Multifamily Housing Should Connect Residents to Shopping

Newswise — Residents of apartment complexes dotting the suburbs of sprawling cities take to their bikes or walk to go to nearby commercial areas if accessible pathways are available.

That's the message University of Oregon architecture researchers and planners are telling the architects, developers and planners of large multifamily living units across the nation.

"My hypothesis is that if people are more connected people will walk more," said Nico Larco, professor of architecture and co-director of the UO's Sustainable Cities Initiative, who has been leading an effort to understand residents' desires and to help fine-tune the planning and development of multifamily housing. "In many places, because of the way developers have built these apartment complexes, everything is disconnected and farther than anyone would rationally want to walk."

Traditionally since the Eisenhower administration, Larco said, single and multifamily housing have been, until only recently, built with the idea of separating residential neighborhoods from commercial areas. The long-held belief was that people don't walk in suburbia. That may have been true then, but surveys say not now, Larco said.

Larco and colleagues have been presenting their ideas at a variety of community forums across Oregon. In September, Larco spoke at the Oregon Transportation Summit sponsored by the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium (OTREC), a national University Transportation Center that partners the UO with Portland State University, Oregon State University and the Oregon Institute of Technology.

Larco teamed with Jean Stockard, professor emeritus of the department of planning, public policy and management, and Bethany M. Johnson and Amanda West, both of the department's research affiliated Community Service Center on a paper being prepared for publication. Their findings of what residents reported have provided the fuel for their public talks.

Their work will next appear at the Transportation Research Board's "Transportation Systems for Livable Communities Conference" Oct. 18-19 in Washington, D.C., a sold-out event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative Technology Administration.

Larco also worked with architecture graduate student Kristin Kelsey and West to publish over the summer a 163-page handbook "Suburban Multifamily Housing Site Design" with funding from OTREC. The handbook is being sent to transportation officials and planners in every state and targets planners, developers and architects. The handbook has been the focus for workshops held in Bend, Eugene, Portland and Salem. It provides 10 key components in the design of new or renovated multifamily housing projects. Users can review case studies of successful projects, follow a checklist and examine building codes drawn from select U.S. cities.

"We have interviewed architects, planners and developers across the country," Larco said. "The concept for years has been that you always put higher density housing developments around the commercial areas. The idea has been that this approach makes a great buffer between commercial areas and single-family homes that they don't want to back up to strip malls. So we have a charged condition of density right next to commercial areas, grocery stores, drug stores, laundromats, banks and coffee shops. When you look at design, however, any notion of sustainability falls absolutely flat."

In his interviews, he said, he was repeatedly told that no one walks in suburbia. "But if you go out and watch people in these communities, you actually see a large number of people walking," he said. "A lot of people in these developments don't even have any cars. The demographic of multifamily housing is completely different than the single-family home. It's mostly people who are single, divorced, recently widowed, retired people, people without kids. Many can't get into single-family homes or don't want to be tied down by a house."

To find out what residents think about their living environments, Larco's team analyzed 14 suburban multifamily sites in Eugene, and asked 1,493 residents 27 questions, focusing heavily on transportation choices and barriers involving adjacent commercial areas.

"The nugget that came out of that is, if their complex is well connected you get more walking and biking," Larco said. In fact, he noted, 73 percent of the respondents living in well-connected areas walk or bike to nearby shopping areas at least once a week. In less-connected sites, only 58 percent did so. "People in well-connected areas walked 60 percent more than less-connected residents, so that whole idea that no one walks in suburbia is completely false," he said.

Walking and riding bikes to nearby shopping areas, Larco noted, "reduces vehicle miles traveled, greenhouse gas emissions and helps to address the obesity epidemic by burning calories. And it also provides independence for the elderly."

When multifamily housing units are cut off from nearby shopping areas, residents often are left with no choice other than taking to their cars or facing long, arduous walks or bike rides. "They have to go through areas where no one wants to walk -- fast-moving cars, no buffering from the traffic," he said.

In Eugene, Larco noted, building codes were changed in 2001 to make multifamily housing more connected. In and around complexes built under the new code, he said, the change is obvious. "People are walking and biking much more often."

About the UO's Sustainable Cities InitiativeThe Sustainable Cities Initiative is a cross-disciplinary effort that integrates research, education, service and public outreach around issues of sustainable city design. SCI works at a variety of scales, from regions to individual buildings actively seeking, through multiple perspectives and disciplines, solutions to sustainable city design problems. SCI synthesizes existing faculty research work under a single theme, serves as a catalyst for expanded research and teaching, and brings this expertise to scholars, funders, project partners and policymakers.

Links: Larco homepage: http://pppm.uoregon.edu/index.cfm?mode=faculty&page=nicolarcoDepartment of Planning, Public Policy and Management: http://pppm.uoregon.edu/ Sustainable Cities Initiative: http://sci.uoregon.edu/ Department of Architecture: http://architecture.uoregon.edu/

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFrGg8q28JI

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