by Eric Fredericks on July 3, 2010
I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and the article appeared in yesterday’s Real Estate section. The article is titled “A Walker’s Guide to Home Buying.” Here is the paragraph to which I contributed:
“A walkable neighborhood doesn’t necessarily have to be in the city center. And it doesn’t have to be more expensive. Eric Fredericks decided in September that, with the housing tax credit, it made more sense to buy than to keep renting. Planning on kids, he and his wife wanted a three-bedroom house in Sacramento, Calif. “We never considered living in suburbia,” he says. But they found a new development in a suburb called Rancho Cordova organized around a main street, with stores and restaurants. Their 2009 house is six inches away from the house next door and a couple of blocks from the town center. It cost $240,000, half what he says he would have paid for a comparable place downtown.”
You can read more of the article here.
I really enjoyed being featured as the “human element” of the article. I think if Ms. Keates had mentioned that I was an urban planner or walkability consultant, then the message probably would not be as effective. I hope the article will plant a seed in the mind of someone that may not have thought about living in a walkable neighborhood before, but might now consider it an important factor in their future moving decisions.
The article didn’t mention the name of my neighborhood, Capital Village (pictured above), or that we live within a short walk of my wife Sarah’s office. I am going to write more about Capital Village in weeks to come.
A special thanks to Ms. Keates for writing an excellent article.
by Eric Fredericks on June 6, 2010
My long hiatus from posting on this website has finally come to an end. I have had some recent big life changes: I got married, bought a house in a New Urbanist-style neighborhood in Rancho Cordova, CA, and have been going full-speed ahead working to bring true high-speed rail to California. I have also been working on some new business ventures that have taken up quite a bit of my free time. Those of you reading this post on the website may notice that it’s undergone some major changes too (please pardon the dust, I am still putting the finishing touches on the layout and content).
Despite all of this, I am probably just as active as ever in promoting walk- and bike-friendly communities. Locally, I have had the privilege (and enjoyment) to serve as the president of WALKSacramento, a fantastic regionally-focused non-profit organization. A couple weeks ago, I led a workshop in Troy, Ohio to train planners and engineers how to create walkable communities. That evening, I also gave a presentation to the general public and elected officials of Troy.
I promised the workshop and presentation participants that I would share my slides on my website following the workshop. I am providing the slides in PPTX format, but if you’d like it in another format, feel free to contact me (note the PDF version is just as large).
Troy Presentation [PPTX]
One thing that I did not mention during the presentations is that all but a couple of photos I used are my own. I put most of my photos up on my public Flickr account and anyone is free to use them provided they give credit. You can access my Flickr account here. I’ve made over 8,000 of my photos public with several thousand more to come.
I want to again thank the presentation sponsors: Troy Community Works, the Miami Valley Chapter of APA Ohio, the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission, and the Miami River Foods Project. A special thanks to the City of Troy for providing the projector and the replacement projector, and the Hayner Cultural Center for providing such a great venue.
If anyone has any questions about particular slides or has any follow up questions, feel free to contact me at eric (@) neighborhoods (dot )org.
