“Smart Growth” the Perfect Product for Retiring Boomers; Urban Dwelling Gen X and Y?

[Jay Everett]

Last Friday I attended an Urban Land Institute event, the speaker was Gregg Logan, Managing Director Robert Charles Lesser & Company, he is considered an industry expert in market evaluation, strategic planning, and economic development. The title of his presentation was “Future of Real Estate: Success in a Down Market”.

I found the information he had to share very compelling. Especially his firm’s findings on Demographic Shifts and Housing Demand:

Between down-sizing Boomers looking for “Safe-Urbanism”, Gen X’ers willing to raise their children in the city, and a flood of urban-lifestyle-seeking Millennials graduating from college, could it be that we are on the verge of a very different kind of building boom?

Is density about to make a comeback? What do you think?

[Kevin J. Gaughan]

I think it is. It would really help if we could somehow help to make it easier for developers to do more infill projects and take advantage of a lot of the infrastructure we already have in place. Why do we need to create new Urban Centers when we already have so many established ones in place.

[Jay Everett]

Municipalities have several tools to help them make infill projects more attractive to developers; tax incentives (which may have limits) and federal and state enhancement grants to improve existing infrastructure, but there are also other sources of funding such as Tax Increment Financing. Making it easier for developers to do infill projects is as simple as making it make economic since to them, right now it is hard for infill projects to compete with greenfield developments, but I think the data suggests that the economic viability of infill projects will continue to increase over the next decade as more consumers start looking for these types of products.

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