On Common Ground - Winter 2017: Walkable Neighborhoods

By G.M. Filisko

Consumers long to be able to walk to and from work, and on the way home maybe window shop, perhaps stop into a local sports bar for a drink, and then pick up dinner at a grocery store or restaurant before heading home — but many want this vibrant urban experience without the cost or hassle of living in a major urban center.

Increasingly, Americans can find that lifestyle in a suburb miles from a big city center as developers turn toward high-density, mixed-use development in suburbia, often by transforming an old or worn commercial or industrial property. The focus is on providing spaces in which residents can live, work and play without revving up their car.

It’s possible this trend is simply a fad pushed by developers chasing millennials. But Doug Loescher, the revitalization program manager for the Office of Community Revitalization in Fairfax County, Va., doesn’t believe that.

“Personally, there’s really no way to turn back the clock,”
he says. “This is a permanent shift that’s necessitated by
economic and environmental drivers. As population
grows, the demand for space, efficiency, and lower envi-
ronmental impacts will only increase. Those point toward
this new form of development.”

Slow strides to walkability

Decades ago, the idea of walkable communities was mostly theoretical, but it existed. “People consider walkability a relatively new trend, but that’s false,” reports Richard Murdocco, who holds degrees in urban studies and urban, environmental and transportation planning and blogs about development at www.theFoggiestIdea.org.

“In the early 1960s, plans for Nassau County, N.Y., argued for denser development around train stations,” says Murdocco. “It was an academic concept. But the recent recession fueled renewed interest in multi-family residential development that’s walkable. With the recession, the single-family home market basically crashed. And in older areas in the Northeast, it can be a headache to build single-family subdivisions. A cocktail of factors has led to the rise of walkability.”