Real Estate

External and internal, hierarchies of “hubs” defined by degrees of integration exist within metropolitan areas. They even exist within your own house. The place where all paths cross has the highest degree of interaction. 

However, Disintegrate and you’ll see disinvestment as I showed with thespace syntax of downtown Dallas post. The real estate market delivered supply (high rise office buildings) because downtown Dallas was the hub of activity with the highest degree of integration. All roads led to Rome, so to speak.

Unfortunately, the invisible arm began moving in a different direction while the invisible hand lagged. While developers invested in high-rises, the government was systematically undermining the demand they aimed to meet, building highways, disintegrating downtown while increasing the level of integration at the edges, giving rise to the “metroplex.” Downtown was left with supply without demand, empty office buildings.

Read more at WALKABLE Dallas-Fort Worth: Magnum Opus: Integration –> Accommodation.

[AMAZING STAT GIVEN THAT DALLAS HAS LARGEST LIGHT RAIL SYSTEM IN THE US]

Travel the highways around North Texas and it’s pretty obvious most people are driving their cars to work and not using public transportation.

Sure, there are public transport options around Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area.

Read more at DFW ranks 148th for workers using public transit – Dallas Business Journal.

RATHER than expand territories by building exclusive communities in the suburbs, a US-based architect is pushing for development that allows homeowners to be nearer to the city centers.

Senen Antonio, partner and director of business development of Duany Planter-Zyberk (DPZ) and Co., in a forum organized by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc., said today’s urban planners have succumbed to “a disease called sprawl.”

He explained that sprawl development means segregated and single use of land that tends to favor vehicles instead of pedestrians.

In such developments, Antonio said roads are planned to make sure cars can pass smoothly, without taking into consideration the distance pedestrians have to walk to get to a destination.

Read more at Architect urges urban planners to rethink ‘sprawl development’ | Sun.Star.

Complete Streets is about creating a transportation systemthat safely serves people however they travel. It recognizes that an individual may have different travel identities: as driver when they commute; as bicycle rider when they head to a friend’s house; as a pedestrian and bus rider when they head to the big game.

Unfortunately, the House transportation bill pushed by the Republican leadership presents a stratified — and outmoded — view of transportation. By devoting all of the funding to highways, it assumes that Americans are drivers. Period.

It is no coincidence that a lot of the people the bill ignores are those who have a limited set of travel identities: those who can’t afford to own a car or continue to pay rising gas prices, and rely on public transportation and walking to get where they need to go.

Read more at Complete Streets » Applying a Complete Streets Lens to Action on Capitol Hill.

There is little short-term risk for outer-edge suburbs in rooting on the land rush. We’ve watched the pattern for 30 years of hot growth: Sell off a swath of farmland, divide it up, run in sewer and water lines, pour concrete pads for four bedrooms and two-car garages. In the blink of an eye, residential rooftops to the horizon.

It’s a lucrative cycle for developers, but the dividends end more abruptly than today’s exurban leaders might want to acknowledge.

Today’s Dallas-Fort Worth bedroom boomtowns become tomorrow’s afterthoughts within the life span of a new roof. The wealth moves on, leaving many mature suburbs in a midlife crisis and struggling to attract people with the commitment and money to regenerate.

Read more at Editorial: The difference between growth and smart growth | Dallas Morning News Editorials 

Delta Associates reports that distressed U.S. real estate fell by $4.7billion in January from October. But there’s still more than $166.9 billion in wonky properties still on the books.

“We think the decline in distress has begun and will continue in a meaningful way in 2012 and beyond if interest rates continue to cooperate and economic expansion picks up pace,” Delta analysts say. “The real test of the decline in the level of distressed assets will come in 2012 and 2013, with about $300 billion in loans coming due each year.”

Delta puts the Dallas-Fort Worth area more than half way down its list with about $5 billion in bad deals.

Read more at Commercial real estate market sees some improvement | Biz Beat Blog | dallasnews.com.

After many years of dramatically increasing home size in America – from an average of 983 square feet in the 1950s up to 2300 square feet in the 2000s, despite declining household sizes - the trend appears finally to be going in the other direction.  The real estate research firm Trulia found in 2010, for example, that the median “ideal home size” for Americans had declined to around 2100 square feet.  More than one-third of survey respondents reported that their ideal preference was lower than 2000 square feet.

Read more at What’s going on with new home sizes – is the madness finally over? | Kaid Benfield’s Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC.

Transportation costs don’t only bust the budgets of low-income households. As the price of gas rises, working- and middle-class families can find themselves in what the New America Foundation calls “the energy trap” 

Read more at Sustainable Development Makes Housing Affordable – Environment – GOOD.

PORTLAND — An invisible marker divides the pre-fabricated houses from grassy vineyards and cascading farmland just west of downtown Portland. This line — rooted in values, politics and planning — captures both the essence and extremes of managed growth.

Development stays limited to areas inside this urban growth boundary. An elected council determines the lines every five years. No city slows growth without consequences. The boundary boosts real estate prices and causes controversy. But Oregonians have come to embrace the preservation it allows.

Preservation is not a word much connected with Texas, a place rooted in expansionist pride and individual freedoms. Growth produces a robust economy that drives additional jobs, quality schools and the appealing security of a less urban environment.

But the state’s suburbs keep spreading as infrastructure erodes, water supplies dwindle and pastures disappear. Texas has no plan to combat the sprawl, although several North Texas communities have taken tentative steps to address it.

Portland’s metropolitan area showcases how state controls, regional collaboration and conservationist philosophy help lessen sprawl’s toll on the economic and physical landscape. And it reinforces how North Texas, with only minimal restrictions on development, will need to accept some constraints.

Read more at Rethinking the future of North Texas development | Dallas-Fort Worth Local Breaking News – News for Dallas, Texas – The Dallas Morning News.

Downtown Dallas Inc. recently hosted a record-breaking crowd of 1,300 for its annual meeting, presented by Ernst & Young LLP, at the Dallas Omni Convention Center Hotel. This year’s theme is a true call to action: Invest Yourself!

Keynote speaker Carol Coletta, former CEO of CEOs for Cities and current head of ArtPlace, a national initiative to accelerate creative place-making across the country, said it best: “You can’t have a successful city without a successful heart—a successful downtown—and vice versa.” Coletta said the urban lifestyle is “no longer an anecdote or a one-day story in USA Today, it is a four-decade trend that keeps accelerating.” In fact, she said, 85 percent of millennials say they prefer urban living. But urban living is not limited to just young adults. Average American homebuyers are paying premiums for homes that have higher “walk scores,” meaning they have more destinations within easy walking distance, Coletta said.

We continue to see this trend in downtown Dallas. The resident population now sits at 7,000 in the Central Business District, and 35,000 throughout our 15 districts that make up downtown.

Read more at Real Points » Blog Archive » John Crawford: Invest Yourself in Downtown Dallas.