sat. Feb. 24th in the Rocky Mountain News Wall Street West section, doesn’t measure up.  Please note the picture accompanying this piece is of my neighborhood, Bradburn Village.  The photo is of the apartments here, which comprise only 10% of the housing, the other 90% are single family homes and townhomes–the photo and caption makes it look like the entire development is very high density, which it is not.  We are also NOT a “transit-oriented development”, those are developments which have direct access to light rail, or other public transit, which we do not.  Use a fact-checker Rocky Mountain News.  Also, Bradburn was NOT subsidized with a TIF, and local municipalities regularly subsidize retail and office developments–would you rather them give more money to a big box crappy looking Wal-Mart, or a beautiful, mixed-use community people love to live and work in?  Give me a break.  My letter to the editor in response to this poorly written and researched opinion piece is below.

Dear Rocky Mountain News,

In the opinion piece “New Urbanism’s Flip Side” (Wall Street West-Saturday, February 24th), author Jennifer Lang–who obviously never interviewed residents of Colorado’s new urbanist communities–stated “..Certainly singles and childless couples will find these areas attractive..”.  I live in a single family home in Bradburn Village in Westminster, and while we have childless couples and singles who live here, our community is overwhelming populated by families with children who have found our new urbanist community an ideal place to live.  Anyone who has ever spent more than one day at home with a small child can attest that having things close by to walk to–parks, schools, churches, restaurants, shops, and bars (for parent’s nights out!)–prevents the feeling of social isolation and boredom so common for parents staying at home with their kids in a traditional suburban subdivision–where they have to get into the car (always a big production when you have small children) and drive to get anywhere.

I find the author’s declaration that “Denver-area residents are being bombarded with high-density living centers” and “the freedom to choose where you live is subtly being eroded by the insistence of planners with New Urbanism on the mind” patently ridiculous. New urbanist communities either completed, under construction, or planned in Colorado are far, far outnumbered by more traditional suburban developments, providing more than ample free market choices for house hunters. Ms. Lang states “..how many more people want to live with little or no yard and with all the urban annoyances of noise, crime, etc?”.  First, yes, yards in new urbanist communities are smaller than the average subdivision.  The only thing this means to my family–and to most others that live here–is we don’t spend our time, money, and effort watering, weeding, mowing, and trimming a vast swatch of yard that barely ever gets used.  We all go down to our local pocket parks so our kids can play together and we can socialize instead.

Urban annoyances?  Please.  Bradburn and other Colorado new urbanist communities in suburban areas are higher density than traditional subdivisions, but they are far from being urban, with the blights that can follow.  The only annoyances I’ve ever had living here are decidedly suburban–dog barking. New urbanist communities combine the best of city living–the ability to walk to interesting places–with the best of suburban living–low crime, great schools, and lower density (than cities). 

As to how many more people want to live in new urbanist communities–plenty judging by our resale value in Bradburn, which is much higher than surrounding traditional subdivisions.  New urbanism creates places people want to live, which in a free market drives up prices, meaning there is more demand than supply.  As to the comment that “social engineering” the lifestyles of Coloradoans is the goal of “urban renewal planners”: How horrible that I know all my neighbors, that I have a list of thirty people who live close by that I can call in case of an emergency, or if I just need someone to watch my five-year old so I can get something done.  How horrible that the pleasing streetscapes, walkability, pocket parks, and porches of our community encourage neighbors to talk to one another; to create the true community we have here in Bradburn–I feel so oppressed by our never ending social events, the safety I feel in our community, and the beautiful and architecturally different houses in my new urbanist neighborhood, not all painted fifteen shades of beige.