2023 AARP Livable Communities Economic Development Workshop: The Built Environment

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Plenary Panel — The Built Environment

Coralette Hannon: Welcome back. Now I'd like to welcome Shannon Guzman, Director of Housing and Livable Communities for the AARP Public Policy Institute, who will moderate our next discussion. Shannon, over to you. 

Shannon Guzman: Thanks, Coralette. I'm so excited to introduce our two panelists today. But before I do, I want to remind everyone about the Slido platform. You should see the instructions on how to ask a question. You can either go to Slido in your browser and enter the event code Livable2023 or just scan the QR code on the screen. 

All right, now it is my pleasure to introduce you to our two panelists. Marques King, RA, is an architect, urban designer and proud native Detroiter. He is the founder of Fabric Design, a design firm focused on small-scale developments and nurturing sustainable neighborhoods, and a faculty member of the Incremental Development Alliance.

Toccarra Nicole Thomas, AICP, is the director of land use and development at Smart Growth America. In her role, she leads the Form-Based Code Institute (FBCI) and furthers Smart Growth America's mission to create prosperous, resilient and healthy communities.

Toccarra and Marques, we are so glad to have you both here to discuss how the built environment influences economic development.

Let's start off with a Slido question: "Livable communities are good for people and businesses. They encourage higher property values, increased economic activity and savings for communities. Investments in the built environment, such as housing, transportation and accessible parks and downtowns, are key to fostering a strong local economy. What livable communities features contribute to the economic development of your community?"

Let's take a look at some of the responses. Okay, Complete Streets, walkability. Marques, what do you think about the responses coming in? 

Marques King: Yeah, I think a lot of these are some common themes that we see ubiquitous in a lot of communities. It's really encouraging that people, sort of, recognize a lot of these themes. And it seems like walkability is taking the cake here, so that's really impressive as walkability connects to a lot of things that hold sustainable and livable neighborhoods together. It's quite promising. Great. 

Shannon Guzman: Great . Toccarra, do you see any other key themes or surprises? 

Toccarra Nicole Thomas: I agree with Marques that walkability is the big thing that is popping out to me, and safety,  and I would just kind of say the common thread between all of these and our panel topic is third spaces. All of these features generate economic vitality for a community. So, I will say, the only surprise is that we didn't see third spaces explicitly called out, but that's what’s resonating with me. 

Shannon Guzman: Alright, great. Well, thank you both for your key insights. Now, Marques, I'm going to ask you the first question: Cities and neighborhoods across the country are evolving, especially since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Your work as an architect and designer has focused on revitalizing communities through small-scale neighborhood development. How does incremental development work and what are the economic benefits to the community?

Marques King: Yeah, that's a great question. I think at first, incremental development as defined as, for my definition, an organic, grassroots, city building system or methodology, if you will, that is extremely local and runs off of the passion, the hustle, the ingenuity, the fervor, the creativity of the people who actually live there in those communities.

Because the genesis and the beginnings of incremental development are, at its core, local, the common and core economic benefits also happen to be local. These types of developments consist of things like house hacks. They consist of things like multi-dwelling houses, micro retail, small offices, short term rentals, AirBNBs, bread and breakfasts. All of these types require a simpler and more familiar type of financing model than traditional development may require, which can be more palatable and accessible for the typical citizen of that particular neighborhood.

These are also the types of projects that, to some extent, can fit on just about any standard zoning lot across the country. On the surface, these projects may seem small, but at the scale of an individual or family, and at the scale of the micro community, like a neighborhood, they have huge potential to maximize community value because they are designed specifically for individuals and neighborhood entrepreneurs, those who care about that local neighborhood. These are the owners of these projects. These are the developers of these projects. These are the managers of these neighborhood assets. They are designed for the local neighborhood farmers, as we like to call it in the incremental development world, who are concerned with building a bit of value for themselves, yes, but are also looking to build value for the entire block, their neighborhood. And that value doesn't get extracted by, in typical instances, larger national developers, but it stays in the neighborhood. It stays down the street.

I call this phenomenon, small buildings but big returns. And lastly, one of the biggest obstacles in the way of doing development in this manner — in this way — would be antiquated zoning laws that essentially imprisons that potential value in neighborhoods and stops individuals from creating the assets and essentially creating the lifestyles they want to live in their neighborhoods.

Shannon Guzman: So that's great, Marques. I really like what you said about the work that's being done and the investments being made are directly from the members of the community because they are passionate about their community and they benefit and the rest of the neighborhood and the community benefits. That point really resonates with me. Thanks, Marques.

Toccarra, through Smart Growth America's work on land use and development, you support the development of compact, mixed-use communities that encourage a variety of ways to get around: transit, biking and walking. What is the fiscal impact of smart growth and land use policies? How does walkability lead to more prosperous places?

Toccarra Nicole Thomas: Oh gosh, Shannon, that is a great topic, great question. I could talk about it for hours, but only three minutes. So I will say in short, it's a huge economic generator. And then, you know, to unpack that a little bit, I’ll give you a couple of statistics.

Let's start with the cost of sprawl, which is the inverse of walkable compact location efficiency growth, right? Smart growth, in other words. We did a report a few years ago where we found that the cost of sprawl costs the American economy $1 trillion a year. Say that again: The cost of sprawl costs Americans $1 trillion in a year. Conversely, we found that Smart Growth is more cost efficient than sprawl. It gives more money back to your local economy, which Marques kind of touched on a little bit. And then it can — it’s like a 10-x multiplier for your local economy, and specifically for tax revenues. You'll generate ten times more tax revenues if you have smart growth without the steep rise in property values.

We found that in our zoning report, and it was a little bit of, like, hmm, we didn't expect that but it was a pleasant surprise, right? And then finally, I'll wrap up on this topic with that places with form-based codes, which we advocate for, generate about $65 million in tax revenues for local governments.

So, in short, smart growth is fiscal. Growth is fiscally sound for community. And now talking about walkability, which was one of the top responses in our Slido poll, it just contributes to the health and sustainability of a community, and also the health and sustainability of your community members within your community. So if your residents are prosperous, your community is going to be prosperous, right?

In our Foot Traffic Ahead report, we found that there's a price premium for living in walkable locations, meaning that people are willing to pay more to live in a walkable community, right? And just some of those benefits, which most people might know about walkability, you have more social mobility, people live longer and have safer and healthier lives. They have greater economic opportunity in those compact and connected, transit-rich locations with that multitude of transportation options including walking. And they spend less of their household income on the combined cost of housing and transportation, so, given that two-time multiplier for that household economy, right? And it's just, in general, you have a better, more robust, more prosperous community that is walkable. 

Shannon Guzman: Thank you so much. I really like the point that you made about making the investment to reduce sprawl contributes to the health and wellbeing of the community, both the people in it and the local economy. That's really important for people to hear and understand, and that these type of communities, smart growth can happen in any type of geography, correct?

Toccarra Nicole Thomas: Correct. 

Shannon Guzman: Yes, that's great. So, thank you both for those responses. Now I have a question for both of you. You've both worked to champion housing that is affordable for people of all incomes. How does having a diversity of housing options support the economic development of the entire community, benefiting the workforce and people of all ages. Toccarra, let's turn it over to you to respond.

Toccarra Nicole Thomas: Thank you for this. First off, housing is my personal and professional passion, so again, I can just talk for hours, but I'll keep it to one minute. In short, housing and housing related activities is a huge generator for our local economy and for our national economy.

The National Association of Realtors a few years ago produced a report where they found that each house sale generates two jobs and that each house sale contributes $113,000 to the local economy. And then, on the other side, multifamily housing generates an average of 161 jobs and adds about $11.7 million to the local economy in the first year that that project has come out of the pipeline.

In short, housing — housing sales, multifamily rentals, multifamily development — are a huge economic boom for your local economy. 

Shannon Guzman: And Marques, what are your thoughts on the question? 

Marques King: Yeah, similar to Toccarra, housing is one of my core passions, both professionally and personally. So I think that answering this question best, we have to first look at how the limited housing options and the condition that our built environment is now ho,w we got here in the first place. We're still operating, essentially, under the housing system, at its core, that is built on the paradigm of a nuclear family. That means you have an able body, a predominantly white family unit, husband, wife, kid or kids and a dog sited on a tenth of an acre or 5,000 square feet. And so, we designed an entire financial policy and urban design system to support this single, solitary model.

However, all of us virtually here, I'm sure, know that this is not the world, the nation, the America that we live in today. The very definition of a family is now more diverse than ever before. And what's more ironic is that the median family size in America has shrunk, for a variety of reasons. But it's shrunk by half since the 1950s, yet our average single family house size has more than doubled. Even though the average family size is shrinking, the amount of family types is increasing. And so, we now broadly recognize the existence of single parent families, single person families, multigenerational families, families with members who have disabilities, aging families that all want to maintain their independence and the list goes on.

Shannon Guzman: Yeah. So Marques and Toccarra, you both raised some great points here. Toccarra, you're mentioning the economic generation that can happen due to investment and development in housing and Marques, you're saying that we need to think outside of the box of how we've developed housing in the past and we need to consider what our current conditions are and respond accordingly to that. Well, thank you both for sharing your expertise on housing and housing's contribution to economic development.

Now I invite you both to deliver a quick, rapid-fire response to our final question. Throughout this workshop, we want to equip participants with tools, resources and strategies for getting work done in communities. With that in mind, what should we each be do be ready to do differently as a result of this panel? Marques, I'll hand it over to you to get us started.

Marques King: All right. Thank you. I think, first, something that everybody can do is just be an advocate for zoning reform. As I mentioned before, zoning tends to be one of those mechanisms that staunches the power and the potential that's sort of embedded in a lot of our communities. Advocating for a palatable mix of uses – so that's something that everybody can do. 

As an instructor of the Incremental Development Alliance and also a steering committee member of SGA, I'm always advocating for people to become developers in their own neighborhoods in their own right. The maxim I use as I end here is, if you're walking down the street and you see an abandoned building or a vacant lot that could really be something and you say to yourself, somebody should do something with that. Well, that somebody is probably you, right? And so, there's different ways that you can engage and become a developer in a nontraditional right to begin to advocate for the change that you want to see in your neighborhood.

Shannon Guzman: That's great. Thanks, Marques. Now take it away, Toccarra. 

Toccarra Nicole Thomas: Well, I'm going to continue the theme of advocacy, but then I'm going to give you a few solid nuts and bolts techniques of what to do specifically.

Find out who is your local elected official and call them. Tell them about the economic benefits of smart growth and how sprawl is costing your community and that they should look into smart growth, innovation, zoning reform, so on and so forth. Participate in your local council meetings, your local planning commission meetings. You might not be a planner type, but you live in a community and you have a voice and you should use that. And then, finally, speak to your neighbors about the local economic potential benefits of expanding housing and housing types in your community.

As Marques pointed out earlier in our panel, you’ve got to have a change in the types of housing that's coming on the markets, right? And, a lot of times, NIMBYs, or people who are a little bit afraid of change, have a very visceral reaction to these proposals. But if you talk to your neighbors or you talk to your community members and you extol the virtues of housing and how it will help support your community and smart growth, they'll be more willing to listen to you and more willing to support these projects when they come out of the ground. So, in short, advocate, and then, finally, mentor.

Tell younger generations, tell older generations, talk to anybody and everybody who's willing to listen about smart growth. Mentor them, get them on the path of smart growth and create that momentum and that movement to advance smart growth in America. 

Shannon Guzman: So, this is great. So, I love how, Marques, you talked about, seeing ourselves as the agent of change. You know, if we see something that needs to happen in a community, why not us? Why not us be, you know, why not me be the person who does something about that?

And Toccarra, I love how you gave us those steps, you know, participating, especially speaking to your neighbors about the changes that we need to see, not just for someone else, but for us, you know, as well, especially as, as we get older. And then talk about those housing types that will work for the community. I think this is really great, sound advice.

Thank you both for providing our audience with a call to action. We have Mike here with us to help facilitate the live Q&A. 

Mike Watson: Thanks, Shannon, Marques, Toccarra. That was fantastic. And I'm delighted to be back here again to give y'all the chance – our listeners – the opportunity to ask questions of our fantastic panelists. Now remember, if you would like to ask a question, please use the Slido Q&A tool.

We have a lot rolling in here. I can tell many of you all know how to use it. The instructions are on the screen if you do need to use it. And we have several, as I mentioned, piling up here, so I'm going to go ahead and jump right in. Shannon, our first question: Toccarra mentioned in her opening comments and reaction to that first Slido poll, the notion of third spaces and not seeing it there. We've had — it’s actually probably our most popular question here — just a request to define what a third space is.

Toccarra Nicole Thomas: Well, third space is one of those spaces where people can just congregate without the expectation of having to pay. And then people of different ages, different income levels, everybody feels welcome and feels included by default, right?

You don't have to do anything special to make this a place where people want to be. Some typical examples of third spaces are a park. And there's this expectation that if you come to this third space, you don't have to be a specific type of way. You can just show up in your most authentic self and make these impromptu connections with someone that you might not have ever interacted with before entering that third space. 

A library is one example — that is one of the few third spaces that are remaining that are free and accessible to all. Parks, public plazas — if they are truly public and not privately developed and privately held. What's another example of a third space? If there was a coffee shop that did not charge you or it was like kind of like one of those communal table-type coffee shops, that would be an example of a third space.

Mike Watson: Perfect. Thank you. I think we'll see that term — if we ask the same question next year — I’m sure that'll pop up a lot more. So, Shannon, our next question here, and I'm going to read it just to make sure I capture it right, is around zoning, asking, can you talk more about antiquated zoning and what can be done to advocate for better zoning practices that benefit the community?

Shannon Guzman: So, Marques, you raised a point about zoning and some of the changes that need to be made. Can you take this question? 

Marques King: Absolutely. So, the best way I like to describe this is thinking about the cities that we used to live in before we had zoning, which was really the period of the 1920s and 30s.

You know, I swoon when I remember and I see remnants of buildings and spaces that are still in existence in our built environment today from that time. Yet, zoning does not allow us to build those spaces again or replicate those spaces and those buildings again in a modern sense. And so, when I say antiquated zoning, I mean zoning that's really not kept up with the demand that we see from people requesting a certain lifestyle in their built environment — things like walkability, things like being able to walk to a multitude of uses, daily uses within their immediate environment, things like having sustainable forms of housing, accessible and affordable housing.

All these things really, if you really dive into it, have some linkage back to the type of zoning that is productive in either promoting or prohibiting certain types of buildings and uses to happen in that particular neighborhood. And Toccarra mentioned that the alternative to this — or one of the alternatives to this — the stronger alternative to traditional zoning would be a form-based zoning, which advocates for less regulation on use.

There's a little bit of regulation, but within reason. But it has more to do with the creation, to use Toccarra's term, of that third space. What are those, what is the image of the city? What are the actual spaces that are being created by the buildings that make people feel comfortable to want to walk down the street to the park or want to sit on a cafe table and a chair on the sidewalk in front of their coffee shop, right? What are the physical elements that support that? Focus on those things and then let the uses come in as they may because we all know that trends come and go. And so building our cities and places based on those things that are universal and time tested rather than the fleeting elements of trends and uses and markets.

Shannon Guzman: So that definitely makes sense, you know, if we want to keep our communities active and lively and vibrant, being able to develop and create those communities centered around what people need and what they want to see and what they enjoy being in really makes sense. And that takes me back to what Toccarra was saying about creating healthy communities, you know, that way we can keep people, especially as they age, walking as long as we create that environment for that.

Mike Watson: That's great, great add on to that, Shannon. And Marques, I love that response there. So, Shannon, you're — kind of where you ended there, I think, tees up one of the questions that we've also seen here around walkability, and specifically around rural walkability, and some strategies that communities can undertake to make rural areas more walkable and safe for folks. 

Shannon Guzman: So, Toccarra, do you want to take a crack at that one? 

Toccarra Nicole Thomas: Of course. So, first off, I'm always going to plug form-based codes. You can have them at a different variety of contexts. So, you can be the rural context all the way up to the city and the county-wide, right?

But drilling down a little bit deeper on how do you include walkability in a rural context, you kind of got to think about where you have – people tend to congregate. So where's your main street? Is your main street walkable? Is it accessible? Does it have a variety of use types along your main street, right? And then when you have your clusters of housing, are those walkable? Are those connected to other walkable communities? Is there a trail system? Is there – your uses, like, your daily needs next to housing? All those are different ways that you can add in walkability into a rural context without making it more of a quote-unquote “urban context.”

Really, just starting with what your community has and where people are located and where they tend to go — those are your cow paths – or your desire paths – that you see cut through the grass — and then installing that infrastructure. And then I add a plug: don't just install sidewalks as infrastructure. You need to have a network of green space throughout your community that contributes to walkability. And then you need to have those uses of spaces along that network, right? And then having this infrastructure that supports walkability. So, benches at a regular interval but, remember, no hostile architecture.

We want to support everybody, have walkability for all. Those benches, that variety of visual amenities to look at – so, one of the videos showed a retaining wall that was converted into an art piece. So, including that type of infrastructure along with the sidewalks.

Shannon Guzman: So, Marques, I'm interested in your response to this question as well on rural communities. 

Marques King: Yeah, I think Toccarra hit a lot of the core points. I've actually had the opportunity to do some urban design work on the western side of Michigan and we had to address that exact question. And a lot of it is centered around the main street where a lot of people come collectively to meet each other, right?

To either purchase things to take back to the farm or take back to their homestead, to get a little bit of interaction or culture to go to the grocery store, hardware store. And so, you know, the elements of walkability, I think, are slightly different, but once you get to that destination, almost, which is main street, you can introduce some of these more hardcore elements of walkability. And then I’ll also support Toccarra's mentioning of trails, which I think are an underutilized element of being outdoors and walkability.

We've introduced a lot of different trails here, just in my context, in the state of Michigan — converting old rail lines to trails for biking, for walking and all these elements that connect a series of larger rural plats, but again, are integrated and then somehow connect to a destination, right? And so, having not just these one-off trails that seem to meander, but they do have an end destination both at the beginning, at the end of those trails, so it's all connected and it all leads to somewhere — a destination that's connected within one another.  

Shannon Guzman: That's great.

Mike Watson: Fantastic. Thank you both for those answers. I think we have time for our final question. I'm going to kind of lump a few together that we've seen here. I think, some of the changes you've talked about in zoning and making communities more walkable can come with increased property values and can, at times, make property values rise up and the fear of being folks having to leave their homes or being pushed out of their property.

So how can we ensure that when we're pursuing zoning changes and making neighborhoods more walkable that the benefits of those are shared equitably and we ensure that folks don't have to leave the neighborhoods that they've made their homes their entire life? 

Shannon Guzman: So, let's go back to Toccarra for that question.

Toccarra Nicole Thomas: So, thank you for that. I'll start with our Zoned-In report. It is a little bit dated. It came out in 2019, so right before the top of the pandemic, but we found that while there is a price premium for these communities, if you deploy your land use regime in a very equitable, people-centered way, where your community members are centered first as part of the process and throughout the process, those property values don't rise as steeply. So, you don't get that sticker shock right away, right?

And then the other side of that, which we're kind of exploring but not really talking about head-on, is that what we have right now in zoning has directly led to the housing crisis and the housing affordability crisis today, which also in turn leads to gentrification, which is kind of what we're talking about, right? And so, what do I mean by that?

When you have a zoning ordinance that prefers and advances single family zoning and limits the amount of land in your community only for single family housing. I creates this scarcity that's artificial which drives up prices. So it's almost, kind of, like supply and demand economic theory, right? So you have this zoning ordinance that is saying you can only have a single family house with large lot size and large setbacks, which drives up the cost of the housing because it limits the supply. And if you do have multifamily, it's very few and far between and it's scattered on the edges of your community. So just, kind of, bringing it back that, yes, there could be some potential price increases.

But if you have that zoning that is people-centered — preferably a form-based code — but there's other zoning interventions that can help, and you open up that supply of land for different types of housing types, you'll naturally see that prices will level out over time.

Mike Watson: Fantastic. Shannon, Marques, Toccarra, I want to thank you so much for joining us. That was a really fantastic conversation. Thank you again for being here today.

Shannon Guzman: Thanks, Mike. 

Marques King: Pleasure. 

Toccarra Nicole Thomas: Thanks for having me.

Mike Watson: Thank you all again. That was, again, really a fantastic conversation, and I think we covered a lot of topics there.

Now to give you some ideas of how you can start to approach some of these topics — Toccarra and Marques mentioned a few — from placemaking to housing in your community, I'd like to invite you to visit the AARP Livable Communities virtual library at AARP.org/LivableLibrary. That's all one word. There you can download digital copies or order print copies of helpful resources like Enabling Better Places, A Handbook for Improved Neighborhoods, our guide on zoning reform that we created with the Congress for New Urbanism. or the pop-up placemaking guide that we created with Team Better Block. Again, that web address is AARP.org/LivableLibrary. We hope you'll check it out. 

Coralette Hannon: And now we'll learn about how Providence, Rhode Island, is developing housing that is inclusive for everyone, helping to support residents and build a strong economy.

We'll also learn about an inspiring AARP Community Challenge project in the city of Orlando, Florida that is helping to connect residents to high-speed internet in a public park.

These videos will last about 11 minutes and when we come back, we'll kick off in an exciting conversation with former Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and AARP's Dawit Kahsai.