High demand for walkable neighborhoods

“Overall consumer preference”

Matt Dietrichson, Jan 27, 12.

Americans are consistently expressing a demand for walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, according to BuilderOnline.com:

The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates once said that “walking is man’s best medicine.” Some 1,400 years later, it looks like the same prescription may be just what the doctor ordered for the housing industry as well.

According to “The 2011 Community Preference Survey,” a poll of 2,071 American adults conducted on behalf of the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 77% of those polled considered having sidewalks and places to take a walk one of their top priorities when deciding where they’d like to live. Six in 10 adults said they would rather live in a neighborhood that featured a mix of houses, stores, and businesses within an easy walk, than a community of only houses that required driving to get to businesses.

“What we see overall in the consumer preference surveys … is that households are overwhelmingly looking for places to live where they can walk to stuff. It’s as simple as that,” says Ilana Preuss, chief of staff at Washington, D.C.-based Smart Growth America. Pointing to the NAR’s survey she adds, “People made a tradeoff on a large house on a large lot with lots of parking where you have a 30 minute commute and have to drive to stores, or a small house on a small lot where they don’t have ample parking but they had a commute of 20 minutes or less. Fifty-nine percent said they would pick the smaller house on the smaller lot. When they looked at households that were interested in moving in the next couple of years, it was 54%. That’s a huge proportion of the market. So we see this enormous demand and a very low supply.”
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