Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Charlottesvillians Pay Premium for Walkable Urbanism

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

cville_housing_prices
Source: Piedmont Environmental Council. (Click for larger image.)

by James A. Bacon

Residential real estate assessments in the City of Charlottesville increased far more rapidly during the 2000s-era real estate bubble than assessments in next-door Albemarle County, and then held up better during the housing bust that followed, according to research conducted by Jeff Werner, Albemarle County land use officer for the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC).

The data, based on a sample of 120 properties, supports the claim made by PEC and other smart-growth groups that people increasingly prefer to live in compact, walkable communities with access to mass transit as opposed to low- density, car-dependent neighborhoods. As a liberal college town with a high smart-growth consciousness, Charlottesville may not be representative of all Virginia communities. But the trend lines support the smart-growth argument for at least one metropolitan region.

How can Werner be so sure that the desire for “walkable” communities is behind the divergence in property assessments? Well, he correlated the percentage change in property assessments over 2001-2011 with their “walk score” and found a tight relationship. (I am not competent to judge his statistical methodology. If others see flaws, please make note in the comments.)

Source: Piedmont Environmental Council. (Click for larger image.)
Source: Piedmont Environmental Council. (Click for larger image.)

The soaring price for city houses reflects that fact that the city is mostly built out and is adding very little to the region’s stock of “walkable urbanism,” to use the term coined by Christopher Leinberger. Most growth is occurring in Albemarle County, where conventional auto-centric development is taking place. The type of housing built in the county is dictated by the supply side (zoning policy) rather than the demand side (what people actually want). People have no choice but to accept what the distorted marketplace offers in Albemarle or pay elevated prices in Charlottesville.

Many people continue to prefer living in the suburbs. But Werner’s divergent trend lines make it clear that supply-side of “walkable urbanism” housing is severely under-served.

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

24 responses to “Charlottesvillians Pay Premium for Walkable Urbanism”

  1. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    not sure how valid it is to do a “walk score” in a college town where cars owned by students face much more serious restrictions than non-student car owners.

    College Towns have pretty much always incentivized walking and disincentivize parking for student cars.

    you could achieve this same ‘effect’ just about anywhere… just select the area you want to be “walkable” and erect a zillion signs that say – “no-parking, cars towed”.. and VOILA the “walk score” goes through the ROOF!

  2. Hamilton Lombard Avatar
    Hamilton Lombard

    I’m not sure why Jeff Werner didn’t use a larger pool of properties but building permit trends back up his findings of increased demand for homes in urban centers. New home construction in most of Virginia’s urban centers such as Charlottesville and Richmond has fared much better than in suburban counties since the recession began. In 2012, Richmond had the highest number of new homes constructed since the 1960’s.

  3. reed fawell III Avatar
    reed fawell III

    This is an excellent and timely study.

    At first glance it confirms the obvious. Of course it’s right on target, just look at Georgetown DC to confirm the obvious. Georgetown is highly resilient, always up or stable and then up again whatever is happening just down the road. But hold on, wait a minute. It took the Kennedy’s and Camelot to bring Georgetown back from a decades long earlier decline.

    So the obvious suddenly becomes less obvious. Indeed a review of the past shows that urban walkable neighborhoods can change radically in terms of their market value depending on outside forces. Take Logan circle or lower or lower 16th Street in DC, their dramatic rise and decline and slow resurrection in the 2dn half of 20th century, one that is still on-going.

    Likely we can attribute this rising and falling to ever changing cultural likes and dislikes – the dreams and ambitions of every age vary. America fell in love with the auto in the 1920’s and 1930s. It changed everything for a while, particularly after WW 11 which slowed by a few years Americans migration out of their cities that drained those walkable urban areas of most all of their previous wealth, health, and energy.

    The immediate value this latest study is that is confirms what many suspect, including some folks on this website, that the next 30 years is growing ever less likely to replicate the last 20 years of the 20th century. And that its likely that that age of the explosive new satellite city and its exurban sprawl is dying just as had the Gilded Age of the urban walkable city had died before.

    So let’s take full advantage of the forces now at work and get rich and happy doing it. And lets stop living in the past, building more obsolete roads to no where, forcing folks into evermore shopping centers in nowhere places.

    1. DJRippert Avatar
      DJRippert

      “And that its likely that that age of the explosive new satellite city and its exurban sprawl is dying just as had the Gilded Age of the urban walkable city had died before.”.

      Exurban sprawl and satellite cities are birds of a different feather. Money Magazine’s list of Best Small Cities always has satellite cities in many of the top slots. In the most recent list of 100 best small cities, Reston was #7.

      These guys have the best approach to livability by area that I’ve seen:

      http://www.areavibes.com/best-places/america/

      I love the fact that you can use the slider bar to change the population range to be considered.

      The problem with Bacon’s theory is that he over-emphasizes walkability and under-emphasizes affordability.

      As far as making money in real estate – college towns and small cities. Ann Arbor, Athens, Charlottesville. These places draw rich retirees like magnets. The retirees don’t really care about the job market. Health care is usually exceptional around the large universities. The areas are walkable. The big question is affordability. However, we are trying to make money. So, we want the housing to get less and less affordable.

      1. reed fawell III Avatar
        reed fawell III

        Good points Don. You’re right – one huge challenge is affordability. That has to be dealt with and its no easy problem to overcome for a host of reasons.

        I do believe however that the era of new satellite cities sprouting from cornfields as was the case in my days of wine and roses are largely over.
        Indeed one might suggest those up from the cornfield cities have been over for two decades. By and large most all development has been infill since early 1990s. Even south Loudoun, despite all the Hype by its boosters, has been stumbling along for quite some time. Loudoun’s high watermark was the AOL deal. That was back in the stone ages by today’s standards. The commercial Market in Loudoun has been struggling ever since as compared the DO DA days of yore. No even close.

        1. reed fawell III Avatar
          reed fawell III

          Not even close.

      2. larryg Avatar
        larryg

        re: ” over-emphasizes walkability and under-emphasizes affordability”

        the problem is – if the area is “too affordable” it can attract people that
        will make the area less safe – and in turn – not only less walkable but less liveable.

        People will not willingly choose to live in an area where they do not feel safe.

        the great technological equalizer now is the camera.

        if you want to put a crimp in the activities of those up to no good – start taking their picture… and calling them in to discuss their whereabouts (that you have recorded ) when bad stuff happens.

  4. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    Right now, urban areas have two temporary but powerful demographic stimuli. Baby boomers are seeing the last of their children leave the home and no longer need the big house in the suburbs. Meanwhile, the Baby Boomers’ babies – the echo boomers – are entering the workforce without spouses or families.

    I am immediately suspicious of taking any statistics from Charlottesville and extrapolating the conclusions to other areas in Virginia. Charlottesville has a university demographic which changes a lot of things. There is a high concentration of jobs in a small area around the University of Virginia. In addition, students fit an odd economic profile where many have disposable income without owning an automobile.

    This sentence is the real kicker – “The soaring price for city houses reflects that fact that the city is mostly built out and is adding very little to the region’s stock of “walkable urbanism,” to use the term coined by Christopher Leinberger.”.

    Well, if extrapolated, this pretty much kills the Bacon theory of lots of people moving from the suburbs to the cities. Soaring prices are indicative of demand exceeding supply. If more supply can’t be built then there won’t be anywhere for all these additional people who want to move to the city to live.

    However, I seriously doubt that Charlottesville is “built out”. Charlottesville is 10.3 sq mi and has 43,475 residents. That’s a density of 4,220. Arlington is 26 sq mi and has a population density of 8,309 per sq mi. Charlottesville is only “built out” if the zoning laws prohibit higher density development.

    So, there may be some hope for Bacon’s theory yet.

    1. TMT Avatar
      TMT

      Walter Alcorn, a former planning commissioner in Fairfax County and a leader in pulling together the consensus that permitted the County to revise the Comp Plan for Tysons has a view that outside the TOD you don’t need heavy density (apartments/condos/office), but one can transition by building townhouses or SFH on smaller lots. He may be on to something. Not everyone wants to live in MFH. I sure don’t. I like a little space between my neighbors and me. I have a SFH on a very small lot (15 minutes to cut my grass) bordering on 15 acres of Fairfax County parkland.

      1. larryg Avatar
        larryg

        I’ve lived in all kind of places in my life, apartments, town houses, duplexes, (but never high rise) and I never really “appreciated” living so close to my neighbors that I could hear them even when they were just closing doors or listening to TV much less the kids yelling and mom/dad having at it.

        I’ve known folks who lived in areas where people were hanging around nearby that you’d not want to find yourself alone with after dark.

        there are a ton of single family detached homes in Charlottesville, NoVa, Richmond, you name it and I suspect this is the ultimate optimal living condition for people if they can attain it. shared walls are tolerable if you have good neighbors but horrendous otherwise.

        It could be that TMT and I are old fogies.. and the younger generations are just fine living cheek by jowl..

        after all.. most of the world lives in pretty tight quarters … whether it’ Europe or Asia…

        1. TMT Avatar
          TMT

          One of the happiest days of my life was when I finally made enough money to get out of an apartment. Even in high-quality buildings, you hear your neighbors and they hear you. No thanks.

      2. DJRippert Avatar
        DJRippert

        That’s sort of, kind of Ed Risse’s theory. Ed saw a clear line of demarcation between high density urban life and low density rural life. He wanted high taxes on empty land in the high density areas and high taxes on buildings in the low density areas.

        Alcorn may have more of a patchwork idea but he and Ed are roughly on the same page.

  5. accurate Avatar
    accurate

    I swear, Jim posts this stuff just to pull me out of the weeds. Fine, here is another view of ‘smart-growth’ that (again) isn’t doing so well. Granted it isn’t in a college town, therefore (in my opinion) gives a much better picture of the public-at-large rather than this isolated, insulated view.

    Pleasant Hill: Mixed-use development at BART station still mostly vacant
    http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_23696449/much-pleasant-hill-contra-costa-centre-bart-transit?IADID=Search-www.contracostatimes.com-www.contracostatimes.com

    1. DJRippert Avatar
      DJRippert

      I think transit oriented development works if the overall area is growing. However, it works very slowly. Everybody talks about the miracle of the Rosslyn – Ballston corridor in Arlington. I lived there from 1982 – 1985. Trust me, that “miracle” took a long time to come to fruition after the Metro was built. Like 25 – 30 years.

      1. TMT Avatar
        TMT

        Well stated. The corridor was pretty seedy in spots during the 1980s.

        1. DJRippert Avatar
          DJRippert

          Which is why I have some faith in the Silver Line – regardless of the immediate politics of why it was built. If Fairfax and eastern Loudoun are to grow intelligently then TOD may be the best approach available. However, it will take decades to see the result. People who criticize the Silver Line with 5 – 10 year timeframes are missing the point in my opinion.

          1. larryg Avatar
            larryg

            It took 50 years for I-95 to quintuple the population in the counties adjoining Fredericksburg.

            and what I’d point out with respect to rail and TOD “corridors” is that roads work the same way with “corridors”.

            the least developed land in the NoVa region and the adjacent adjoining outer counties is the land that is in between the road ‘corridors’.

            this is not really in dispute as the folks who are opposed to new roads know that the interchanges to those roads will be the first land that is “opened up”.

            I don’t think you have to designate land next to rail as TOD any more than you’d need to designate land next to a new highway as HOD (highway oriented development).

            the marketplace takes care of that.

            if land adjacent to a new road will double, triple in value even though it’s far from schools, shopping and other services, surely that same thing could happen to TOD.

            If you actually wanted to master plan in the DC area – you’d not only build the line to Dulles.. Md would build an equivalent parallel line and then connect them across the Potomac.

    2. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      welcome back Accurate.

      Hey that paper sounds like one of them right wing rags…

      also… you live in Texas and you gotta go to California to find a Smart Growth ‘fail’ and you got your own Smart Growth projects in Houston?

      http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/category/texas/

      sounds like you got some of those nasty socialist types in your local govt dude.

      🙂

    3. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      Hey, Accurate, thanks for the reference. I would argue that Virginia and California are two very different situations. California tries to force smart growth on the population through regulation and subsidies, regardless of whether there is market demand for the product. In Virginia, the situation is the opposite. The regulatory regime forces sprawl on the population, whether there is market demand or not. The solution is to create a level regulatory playing field so developers and builders can supply the kind of housing product people prefer to buy. Sadly, we don’t have that in very many places in the U.S.

  6. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    Anyone who has visited Charlottesville knows that what is “built out” is
    the single family detached home . the town is surrounded by 1940-50-60 style subdivisions that have gradually “gentrified”/upscaled while the bigger, older 1920-30s style homes often have converted to student apartments.

    Richmond is 62 sq miles and a density of 3211 … hmmm

    the most striking thing about Charlottesville, at least to the parts I have seen.. is that there does not seem to be the decrepit low income sections found in other places like Richmond.. Not sure of Arlington…

    compare these to Detroit and ask what causes a town to “empty out” like Detroit did – remember – major auto factories are mere miles from downtown Detroit – no further away than Albemarle is from Charlottesville.

    Portsmouth is another place where density is challenged by safety concerns.

    what’s different?

    Smart Growth and high walk scores are Epic Fails if the place is not safe.

    1. DJRippert Avatar
      DJRippert

      Yeah – for all of the bitching over Northern Virginia’s dysfunctional human settlement patters the truth is that Northern Virginia has most of the functional settlement patterns in the state. That doesn’t mean there are no dysfunctional patterns in NoVa. Quite the opposite. However, I have yet to her of a functional pattern in Virginia outside of NoVa.

  7. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    I’ve been the width and breadth of Va geographically partly as a by-product of my life paddling and exploring Virginia’s rivers.

    there are few places I have not visited. The places I have visited far outnumber the ones I’ve not seen yet.

    Very, very few of them fit the current “smart growth” vision and most of them that come close are vestiges of bygone town centers now tattered and dilapidated with much of the commerce moved to fringe shopping strips and centers.

    the actual “downtown” in these places are imminently walkable but the shops are boarded up and people largely do not live in those buildings but in nearby adjacent single family detached neighborhoods that were built around the business district back when it was the “central” business district.

    this has all changed across the state. there are a few towns/cities outside of NoVa where there is still some spark of dense settlement pattern but it’s usually college towns like Charlottesville, Blacksburg, Harrisonburg, etc.

    Think about how Virginia and the Feds themselves locate things like DMVs, social security offices, post offices, etc… not in town centers.. but in these newer auto-dependent developments – with parking lots. The only think left in many of the town centers is – the town government offices… and come night.. the town centers are deserted unless there are some eateries or bars but the hardware, clothes, shoes, 5/10, all that’s left is the empty storefronts where they used to be.

    You might think – of all places – that the town centers in the rural part of Va would attract residents because they have services – water, sewer, police, hospitals, etc.. but they don’t.

    In RoVa – people live largely in SFD homes and shop at shopping centers outside of the town centers and get medical care and other services in smaller strip centers… and stand-alone offices on the edges of the towns.

    As DJ says.. “smart growth’ is largely a NoVa thing or perhaps only where there are city transit type services, perhaps.

  8. reed fawell III Avatar
    reed fawell III

    Very interesting discussion going on here.

    We’re got to find a practical way to meet Don’s concern for growing density in existing high priced urban walkable communities so as to make them more affordable at best, and at least tap into and take the benefit of growing demand.

    As Larry points out we need to find better ways to re-inhabit the small towns in Virginia. They are a precious resource that too often been allowed to go to waste. How are Warrenton and Culpeper doing today? Those wonderful old towns should be back and thriving by now. Are they? I am out of the loop but they should be back very strong by now for demographic reasons. I am reminded of Shepherdstown West Virginia, its renaissance decades ago. The jump-start there as I recall was the play festival.

  9. Paying More for Walkable Homes in Charlottesville? | RealCentralVA.comRealCentralVA.com

    […] That’s the theory put forth by the Piedmont Environmental Council and reported on at Bacon’s Rebellion. […]

Leave a Reply

Read More