News

"A Life of Walking vs. Driving," via the New York Times.

Until the 1990s, exclusive suburban homes that were accessible only by car cost more, per square foot, than other kinds of American housing. Now, however, there is too much housing inventory in these suburban locations, and housing values have fallen. Today, the most valuable real estate lies in walkable urban locations. Many of these pricey places were slums only 30 years ago. 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. As a neighborhood moves up each step of the five-step walkability ladder, the average household income of those who live there increases some $10,000. People who live in more walkable places tend to earn more, but they also tend to pay a higher percentage of their income for housing. ... Different infrastructure needs to be built, including rail transit and paths for walking and biking. Some research has shown that walkable urban infrastructure is substantially cheaper on a usable square foot basis than spread-out drivable suburban infrastructure; the infrastructure is used much more extensively in a small area, resulting in much lower costs per usable square foot. 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.

• Walk this Way:The Economic Promise of Walkable Places in Metropolitan Washington, D.C. (PDF)
• Now Coveted: A Walkable, Convenient Place
• D.C.’s walkable neighborhoods have a lot to offer, but at a price
• How the real estate market is changing: walkability counts a lot more
• Why We Pay More for Walkable Neighborhoods