Coveting Compact Communities

Christopher Leinberger, writing for the New York Times, on the value of walkability:

Mariela Alfonzo and I just released a Brookings Institution study that measures values of commercial and residential real estate in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, which includes the surrounding suburbs in Virginia and Maryland. Our research shows that real estate values increase as neighborhoods became more walkable, where everyday needs, including working, can be met by walking, transit or biking. There is a five-step “ladder” of walkability, from least to most walkable. On average, each step up the walkability ladder adds $9 per square foot to annual office rents, $7 per square foot to retail rents, more than $300 per month to apartment rents and nearly $82 per square foot to home values.

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It’s important that developers and their investors learn how to build places that integrate many different uses within walking distance. Building walkable urban places is more complex and riskier than following decades-long patterns of suburban construction. But the market gets what it wants, and the market signals are flashing pretty brightly: build more walkable, and bikable, places.

Building walkable places isn’t so complex. We have thousands of years worth of precedent. The decades-long patterns of sprawl are a small blip in the millennia-long patterns of compact, traditional settlement patterns. Sure, there are modern needs that need to be accommodated. But ultimately it’s a question of priorities. Building for people first and letting the car become secondary will go a long ways toward making great places.