Condos, Downsizing, Retirement, Trends

The Future: Big Picture

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist based out of Kirkland. Here is a video of an interview in which he talks about the future of Atlanta from a wide perspective. He could be talking about Seattle, or any other major American city. The formative factors are the environment, energy, technology and an aging population. Watch the video to see how he puts them all together. Applying what he said, Seattle seems to be progressing along in its own unique way in term of transportation and land use planning. The one piece that will be the most difficult to address is the need for affordable housing for aging boomers.

According to Hiemstra, most of the aging boomers will want to be near family. And family is……everywhere. Dwellings will need to be about half the size of what we are accustomed to, or 1200 to 2000 square feet, if they are condos they need to be accessable with as few steps as possible, in a walkable neighborhood, and close to accessable public transportation.

Being a north end resident all of my life, I can think of a few developments that hit all of the requirements that hit on all cylinders, and many more that hit on some. The ones that have it all are in neighborhoods that are walkable and have transportation right now, such as Ballard, Wallingford, Greenlake, Queen Anne. Outside of the older neighborhoods, other neighborhood have their local higher density areas of condos, some in areas that are walkable and others that are not. Then there are the recent planned larger developments with their own center of gravity like Point Edwards in Edmonds, and the mother of all transit oriented developments, Thornton Place at Northgate. There are also other areas that were built in the 1970’s for the leisure retired population like in the Sand Point area, that worked well for a car oriented culture, but come up short for safe, walkable, interesting neighborhoods.
Not surprisingly, the large newer developments are priced at high levels, and the older or smaller developments are are at more affordable levels. It will be interesting to see what buyers in our “reset” economy will be willing to pay.