Thumbs down to age-restricted communities
Over the past several years, I watched as LeylandAlliance's proposed Madison Landing development in Madison, Connecticut, was tortured to death.
When New Haven architect Robert Orr created a handsome design for the project, on the site of a former private airport next to Long Island Sound, the idea was that Madison Landing would be a community for all ages. Its 42 acres would have a variety of housing, plus enough other uses to make it a lively little place.
But in Connecticut and some other states, suburban municipalities often oppose developments that are likely to add to their school costs. So Leyland eventually was pushed to alter its proposal — eliminating house sales to anyone under age 55.
That's been a common story. Well-off communities — at least in portions of the Northeast — have focused on avoiding public costs, even when the result is development that leaves out much of the population.
Ultimately, Madison Landing was killed, mainly by a combination of NIMBYism and environmentalism. There was a long-running local debate over whether there should be any development at all on the waterfront. Last year, after nearly a decade of planning and consultation, LeylandAlliance agreed to sell the land to the town — for natural habitat and recreation space.
Now, however, development conditions are changing in another way. Madison Landing's fate is sealed, but across Connecticut and elsewhere, it looks as though there will be fewer projects that shut out the under-55 population. The New York Times says that given today's difficult real estate market, developers are deciding that the 55-plus market may simply be too small to make a project feasible.
As an example, The Times cites Windermere Village, a 123-house development in Ellington, a suburbanizing town northeast of Hartford. After failing to sell even one house last year, William Coons Jr., the developer of Windermere Village, negotiated with the town to switch the project from 55-plus to buyers of all ages.
Says The Times: "Age-restricted housing, once chosen by developers because it put them on a faster track through the approvals process, is no longer so appealing to them in this much-diminished market. The empty nesters who, when the market was high, were expected to downsize en masse into so-called 55-plus or 'active adult' communities did not materialize. As it turned out, many in this age group are unwilling or unable to sell their houses."
As the difficulties of the 55-plus market sink in, municipalities increasingly are freeing developers from age restrictions that were previously agreed upon. That's a positive move.
Age-restricted developments that encompass dozens — or hundreds or even thousands — of acres have always struck me as having serious flaws. Though some older people enjoy living solely with their own age group, and though these developments can offer specialized amenities — as I learned years ago when visiting Sun City West in Arizona, and other seniors-only developments in Florida and California — rigid segmentation runs the risk of making a place less flexible than it will ultimately need to be.
Personally and politically, there are consequences. How readily can you form friendships and associations outside your own age cohort if younger people aren't allowed to live on your block or on the next block or on the one after that? What incentive is there for you to make common cause with people in a different stage of life (let alone in a different economic bracket)? How likely is it that you'll gain first-hand knowledge of civic matters such as local public education?
I'm sure there are age-restricted communities where residents involve themselves in civic issues, but there's always a disadvantage in being purposely segregated from the rest of your town. So I'm glad to see such restrictions waning. I hope this trend gathers momentum.
Making communities for a broad range of people is what New Urbanism should be about.
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Human monocultures
"There is something very sad about our modern communities in which younger and elderly are separated through human monocultures. The proverb says there is wisdom in grey hair, and in fact they contain hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary wisdom. Today we have left the caretaking of our children to ‘experts’ with three years at college behind them — we think they’re better fit for this task than our elders “educated” by evolution. A new study suggests that emotional intelligence and cognitive skills peak as we enter our 60s, and there is a reason for this: The elderly were always the ones tasked with passing down the cultural heritage and the social stability of the tribe, and the children were their goal and hope for future. This is the main purpose of being old, this is why no other vertebrate lives for decades after menopause, like the human female." See: http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-04-09/modernism-and-disconnection-life
Ellington
Excellent article. I was the Town Planner in Ellington at the time the regulation for over-55 housing was written and adopted. In fact I wrote it. Having said that, I did not agree with the age restriction then, nor do I now, but as the Planner, I served the community and its appointed leadership. They would only accept the regulation at the time, if it included the age restriction.
Trying to make a silk purse, I used it as an opportunity to achieve a design that was better than the Town's very rudimentary multi-family residential standards. The result was a fairly pleasing, pedestrian-scale assemblage of smaller cottage homes surrounding a large central green. In addition, the street designs were allowed to be adjusted because it was a common interest community. Finally, public recreational trails in dedicated open space were created along a stream/wetland corridor at one end of the site. That area can now also easily serve as an appropriate and sufficient active play area for the children fortunate enough to now live in the community. I had initially suggested more flexibility in home options in order to increase diversity and natural area protection, but even though those recommendations were not endorsed, the end result was certainly better than the Town's typical design approach.
Ellington is a fairly rural but fast-growing Town on the fringe of Hartford's urban area that went gung-ho for high end McMansions on large lots during the boom years. They are now paying the price and have recently adopted a down-zoning of sorts via a soil-based zoning scheme. Perhaps had they taken their Planner's advice during the boom times, the pain they are now enduring might not have been so harsh.
I am thrilled that the limitation has been removed and hope that the project is successful without it. That might help motivate Ellington and other Towns to be more receptive of better development forms that are not predicated on age restrictions.
Hope springs eternal.