Image via MissingMiddleHousing.com
In my childhood hometown—a streetcar suburb built in the 1920s outside Chicago—the small downtown was built around the commuter rail station and apartments topped the stores along the surrounding commercial streets. The adults in my hometown walked from single-family homes and apartments to the train that took them into the city. Today, many of them bike to the train station. Kids could and did walk and ride their bikes to school. Now more apartments, condos, and townhouses are being built near the downtown to fill in the housing options.
Top: local businesses (including a food co-op) with some homes above; bottom left: new apartment building over a local coffee & wine bar; bottom right: apartments above a variety of retail.
Making a family-friendly neighborhood or city isn’t just about space for kids and families, though. One of the things I especially appreciate as I age is that people can find housing for any stage of life within the neighborhood. You can be a young single person, a couple, a new family, a huge family, an empty nester, or a senior and find your space in the same area. You can rent or own any number of variations of size and configuration.
Unfortunately, family-friendly communities such as mine are hard to find. Requirements for wide streets, lots of parking, and zoning that doesn’t allow apartments next to detached homes makes it tough to duplicate this type of neighborhood with a variety of housing choices to match the variety in life. In some areas it’s all but impossible to find anything other than single-detached homes. In other places it’s hard to find single-family detached homes close to transit and shopping, or the houses that are available come with a hefty asking price. Maybe that tells you something: there is a premium for these walkable neighborhoods, and we need to build more of them.
The idea that cities can’t be family-friendly is preposterous. Like kids, cities come in all shapes and sizes, and some of them have green space, good schools, and a variety of residential options. More cities used to be like this, but “modern” zoning often excludes everything but single-detached homes which means new housing is concentrated in a few, bustling neighborhoods. The result is cities that often lack the housing choice and affordability that families need. But by taking a cue from the past, cities can re-legalize more types of housing and create more walkable, liveable places for families and everyone.
Robbie Webber is a Senior Associate with the State Smart Transportation Initiative, a program of Smart Growth America in partnership with the University of Wisconsin based in Madison, WI.