The interior doesn’t look anything like the neatly furnished Ryan model, but I expect it never will. It’s not just the disorder of the move. The model didn’t have a colorful plastic slide in the middle of the family room, over which Kendal, a happy little girl with curly red hair, is clambering. Her toys are everywhere. “They’ve been in storage for the last two months, so when we unpacked it was like Christmas,” says Meghan.
She is putting away dishes and utensils in the kitchen. Scott is helping his father hook up the dishwasher. “We thought that the Ryan appliances were pretty expensive, so we got everything from a Scratch and Dent in Delaware,” he says. “The fridge is coming on Tuesday, so for now all our food is stored at the neighbors’, who moved in just before we did.” Meghan and Scott have already met the people in the house next door, as well as a young couple whose house is under construction on the other side. “You can’t ignore the neighbors,” says Meghan. “After all, you have to be a sociable person to want to live here. We noticed that the people down the street have little kids. We’ll probably walk over there this week and introduce ourselves. Friends for Kendal, friends for us.” For the moment, only four houses in New Daleville are occupied, but already a little community is beginning to form.
Meghan’s parents, who have just left, came up from Virginia to help with the move. Her father, as practical as his daughter, installed the blinds as well as ceiling fans. “Our first night here, the day we moved, was cool and breezy,” she says. “We all sat out on the porch. It was wonderful. There are no streetlights yet, and we could see clear sky and bright stars. And it was so quiet. The others finally turned in, but my father and I stayed out there a long time.”
Meghan had stored some of her furniture, as well as her piano, with her parents, who brought it up in a U-Haul, along with other things. “They’re downsizing at the same time as we’re upsizing,” she says. “So we’re getting all their stuff.” Exactly, I think, as I leave the house. As my chapter of the New Daleville story is drawing to a close, theirs is just beginning.
New Daleville is a classic tale of entrepreneurship, of risks and opportunities, plans and mishaps, ups and downs. Private money got the ball rolling. Despite unforeseen stumbling blocks and delays, the developers managed to transform a cornfield into permitted lots worth about $15 million. The home builders, at considerably less risk, are marketing the houses. Buyers have come — or not come — by individual choice. National economic forces have intervened. Prices have been modified, incentives offered, deals struck. The builders will make money, too, though not as much as in the heady years of the housing boom. They will also learn important lessons about marketing a neotraditional development: build the model homes early, create a sense of community as soon as possible. Two or three years from now, when all the houses have been sold, the development will represent a total investment by buyers and lenders of about $40 million. Based on historical experience elsewhere, this investment will increase in the future, to the benefit of the individual homeowners. All this is the result of an initial private investment of $2.5 million.
Of course, New Daleville is not simply about money, it’s about creating a community. When it’s complete, this neighborhood will not have the variegated appeal of a mature garden suburb such as Chestnut Hill. The trees will have to grow, the landscape will have to fill in, and the houses will have to develop the scuffed edges and small adjustments that give a place character. Vinyl doesn’t age as well as Wissahickon stone, but when it is eventually replaced, there will inevitably be more variety. At some point a house will be enlarged; another will be modified. Just as the Levittown houses sprouted shutters and dormers, the New Daleville houses will sprout — whatever is in fashion in forty years. The homeowner association will try to maintain uniform standards, but individuality will creep in, as it always does.
That is the lesson of Chestnut Hill and Levittown: community building takes time. Which is not to say that it doesn’t greatly matter what the developer builds in the first place. The architectural quality of George Woodward’s houses in Chestnut Hill has had long-lived appeal. The flexibility of Alfred Levitt’s designs has allowed future generations of homeowners to adapt and expand. At New Daleville, the public spaces will always serve to tie the houses together. The architecture may change, but the feeling of a neighborhood will endure. In all cases, the initial plans were only the first step in a long process: from developers to builders to homeowners.
Americans take this process for granted, but there are other ways to build communities. Some countries depend on centralized planning, in which the public authorities decide where people should live, and what kind of housing they should live in. Others rely on private builders but are strict about controlling the availability and use of land. The cities of the developing world, by contrast, depend on the unplanned and unregulated efforts of millions of individuals who build their own homes in so-called squatter or informal settlements, which eventually turn into urban neighborhoods.
For better or worse, America has always approached community building as a business. Developers and builders have proved proficient at providing the kind of housing that people want, at prices most of them can afford. Over the years, what people have wanted has changed, as reflected by the early garden suburbs, the mass-produced postwar subdivisions, and the master-planned communities of the prosperous decades that followed. Picture windows and carports one decade, dormers and porches the next. Today’s neotraditional developments are more than nostalgia, however; they are an expression of a taste for design, neighborliness, and sociability. What does the future hold? It could be a continued dispersal to the edge in yet farther-flung exurbs, some version of Wright’s Broadacre City, or a densification of the older suburbs to make them more townlike, more Unwinesque. Or likely both.
The market approach to community building has proved to be myopic as well as accommodating. Each development project is an isolated business venture — a New Daleville here, a Country Walk there — with little coordination among them. As Londonderry shows, sometimes the parts come together to make a whole, sometimes they don’t. Finding ways to establish and reinforce links among different developments remains a major challenge, for municipalities as well as for developers. In this process, places where land use is controlled by county governments will be better equipped to develop coordinated plans; in those parts of the country governed by fragmented home rule, piecemeal growth will likely continue.
The story of New Daleville is a small episode in the ongoing development of the United States, and it is repeated, in different versions, across the country. Joe and Jason Duckworth take their places beside the generations of land jobbers, speculators, subdividers, and real estate developers who have built communities across the nation, in cities and towns, suburbs and exurbs. Directly and indirectly, these entrepreneurs have shaped the way Americans live today — and will live tomorrow.
Postscript
New Daleville, September 2006
The housing market slowdown that began in the summer of 2006 continues into the fall. A variety of factors — uncertainty about interest rates, buyers’ concerns about the future, and house prices that have simply risen too high — has caused the market to stall. Home sales are dropping nationwide, and people who can’t sell their old homes are not in a hurry to buy new ones. Builders’ inventories grow. The prices of new houses stop rising in some regions, and are declining in others. While this is hardly a bursting bubble, the peak of the real estate boom is clearly over.
The first to bear the brunt of the downturn are the national builders, whose stock prices plummet. Corporate belt-tightening quickly follows. At New Daleville, having already cut prices, the builders take a second look at the models themselves. Certain special features that were included when the houses were first marketed — brick pathways, varnished front doors, nine-foot ceilings in the bedrooms — become extras. Even the trees that come with the houses are now slightly smaller.
Althoug
h projects such as Celebration and I’On have shown that buyers will sometimes pay more to live in a well-designed community, neotraditional developments are not immune from economic downturns. Nevertheless, despite the fact that August is traditionally a slow month, with families on vacation rather than house hunting, traffic at New Daleville actually increases, and continues into September. In two months NV and Ryan each sell four more houses, for a grand total of twenty. A local builder buys Arcadia’s five remaining house lots, as well as the commercial lot. It appears that the new strategy is working — at more competitive prices, New Daleville is finding buyers. It also helps that the marketing now emphasizes the community aspects of the development. Jason Duckworth and his assistant, Christy Flynn, are spending several hours each Sunday at the site, explaining the neighborhood concept to the sales reps — and to the buyers. Flynn brings her laptop and shows images of other neotraditional communities. Now prospective buyers hear not only about numbers of bedrooms and kitchen options, but also about public parks and walkable streets.
Tom Comitta suggested to Jason that the sales reps might benefit from more exposure to neotraditional ideas. Comitta also had thoughts about improving the boulevard by planting more London plane trees and adding a small gazebo (which Arcadia does). “The public realm must be implemented with the same attention to detail as the houses,” he tells me. “What’s needed is a town landscape architect.” Comitta is no longer working for Londonderry Township, but he remains interested in New Daleville for professional reasons. His practice has grown; in addition to advising municipalities, his office is now designing several subdivisions. Needless to say, they are all neotraditional. New Daleville hasn’t changed any of Comitta’s ideas about traditional neighborhood development. In his thoughtful way he is persistent. While acknowledging that planning theory sometimes comes up short against the realities of the marketplace, he remains as enthusiastic as ever about compact, walkable neighborhoods.
So far, with only ten houses occupied, New Daleville doesn’t look much like a neighborhood. Yet the invisible bonds of community are already beginning to form. According to Meghan Andress, her neighbors are friendly and outgoing. Since people are moving in one at a time, she meets them all. “We usually go for walks in the evening. People are out on their porches and we start talking,” she says. “They invite us in for a glass of wine. It’s neat.” Meghan’s daughter, Kendal, is going to swimming lessons with a new friend; Meghan and a neighbor down the street are planning a community cookout for the fall. How much this activity is encouraged by the proximity of the houses and the presence of front porches is difficult to say, but it’s hard not to believe that people are affected by their environment. Put them in a village, and they begin to behave like villagers.
Jason Duckworth tells me that until he talked to prospective buyers he expected they would be interested mainly in the houses, but he found that people understood — and liked — the idea of neighborliness. New Daleville’s slow start underlines the importance of demonstrating this idea as early as possible. In its next project, Arcadia will make sure that the model homes showcase community features such as ease of walking and common greens.
Developers learn on the job, and Jason has a long mental checklist. He agrees with Comitta that the landscaping can be improved. There needs to be more variety in the sizes and types of houses. He is also dissatisfied with some of the engineering details. The utility company had agreed to locate its equipment in the back lanes, but for lots accessed from the street, it has placed transformers and junction boxes next to the sidewalk, which is decidedly unattractive. He believes they can do better in the future.
For developers there’s always the next project. Jason, who is busy with several new subdivisions, is spending about half his time working on Arcadia’s large new development, Bryn Eyre. The permitting process has been remarkably swift, and construction is expected to begin in two years. The weakening housing market has not affected Arcadia’s plans. “We’re not pulling back at all,” he says. While an economic slowdown may last a year or two, developers’ time horizons for getting projects permitted are so much longer that they can’t afford to wait. In addition, a weak market creates new opportunities for land acquisition, as cancelled projects come up for sale. Jason and Christy are looking at more than twenty potential sites. As Joe Duckworth told my students, downturns hurt some developers and help others.
Successful developers are not the ones who make the most money in the good times, they’re the ones who survive the inevitable bad ones. All developers get caught unawares when the market adjusts, but Joe has been careful not to take on too much debt. He has either long-term options with land sellers, or signed contracts with builders. The only project in which he actually owned undeveloped land at the time of the slowdown was Bryn Eyre, but since that development will take twenty years to complete, he’s planned for at least two market corrections. So he is taking the current downturn in stride.
For Arcadia, New Daleville has been a roller-coaster ride. The earliest economic projections had shown a modest return on investment; after the builders’ auction, lot prices almost doubled; now, thanks to the delays and the weaker market, they are back to where they’d been at the beginning. “It’s not as good as I hoped it would be,” Duckworth says, “but it’s not a tragedy.” Nevertheless, the experience has taught him a lesson: neotraditional developments far out in a rural area are risky. The township wanted something different, but the market wasn’t quite ready for it. Developers tread a delicate path. They are agents of change, operating between the regulations — and desires — of local jurisdictions and the demands of the marketplace, and they must satisfy both. That isn’t always easy, and it’s rarely popular.
Four and a half years have passed since Tom Comitta convinced Londonderry Township to try a new sort of development. When I ask Tim Cassidy whether the experiment has converted his neighbors to the neotraditional approach, he says no. So far, most people continue to believe that higher density is not right for a rural community. The planning commission is currently reviewing no less than ten new subdivisions, but none resembles New Daleville; they don’t have community water or sewage systems, and lots will be half an acre or larger. That means more scatteration and more exurban growth.
At first glance New Daleville seems to be a case of a strong-willed board of supervisors, supported by a vocal minority on the planning commission, and a persistent developer, pushing an unpopular project through the process. Hardly a propitious model for the future. But the history of development is laden with similar examples. Many fail but some succeed. In any case, change takes time. New Daleville is still not finished. As subdivisions continue to be built in Londonderry — and there’s no doubt that they will be — public attitudes may change. Ten years from now, the small lots, the narrow streets, the public park, and the compact cluster of houses on Dr. Wrigley’s cornfield will all make sense.
October 2006
Acknowledgments
When I met Joe Duckworth, fifteen years ago during a Harvard summer workshop on house design, I was the teacher and he was the student. During the protracted writing of this book, these roles were reversed. I’m extremely grateful for our frank conversations, as well as for the open access that he provided to the Arcadia Land Company in general and the New Daleville project in particular. Thanks also to Jason Duckworth for his openhanded cooperation, his intelligent observations, and his enthusiastic and helpful assistance throughout. Dave Della Porta and Jim Weidner were patient with my questions and explained technical details. I would also like to acknowledge the help of other members of the New Daleville team: Bob Heuser, Jeff Miller, Simi Baer Kaplin, and Mike DiGeronimo. They were all unfailingly liberal with their time.
Tom Comitta helped me to see New Daleville from the local perspective and also steered me through the zoning literature. Tim Cassidy candidly explained the politics of Londonderry Township and gave me the benefit of his lifelong association with the place. T
hanks to Charlotte Wrigley for her reminiscences of the old family farm. Thanks also to Meghan and Scott Andress for generously sharing their time and experiences. I hope they enjoy their new home.
Successful developers are realistic dreamers. Several provided me with valuable professional insights, in particular Robert Davis and Vince Graham, whom I have known and admired for many years. I have written extensively about home building and development, and my conversations with Tom Natelli, Dwight Schar, Robert I. Toll, David Weekley, and the late Charles E. Fraser also informed this book. Thanks, also, to Dick Dilsheimer and Brad Haber. At NVR I want to thank Rick King, Mike Linthicum, Carmela Bond, Greg Norbeck, and especially Kristi Oliveira, for taking the trouble to respond to my too-frequent e-mail questions and telephone calls about their business. Thanks to Amber Britton of Meredith Pepper Inc. for her comments about home decoration.
My appreciation to Peter Linneman, my friend and coeditor at the Wharton Real Estate Review, in which a number of articles — by myself and others — prepared the way for this book. Thanks, too, to my Wharton School colleagues Joe Gyourko, Georgette Phillips, and Todd Sinai. At the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, David De Long shared his thoughts about Broadacre City over several agreeable lunches, John Keene explained legal issues in land development, and Jonathan Barnett recalled the early days of New Urbanism. Several architects who are active in neotraditional planning provided helpful observations and recollections, in particular Robert A. M. Stern, JaquelinT. Robertson, John Massengale, Melanie Taylor, and not least, my friend Andrés Duany. My appreciation to my capable research assistants, Acalya Kiyak, Fernando Moreira, and Ann Lutun.
Last Harvest: From Cornfield to New Town Page 26
