The Truth About Livable Communities

By Deborah L. Myerson, AICP

Most people enjoy walkable communities where they can enjoy reduced car dependence, more exercise, interactions between neighbors, social engagement, and a sense of community. Compact neighborhoods also often have a mix of housing types that can sustain many different kinds of households and incomes.

But how do livable – and affordable — communities actually come to be?

To find out, the ULI NWA Developer Fishbowl convened half a dozen members of the Northwest Arkansas residential development community to gather in-person on March 4, 2022. Participants shared their perspectives on the affordability challenges for the region’s market rate housing, based on their experiences on the production side of the industry.

Source: ULI Northwest Arkansas

Fifty attendees in the audience from Northwest Arkansas and beyond —urban planners and other land use professionals— participated both in-person and virtually. Attendees listened to the conversation, asked questions, and reflected on takeaways for their own communities.

Developer Fishbowl Facilitator and Panelists

Facilitator: Amy Reeves Robinson

Panelists:

• Jesse Fulcher, AICP, Director of Land Planning, Rausch Coleman Homes
• Matthew Hoffman, AIA, Director of Urban Design, MBL Planning + Architecture
• Ryan King, AIA, Owner/Principal, Unit Architecture
• Sarah Marsh, Residential and Commercial Realtor, Keller Williams
• Yume Rudzinski, Blue Crane, LLC
• Robert Sharp, Architect and developer

Panelists had a lively discussion about policies that help—as well as those that hinder housing affordability and livable communities—often sharing stories from their own experiences to illustrate their points.

Below are some of the many observations that emerged during the conversation, revealing truths about what encourages–and challenges—expanding opportunities for more mixed uses, livable neighborhoods, and attainable housing.[1]

It’s About Choice

Source: ULI Northwest Arkansas

Panelists were animated about the need for greater housing supply and a wider array of options.

“I think there’s some people who are missing out because there’s not an affordable option, whether it be a townhouse, a duplex, a condo or whatever it may be downtown… I think some of them, they do want to live in the suburban locations…But it’s about having the choice. There’s very limited choice, unless you have economic means, in the downtown area.”  – Jesse Fulcher

“To be able to build affordably, we have to be able to build more than one unit on a large lot.” – Yume Rudzinski

“I get a lot of calls from out-of-state buyers moving to Northwest Arkansas. They consistently want to be near the trails, that is the number one request. They want to live in walkable neighborhoods. And a lot of people are relocating here, because their jobs have gone virtual.”  – Sarah Marsh

Cumbersome Codes

Local codes that emphasize large lot sizes may inadvertently make it more difficult to attract economic growth that can sustain a growing workforce.

“I’m working with the community right now in Northwest Arkansas that has a significant housing shortage. Their local employers need to hire 400 people for jobs paying around $15 an hour. There’s no housing in the community.

But, they’ve got 90-foot wide minimum lot width. How do you create more affordable housing when you have that much land and infrastructure costs tied up in somebody’s idea of what a neighborhood should look like?

If they were to just shrink that lot size down to even 30-foot lots, three times as many homes could be possible, which would reduce the land and infrastructure costs by two thirds on each unit. That could have an exponential impact on their community”  – Sarah Marsh

Removing minimum parking requirements is an easy way to encourage more compact development.

“There’s a 12- or 10-unit apartment building down the [Fayetteville] middle district that’s built on a 10th of an acre. It’s got a smoothie shop and a little bar and it’s right on the trail. And it works. But that project just absolutely wouldn’t be done if there were parking requirements. There might have been just a smoothie shop.” – Robert Sharp

There is what renters and buyers desire for real estate options, and there is what cities allow to be built. At the intersection of the two? Convenience.

“The truth is, is that the only projects that are built in Northwest Arkansas (or in fact, in the country) are the projects that hit that bullseye: marketable, allowed, and convenient.

A really big missed opportunity there on the municipal side is not considering that third “convenience” circle…We have a world class downtown master plan in the city of Fayetteville that we passed 15 years ago. It allows all the wide range of the wonderful missing middle housing types that anybody could ever want. But, because of a of an obscure section in the drainage code, basically all we’ve gotten in the ensuing 15 years is million-dollar duplex houses.

But it’s way more convenient to do that than it is to do the small-scale apartment building. We do ourselves a great disservice by not figuring out how to move that bullseye over the zone that we’re actually trying to target. Which, if it is missing middle, then we should just do that.” – Ryan King

Eagerly Seeking Your Approval

Time is money. The more time it takes a developer to get through the local permitting process, the longer buyers or renters must wait, and the more costly the housing will be.

“Time helps everybody. If we are saving time, we can be more efficient, particularly in an era where we are at historic lows on housing inventory. We’ve got a crisis.”  – Robert Sharp

“If you go out and you spend millions of dollars on piece of property, then you spend millions of dollars on infrastructure and you’re done. Then they’re like, ‘Okay, now you can turn in your final documents. We’ll get back to you in about 60 days, and then we’ll send it around for signatures. Maybe 75 days, you’ll have it in your hands.’  It’s like you’re just sitting on millions of dollars, paying interest and where’s all that go? Right back in to the product that you have to sell to somebody.”  – Jesse Fulcher

Visualizing Density

“Think about the variables that are so central to our zoning code—but have barely anything to do with the experience of walking down the street. I think ‘density’ and ‘units per acre’ are a perfect example of this…Most people, and in fact, most architects and planners, couldn’t walk down a street and tell you within five or 10 units per acre what the density is.” – Matt Hoffman

Source: Caleb Lowery, Archinect.com

“We have a program we call ‘pattern zoning,’ which is where we go into a specific district within a city and we pre-approve a feature complete set of buildings. So, everything from small backyard cottages up to medium-size apartment buildings and spend some mixed-use buildings and certain areas…They can get the drawings from the city, take them to a bank, and get an appraisal, have them priced from a from a contractor and they can get a building permit really quickly.

We just finished up our second pattern zone project in Claremore, Oklahoma. This is a town of about 19,000 people. They adopted the program in December. And, in the first two months had 26 requests for missing-middle projects. This is everything again from backyard cottages up to medium-format apartment buildings.” – Ryan King

Source: The Claremore Daily Progress

Better Design Options

“One of my least favorite things to see in the code is building with a kit of parts: you’re going to build this, you have to use X amount of windows at certain sizes…I understand why they’ve done that, because of the results that they’ve had in the past. But there’s got to be a way to provide designers with some trust and flexibility. And then being able to review that and say ‘Okay, that actually would work,’ instead of saying ‘No, you’re not. You don’t have all of these pieces and parts.’ – Yume Rudzinski

Source: My3DConcepts.com

“This is really critical: when you have a neighborhood meeting and you say, ‘Hi, we’re the city,’ or ‘We’re the city’s consultants,’ and ‘We want to rezone your neighborhood. Here’s the text document that describes what we’d like to do.’ And there’s all these really legalistic sounding things about “units per acre” and it freaks people out. The truth is, they should be freaked out—because they have no idea what they’re going to get.

The benefit of doing the pre-approved buildings is we’ll actually 3-D print models of the buildings that we’re going to get pre-approved. And we’ll hand them to people will say, well, “What do you think of this building in your neighborhood?”

And more often than not, we found that we’re able to have conversations with people about all kinds of missing-middle housing: triplexes, small cottage courts, townhouses. We’re able to talk about building typologies that would be nonstarters, if we were only talking about some sort of verbal, code-oriented description. We’re able to have conversations with people about allowing and entitling those in their neighborhoods and we have some confidence that that’s what’s actually going to get built.” – Ryan King

Building for the Future

Source: TalkBusiness.net

“One thing people don’t realize about Northwest Arkansas: half of the buildings that are going to exist 25 years from now haven’t been built yet. So that means that we’re literally going to produce another Northwest Arkansas in our in our professional lifetimes. It’s an immense responsibility— and an immense opportunity. – Matt Hoffman

To access the full Developer Fishbowl Event video, click here.

                                                                                                                   ###

The Developer Fishbowl event was part of “Aligned for Affordability,” a yearlong initiative launched by ULI Northwest Arkansas to better understand the dynamics of the NWA housing market, how local policies impact affordability, and what solutions might work in specific jurisdictions.

Deborah L. Myerson, AICP, is a housing and community development consultant based in Bloomington, Indiana.

[1] Quotes have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.