A streetscape of single-family houses in Fairview Village, Oregon. Photo by Jason Miller.

The American suburban backlash is alive and well, epitomized in such successful traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs) as Kentlands, Harbor Town and Newpoint. These TNDs and scores of others integrate their amenities into pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods that emphasize the concept of community and independence from the almighty automobile, which dominates the lifestyles of those who choose to live in conventional suburban developments (CSDs).

TND advocates—new urbanists—have used strong words such as "unsustainable, segregated, short-sighted and without choice" to describe the CSDs that have proliferated during the past 50 years—words that may well describe the TND movement in the next 50. In fact, without immediate change, the TND projects of today may in the near future be rejected and regarded as icons to short-sightedness in the same way that deteriorating suburban retail malls stand as icons to sprawl.

The New Urbanism movement must immediately require the incorporation of universal design, (UD), into the homes built in all neotraditional projects if the TND principles that are so passionately advocated today are to have lasting value.

This kitchen offers work spaces, appliances and traffic lanes that are appropriate for all ages and capabilities. Photo courtesy of Wellborn Cabinet, Inc.

Universal design is the art of creating environments and products that are attractive and user friendly for people of all ages and abilities. The late Ron Mace, FAIA, coined the term and originated the concept some 20 years ago. Mr. Mace founded the Center for Universal Design, which is at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

Universal design is the only design framework that consciously designs to accommodate peoples' differences—not their similarities. Those familiar with product development history will know that many products and environments we live with today are the result of products developed for use by the military's ideal subject; i.e., the six-foot, 190-pound, healthy, strong male.

Universal design also seeks to accommodate the military ideal, plus the majority of other users who do not fit that physical type. If done well, the result is an attractive product that each user finds superior for his or her own circumstances. Not surprisingly, such products sell better; therefore, universal design is also a powerful marketing tool.

An elevated dishwasher cabinet. Photo courtesy of Wellborn Cabinet, Inc.

As an example, let's look at elevated dishwasher cabinets. The typical under-counter cabinet opening for dishwashers has been used for years. It's a great choice for the installers because it maintains a uniform cabinet configuration and countertop. The end user and subsequent service people don't fare quite so well, though: They are sentenced to the daily task of stooping and bending to use the machine. Who hasn't been on their hands and knees searching for silverware that has escaped the utensil basket?

A better universal design choice is to raise the cabinet. Doing so reduces bending, facilitates a more efficient repetitive motion, brings the controls into better view and offers a higher countertop, which is more usable for fine cutting and use by taller residents. Raised dishwashers are, at the least, equally attractive and are available in standard, pre-made "box" cabinets.

While universal design techniques can be applied appropriately to all designed products and environments, my specific interest is the application of universal design to the housing industry, where UD is recognized as one of the hottest new-home concepts in housing today. UD is currently benefiting from both a market pull and a policy push.

Texas home designer Larry Garnett's response to a Professional Builder Magazine marketing study of Baby Boomers: plan L-0004-UDA. While not a poster child for strict UD concepts, the home takes definite strides toward providing a more sensitive environment for retirement age and beyond.

The aging baby boomer, now a significant force in the housing market, has a proven appetite for nontraditional concepts that accommodate their actual diversity and perceived individuality. Research by both AARP and Professional Builder Magazine indicates that the aging boomer market segment desires UD in their home. They intend to enjoy an active lifestyle on their own terms, regardless of age or circumstance. They desire flexibility and inclusivity. Consistent with the boomer mantra, they want it all. UD is a step toward accommodating this ideal in housing.

Government policy is also pushing the housing industry toward the adoption of universal design principles. Policymakers realize that we can't easily continue to care for the aging of America in higher-cost institutional settings. In response, the Administration on Aging recently helped establish the Senior Housing Research Center, an arm of the National Association of Home Builders Research Center. The purpose is to identify housing-related products and design strategies that better equip builders to build the age-friendly home in Anytown, USA. The desired outcome is to better accommodate our aging population in the home environment.

Universal design is positioned to make an important contribution to the housing of our society over the next twenty years. And nowhere is that contribution more appropriate than when married with the concepts of the New Urbanism. The application of universal design theory to new housing perfectly complements the TND philosophy in development. In fact, the similarities between TND community planning and universal design home planning is so striking, it is astonishing that the two concepts have not yet been unified.

People-centered design
Universal design designs toward how people actually use a space and how best to utilize the features to deliver people-oriented benefits. For example, universal design advocates the inclusion of work surfaces at varying heights.

Varying counter heights serve various users of varying stature, including those who prefer to (or must) sit while working. These counters also better accommodate different tasks. Chopping walnuts into fine pieces is best accomplished at a tall counter. Cutting frozen cookie dough requires greater leverage and is easier at a lower counter.

A pocket door spans the wide, no-step entry to this bathroom. Note the open storage and supplemental sink to the left and right of the doorway. Photo courtesy Johnson Hardware.

Long-term consequences vs. short-term solutions
Universal design advocates the provision of wider passage doors, (perhaps 3'-0"), in bathrooms. Selecting the now-standard 2'-0" door allows home designers to use the same guest bath in a new home they have always used and the market has apparently accepted. Doing so avoids having to rethink cabinet placement, toilet location, utilization of open floor space and alteration of estimating and purchasing formulas. The 2'-0" door is an obvious short-term choice.

Long term, however, the consequences beg a different approach. Grandma's 80th birthday celebration is memorable, but anything but a celebration as she or her friends who use walkers can't use the bathroom. Pregnant mothers-to-be find the frequent bathroom visits to be less than pleasant indicators of their growing circumference. And the future remodeling contractor enjoys an extra handful of your dollars in their pocket for the additional effort required to break the old bathtub into smaller pieces before he or she can remove it.

Technically and culturally sustainable
Universal design in housing is one step toward delivering in a more cost-effective way the lifestyle independence the majority of the market desires. No one is more cognizant of that fact than our government.

By the year 2005, nursing care cost in the U.S. will exceed $130 billion, up from $89 billion in 1998. Our government pays 57 percent of those costs. Equipping homes to better allow cost-effective, at-home care is a strategy worth pursuing.

Generations can meet and interact more easily at a sink that accommodates both of them. Photo by Ronald Mace, FAIA.

In one study, elderly households spent on average $17,000 less over an 18-month period when assistive devices and environmental interventions were present in the home, compared to elderly households in homes without such changes. And not surprisingly, generally the individuals within the altered environments were also more satisfied and experienced less physical decline.

Culturally, UD provides for the integration of families and households. People of all ages and abilities can coexist both inside and outside the home when TND is combined with UD. And we're learning that a significant desire of most families is that satisfying interaction, today and every day.

Universal design advocates the inclusion of an area at the sink for seated work. Most believe that this feature is motivated by a need to reduce strain on elderly arms and backs. While accurate as a benefit, as a primary motivator it is a myth. Through market analysis and focus group work, we have learned that the primary motivator is a want to be independent and maintain family interaction in the kitchen.

The foremost market benefit of UD is lifestyle enhancement through family interaction; i.e., to be culturally sustainable, then, secondarily, to fulfill a physical need.

Expansion of residents' choices
Because UD designs toward people's physical and activity differences, UD offers a design framework that offers choice to a wider segment of our population. This makes UD a great marketing strategy and a logical extension of TND theory.

Tight integration
Universal design perceives the home as an activity facilitator for residents in the same way New Urbanism positions the neighborhood. The neotraditional neighborhood is a highly desirable environment for the young, the busy, the disabled and the elderly. Universal design provides the same integration theory within the home—creating a flexible, adaptable and user-efficient space. Each area of the home is designed to accommodate the daily activities of the young, the old, the disabled and the busy.

One example is the no-step entry, which young children can better and more safely navigate. Where busy executives can roll their suitcases. Where grocery delivery staff can efficiently bring packages to elderly residents. Where those with vision challenges can confidently return from their nearby workplace. And where neighborhood daycare providers can roll wagons full of children to the town square.

I can't think of a more appropriate setting for a UD home than within a TND neighborhood, since each resident can be assured of the maximum potential to engage in daily life inside and outside of the home.

Without UD in TND housing, however, new urbanist neighborhoods could quickly become underutilized, segregated pockets marked by housing where the people-friendly benefits end at each home's porch railing. Current TND residents will be prevented from using the daily privileges and necessities of life so carefully planned within walking distance of their home. Others will be forced to leave prematurely as they seek other home environments that better accommodate any number of common life changes.

As absurd as it sounds, in many celebrated TND projects today, most elderly—and certainly the disabled—who desire to enjoy the neighborhood conveniences and TND lifestyle must drive to the project from more user-friendly housing forms, engage in their activity, and return from whence they came via automobile. What a surprising paradox!

Let's take a lesson from history. Without the incorporation of UD in new housing, neotraditional neighborhoods will fare no better in the long term than those communities that were built during the early 1900s.

History's lesson: The cost of retrofitting
Many aging residents appreciate the conveniences and familiarity of their homes and traditional neighborhoods—the very neighborhoods (and urban examples) from which the New Urbanism takes its cues. Overwhelmingly researchers tell us these residents desire to "age in place" in these familiar surroundings. They prefer an independent lifestyle near family, friends, their grocer, banker, and pastor or rabbi.

The Hopedale Town Hall in Hopedale, Massachusetts. Top photo shows the Romanesque structure as it was originally built. Middle and bottom photos show its recent retrofit, which provides easy access for all patrons. Photos courtesy of Nichols Design Associates, Inc.

We now know that this independent lifestyle can be costly if attempted from an inappropriate home environment like most created during the early 1900s. In these existing traditional neighborhoods you will see expensive government programs being put in place to modify homes. You will see additional strain on social services and caregiving programs as they seek to provide services in these homes. You will see psychological effects from isolation when the resident is held captive by their home, prevented from enjoying the conveniences nearby or hosting friends. And you will see the tremendous medical expense incurred for additional care or recovery from accidents in the home.

A review of the agendas of leading agencies serving our aging populations in well-integrated, older neighborhoods, reveals deliberate programs backed by substantial investments designed to meet the challenges of aging in inappropriate housing within integrated urban environments. Agencies such as Wilder in St. Paul, Minn.; the Andrus Gerontological Center; AARP and the Philadelphia Corporation on Aging all have similar stories to tell.

In Philadelphia's neighborhoods, for example, 90 percent of the elderly live in housing built before 1939. Philadelphia has at least two resulting problems:

1. Providing cost-effective home modification and social services to residents in these age-insensitive homes.
2. Handling the homes abandoned by residents who have had to prematurely leave for more appropriate housing forms and higher-cost institutional care. Many such residents refuse to sell their home, believing that some day they will return to their beloved integrated neighborhood.

Having had their share of struggles with homes of history, the Philadelphia Corporation on Aging supported and saw legislation approved that requires wider doors, first-floor bathrooms and no-step entries for new homes using public dollars. Similar ordinances are now on the books in Atlanta, Austin and other cities.

Susan Klein, housing director for the Philadelphia Corporation on Aging, says, "We need to—everyone needs to—quit repeating mistakes when we build homes. Every time I look at a house I now think, who is going to be living in that house years from now."

There is so much that is good about neotraditional neighborhood development. In particular, the pioneers of this concept have improved on a wonderfully classic recipe for people-friendly neighborhoods, sustainable planning, timeless aesthetics and integrated land use.

To date, the New Urbanism has been advanced by a relatively cohesive group of top planners, architects and public officials. It's now time to separate the new urbanist elite from the new urbanist ordinary. To see who has what it takes to expand the TND concept beyond the porch railing and into the home itself.

It will take committed professionals at the elite level to stand up to the challenge. To create no-step entry homes that define the streetscape and preserve the character and proportion of the home. To provide sustainable choice for people of all ages and abilities. To give more than lip service to the notion that TND designers value more how their works live than how they look.

Are you up to the challenge?

Sources: AARP Research Report: "Fixing To Stay," May 2000; Professional Builder: "Aging Baby Boomers: What We Know, What We Don't Know," April 2000; National Institute of Standards and Technology, Public Affairs—National Care Costs, October 2000; Archives of Family Medicine: "Effectiveness of Assistive Technology and Environmental Interventions in Maintaining Independence and Reducing Home Care Costs," May/June 1999; Susan Klein as quoted in The Dallas Morning News, March 4, 2001.

Commentary published on TNDhomes.com does not necessarily express the opinions of Homestore Plans and Publications nor those of the editor of TNDhomes.com. Although in this case, the editor is completely on board with this writer's views.