walk21: walking and liveable communities. moneyballing walkability
TRANSCRIPT
Mariela Alfonzo, Ph.D.Founder & CEO, State of Place
Research Assistant Professor, New York University
Walk 21 Hong KongOctober 5th, 2016
MONEYBALLING WALKABILITY HARNESSING THE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY
& DATA TO HELP MAKE PLACES BETTER
This is my hometown - westchester meeyameWhere my most exhilarating memory is playing an ersatz game of froggeras i tightroped down pencil thin sidewalksdogging cars as I crossed strip-mall lined highways masquerading as streetsall to get to a chicken teriyaki sub.Growing up in Miami - especially as a carless teenager sucked.
This was life
This was work
This was play
Rockport (shoe company) advertisement
Fast forward ten years later. Today walkability is such a known commodity that it’s even made its way onto a shoe ad!I cannot tell you how happy this makes me – when I first told my friends in Miami I was moving to Southern California to study walkability, they thought I was nuts! We’ve come a long way in the past 15 years. The health benefits of walkability are now well known – people walk more when it’s, well, easier to walk! And that has huge impacts on obesity rates and associated chronic diseases. The environmental benefits of reduced GHGs and air quality have also come to light in the recent years. People now talk about sustainability and resiliency in the same breath they talk about walkability. And recent studies have even extolled the happiness factor that walkability brings, not to mention sense of community and sense of place. But it’s really the economic story that has pushed walkability to the real estate limelight…
Today, walkability is no longer a nice to have or a luxury, it’s key to economic competitiveness. Survey after survey now show that an increasing number of both Millennials and older adults want to live in lively, dynamic places where it’s safe, convenient, and pleasurable to walk to everyday destinations and amenities. Walkability now even has a role in the innovation and startup economy, with a large majority of Venture Capital money going to center cities or walkable suburbs. Even the CEO of Twitter talks about the appeal of an urban campus – and he’s not alone. Facebook, Google and other major tech players are increasingly locating in the walkable core of cities. I cannot tell you how many stories I hear about cities going the “walkability” route after losing bids to lure large firms to other cities in their regions that offered employees a better quality of life, specifically walkability – this was the case for Oklahoma City, where I just gave a talk about the power of place at their second biannual Placemaking conference. Again, walkability is no longer a nice to have, it’s a need to have.
80%OF 18-34
SURVEYED WANTTO LIVE INWALKABLENEIGHBORHOODS
YEAR OLDS
"I love the idea of an urban corporate campus with all the energy and variety that provides" Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey
40%
W I T H I NOF DAILYGOODS &SERVICES1
WANT TO L IVE> 50 YRS OLD
MI
5 INVESTMENTM A R K E T S
58%IN
TOP VC OF CAPITAL W E N T T OCENTER C ITY
OR WALKABLE SUBURBS
48141
AVERAGE WALKSCORE OF
US CITIESWITH POPULATIONS OVER 200K
OUT OF 100
Being able to project ROI is really important for policy-makers, for the public, for the taxpayer, because that NIMBY effect can weigh heavily on getting a project approved. Why are you spending another $1.5M on X when it seems to work fine right now? It would be nice to have a way to show it.
Director of one of South Florida’s Downtown Development Authorities in an
interview with State of Place
So in the last three years since the Brookings study, we got the opportunity to update the underlying audit tool when we applied it to the Chinese context. We refined many of the existing inventory items, deleted extraneous items, and added items mainly related to pedestrian and bicycle barriers and architectural and building quality. In the end, we ended up with 286 items, all collected at the block level.
290+URBAN DESIGN
FEATURES
TOUCH, SEE & FEEL WALKABILI
TYFROM
ARCADES
TO ZEBRA STRIPES
So in the last three years since the Brookings study, we got the opportunity to update the underlying IMI audit tool when we applied it to the Chinese context. We refined many of the existing inventory items, deleted extraneous items, and added items mainly related to pedestrian and bicycle barriers and architectural and building quality. In the end, we ended up with 286 items, all collected at the block level.
TRAINING VIDEO
+ INTERACTIVE
QUIZ
TRAINED STAFF COLLECT DATA
MINUTES/BLOCK
15-20
DATA COLLECTION
APP SEAMLESSLY TRANSFERS
DATA TO SERVER
STATE OF PLACE INDEX
TIGARD TRIANGLE
69TH FROM BAYLOR & CLINTON
Segment 12 80 14 51 0 0 0 3 33 31 83
24
Very Low0 - 20 Low
ModerateGood
Very Good21 -
40
41 - 60
61 - 80
81 - 100
*PREMIUMS FOR EACH
LEVEL INCREASE
+ $9 SF OFFICE RENTS
+ $7 SF RETAIL RENTS
+80% RETAIL REVENUES
+ $300 UNIT RES. RENT
+$81 SF FOR-SALE RES. VALUE
$
$
$$
$
STATE OF PLACE INDEX
TIGARD TRIANGLE
24
STATE OF PLACE INDEX
TIGARD TRIANGLE
MASTER PLAN
22
53
10 81 8 0 0 0 11 52 74
39 81 68 33 0 29 47 68 79
MASTER PLAN
STATE OF PLACE INDEX
TIGARD TRIANGLE
ADRIENNE
MASTER PLAN
MASTER PLAN
38.7
RETAIL RENTS
RETAIL REVENU
ES
RESIDENTIAL
RENTS
OFFICE RENTS
BASELINE $25.92 $18 $90 $1,123
SCENARIO 23200 FT2 6 UNITS2000 FT2 2000 FT2
SCENARIO 13200 FT2 N/A N/A N/A
PREMIUMS $5.25/FT2 161.61/UNIT
$2.77/FT2 $29.30/FT2
PREMIUMS $.18/FT2 N/A N/A N/A
PROJECTCOST
VALUE CAPTUR
EDROI
$6.4M
$8.2M $14.6M $1.78
$9.1M
$1.42
MASTER PLAN
38.7
State of Place helped us with the long-term strategic vision for Tigard Triangle. It helped our long-term planners to think critically about where we should invest in… We have been using it and we’ll continue to integrate that in our planning, economic development, and infrastructure development.
Lloyd Purdy, Economic Development Manager
City of Tigard (Portland Metro)
“I think what State of Place’s doing is fabulous. Supporting this great movement and keeping a momentum of what is happening in our country, I am thankful that there are people who build models that practitioners can use to get it done. Everyone has great ideas, but the hardest part is GETTING IT DONE. Having this sort of data, a very well built model, is a powerful way to get it done.“
We are under a great deal of public scrutiny. We need an objective – third party – projection of the clear benefits of this project to help us tell a more powerful story, to help us convince those skeptical of this project, those who are convinced the construction will negatively impact their businesses, that there is long-term value here. And that the bigger risk is NOT doing this project.
Neighborhood 1: Xintiandi (“High” walkable)N= 129 segmentsN = 129 resident surveys
STATE OF PLACE = 54.8
Neighborhood 2: Zhongshan Park (“Medium” walkable)N = 60 segmentsN = 243 resident surveys
STATE OF PLACE= 42.2
Neighborhood 3: Lianhua Lu (“Low” walkable)N = 97 segmentsN = 291 resident surveys
STATE OF PLACE= 41.9
Neighborhood 4: Fengqi Lu (“High” walkable)N = 97 segmentsN = 291 resident surveys
STATE OF PLACE= 40.7
Neighborhood 6: Guihua Cheng (“Low” walkable)N= 127 segmentsN = 234 resident surveys
STATE OF PLACE= 34.8
+22MIN
COMMUTING
DESTINATIONS
EXERCISE
+3.5MIN
+4.6MIN
+14MIN
