News & Opinion

It is tough to look in the mirror, but as Schramm points out, "the practice of city planning has escaped reality."

How do they relate to the highest-frequency transit network? Where the two do not connect reveals opportunities for revitalization.

In the March 2013 issue we reviewed Arthur C. Nelson’s book, Reshaping Metropolitan America, and some of his numbers are further analyzed in an article in the current issue of Better! Cities & Towns. One of Nelson’s main findings is that a demographic wave of Millennials, who are delaying having children and strongly prefer urban places, combined with the downsizing Baby Boomers, will transform the character of the housing market in the next two decades. There will still be plenty of households with children in America — Nelson forecasts more than 38 million in 2030. But these households will make up a very small share of the nation’s growth — and therefore a small share of the growth in the housing market. The majority of the growth will be single-person households (see table above). “The bottom line is that a new reality has emerged: The future of American planning and public policy will be geared to meeting the needs of households without children, with half the new market being single-person households,” Nelson says. “Yet, our planning, zoning, and development codes remain rooted in reality that no longer exists — that of mass family and child-oriented markets.”

According to the book Reshaping Metropolitan America, about half of all nonresidential structures in the US will be “ripe for redevelopment” in 2030. Many of these are commercial strip retail buildings with large parking lots or dated office buildings on suburban sites, according to an article in the current issue of Better! Cities & Towns. The annual report Emerging Trends in Real Estate notes that many suburban retail and office properties across the US are languishing in value and may not be worth refurbishing. All in all, 50 billion square feet of commercial space in the US will need redeveloping by 2030, says Reshaping Metropolitan America author Arthur C. Nelson. One of the challenges to redeveloping such sites, however, is that they are often located on commercial strip corridors that are not appealing for mixed-use development. That challenge could be addressed by “complete streets” projects on major thoroughfares that need to be rebuilt anyway, setting the stage for redevelopment.