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April 6, 2007

A Review of New Urban Demographics and Impacts on Housing

New urban demo-graphics point to urban housing (2 of 2)

Continuing our look at the Brookings Institution's Robert Puentes' report, A Review of New Urban Demo-graphics and Impacts on Housing...

So what are the key drivers leading to the downtown population surge profiled in the previous entry, which had been decreasing prior to the 1990s?

Look at the net changes in household types over the last 25 years - 11.8M singles vs 1.4M families with kids, the latter of which only represents 4.5% of all net new households in that time period.

Some other key statements from Robert's research show that as couples get married later and have fewer children, there is a striking decrease in average household size, which of course leads to the trend in not-so-big homes.

Robert's summarizing points:

"- In 2030, about half of the buildings in which Americans live, work, and shop will have been built after 2000.
- Household formation will have profoundly important impacts. Childless married-couple and single-person households will grow rapidly.
- Older, inner-ring “first” suburbs will figure prominently in conversations about metropolitan growth and development.
- The nation will continue to get much more diverse and multi-cultural."

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April 5, 2007

A Review of New Urban Demographics and Impacts on Housing

New urban demo-graphics point to urban housing (1 of 2)

What will the housing market be like 10-20 years from now?

Robert Puentes, a Fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program provides some answers in his presentation, A Review of New Urban Demo-graphics and Impacts on Housing. It's essentially a slide show displaying key demographics and how they will shape residential development.

As you can see in the first slide on the left, urban downtown populations have grown in the last few decades after declining prior to that. The next two slides provide the demographics behind the downtown growth, 59% living alone (probably mostly women), predominantly between 25-44, with retiring boomers on the rise.

Some other key statistics:
- Suburbia is still growing at a much faster rate
- Minorities made up 33.1% of the population in 2005 vs. 24.4% just 15 years ago, with the most significant growth rates in hispanic and asian groups.
- The top 100 cities are now majority minority.
- Foreign-born resident populations in historic 'first-ring' suburbs have quadrupled in the last 30 years.

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April 4, 2007

Do women prefer walkable communities?

Based on this National Geographic map outlining concentrations of single women and single men, I'd venture to say yes.

It's apparent on the map that men prefer to locate in cities built in the post-1940s auto-oriented era, while women prefer the more walkable, pre-1940s neighborhoods. It should be no surprise, given the studies that document what women prefer in their neighborhoods and what attributes make for a safe city (see findings at links). So, while the evidence isn't new, presenting it on a single infographic is.

What does it all mean? It's not so much that single men prefer auto-oriented development (there is no evidence supporting such, only the opposite), it's just that women really prefer walkability, safety and convenience. Thankfully, we're evolving toward the latter. As they say, the easiest way to attract single men is with single women, not vice versa.

Image source: Referenced by the Richard Florida Creativity Group from National Geographic's February issue.

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April 3, 2007

City Life, the game

How 'play' is going to shape our communities

"Schools aren't preparing students for jobs of the 21st Century." That's the concern of John Seely Brown, a renowned leader in organizational learning, and Doug Thomas, professor at the USC Annenberg School of Communication and editor of Games & Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media.

The same could be said that our current culture and business environment isn't preparing us for communities of the 21st Century, at least not cool towns.

Why not? Much of our current learning - at work or at school - is via information transfer: books, lectures, and increasingly the internet. However, as Thomas states in this Smart City Radio interview, it doesn't allow for innovation, different ways of thinking and a focus on possibility instead of certainty, the hallmarks of learning by playing.

He posits that play, such as through video games, "is extremely effective at setting up dispositions, which are outlooks toward certaning ways of knowing, certain ways of interacting with people, reading social cues, and understanding how other people share space with you." In other words, rather than trying to get people to understand math or their customers through seminars or books, we should ask how we can get them to look at the world in the same way a mathematician or customer would - which games excel at. Video games such as Sim City for instance, allow you to see how your decisions play out immediately as well as down the road.

The modern form of learning will not be based on problem solving, but "defining a problem space where we ask how we educate the other side about what it's like to be in the shoes of the other."

This is why beta communities are the future and now of real estate development and community building.

Image: City Life, the game

Thanks to Erin, Saul and Asasi, three high-school-bound-for-college-now-proud-to-be-adults for inspiring this story over lunch.

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April 2, 2007

Long Beach, Mississippi

A postcard portal for post-Katrina city

What to do when your city is devastated by Hurricane Katrina? The government and city leaders of Long Beach, Mississippi, a city of 17,000 people, allowed its citizens to reshape the city's future into a postcard portal, facilitated by an urban design firm familiar with the creative class, Ayers Saint Gross.

The result is the Long Beach Mississippi Concept Plan, a regional master plan the recently received a CNU Charter Award for New Urbanism, mentioned in the previous entry.

The public sentiment was focused on establishing a commercial center, a focal point, and an identity, and as you can see, they not only achieved that, they also passed the postcard test and created a portal or gateway for the city, linking the marina to its main thoroughfares. There is no question that, based on these images, this vision not only communicates that this is the heart of the city, but that this is Long Beach, Mississippi and not any other place in the U.S.

This unique identity is largely achieved via the humanistic verticality of the rowhouse-type flats. Note how less inspiring the place would be if those buildings were replaced with the mid-rise buildings anchoring them on either side.

You can download the entire Long Beach Mississippi Concept Plan here.

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