Peter Katz / Jun 11 2010
For Release Sunday, June 13, 2010
Citiwire.net
That’s what I would have said to Shaun Donovan, Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development had I been able to reach the podium before he was whisked into a waiting car for a tour of Atlanta-area public housing sites. Donovan had just addressed the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU)’s annual gathering this May. CNU has been working tirelessly for the past two decades to find a new and better approach to community development in America.
Simply stated, CNU seeks to build strong, economically competitive regions woven from a fabric of walkable neighborhoods and districts, that offer beautiful, affordable places to live, work, learn and play. What CNU members dislike is the single-use development pattern known as suburban sprawl– the pattern prevalent in most places built over the past 50-60 years.
Apparently, Donovan dislikes sprawl too. He thanked CNU members for their part in changing “the way we think about our communities” and offered his critique of the suburban-edge housing boom that hindsight now tells us was a fool’s paradise:
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Peter Katz / Oct 09 2008
For Release Sunday, October 12, 2008
Citiwire.net
There’s a critical “place” story beyond the carelessness and/or chicanery of subprime mortgage lenders and resellers who precipitated the crisis that’s triggered a $700 billion federal bailout and global financial jitters.
It’s the brutal geographic sorting out of winners and losers among the residential properties we call home. It has to do with the “intrinsic value” of a dwelling. Which, in turn, has to do with where it’s located and the convenience and amenities of the surrounding community.
In his study Driven to the Brink, researcher Joe Cortright identifies an emerging pattern of home price fluctuations spanning many U.S. regions. “Distant suburbs,” he writes, “have seen the biggest declines, while values in close-in neighborhoods have held up better, and in some cases continued to increase.”
The picture’s not without exceptions, including the despair of already troubled neighborhoods in such “rustbelt” cities as Cleveland and Detroit. But the pattern across the continent is fairly consistent: Dwellings within walkable neighborhoods, close to transit, shopping and places of entertainment, are holding their own in terms of price and value. Read More »
