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Granny Cleansing
The Free Lance-Star - July 6, 2003
What's really wrong with Stafford County's
planned retirement community
THE STAFFORD COUNTY
supervisors' 5-2 vote on Tuesday that allows the Silver Cos. to build a
1,450-home retirement settlement in south Stafford can be criticized on
sundry grounds. Maybe the board shouldn't have changed zoning rules to
sate the land-use desires of the Silver Cos., which at first said it would
put offices on that part of Celebrate Virginia. Or maybe the several
million the developer intends to offer up in the deal will fall short of
offsetting the mobility and other demands of a few thousand still-perky
pensioners. (You need be but 55 to own one of the digs.)
But the "active adult" community planned
for Celebrate North raises what we in the thumb-sucking trade like to call
a Larger Issue, which should command the attention of future political
bodies. Namely, is it wise social policy to facilitate the segregation of
Americans into age-restrictive subdivisions?
The community envisioned by the Silver
Cos. may legally exclude children. It surely will functionally do so: Most
55-year-olds have already nudged the kids out the door (if not changed the
locks and, perhaps, dug a small moat). Such communities merely formalize a
trend that began after World War II in that archetypical American
confection, the suburb. Today, in many subdivisions, it's uncommon to see
an old person unless he or she is visiting. In the Stafford-favored
retirement community, the only young persons will be visitors. This
bifurcation-by-birthday is surely a loss for all generations.
It did not happen by accident. As
architecture expert Catesby Leigh writes in the current National Review
magazine, "The suburban blueprint"--the postwar redesign of communities by
federal and local officials to serve automobile travel--"puts old folks at
a disadvantage. Alleys were banned under postwar zoning codes--and with
them, the granny flats that could accommodate elderly in-laws. The new
automotive scale also was no help to those too old or infirm to drive,
especially when single-use zoning put the daily necessities outside
walking range."
Some modern homes seek to replicate the
granny flat in the "mother-in-law suite." But these have a way of morphing
into glorified guest bedrooms, rec rooms, or junk depositories. And they
often don't meet the need for a measure of independence--of actually
having one's own place--felt by many elderly people. Granny flats, garage
apartments, and carriage houses--what the New Urbanism terms "accessory
dwelling units"--do. An added benefit of these units, notes New Urban
News, is "safer and more lively alleys. With more 'eyes on the street,'
children and adults are more likely to use the alley for play and
socialization."
A society deprived of routine
interactions between children and old people--between small human packages
of wonder, mischief, and energy and walking gray troves of wisdom,
cracking good stories, and pent-up affection--is a poorer society.
Moreover, age-segregated communities may pit generations against each
other. Stafford's Elderville, for example, likely will show little support
for new taxes to improve schools that its children don't attend. Baby
boomers, who are about to start being very expensive to the rest of
America, should pause before they blithely foster calendar-tied
antagonisms.
Oddly, many ideological conservatives
stoutly defend suburbia--maybe because a lot of Republicans live there.
But conservatives should consider what the creation of isolated
subdivisions, in many cases, primarily serves--government. The Stafford
board approved the proffer-sweet Silver Cos. proposal as a way to escape a
financial jam caused by poorly planned past residential building. And
conservatives should conserve. "There is a repressed demand out there,"
writes Mr. Leigh, "because the cultural memory of many, many Americans
does embrace the historic town"--a place where old people, younger adults,
and kids were not strange sights to one another.
Date published: July 6, 2003
http://www.freelancestar.com/News/FLS/2003/072003/07062003/1027349
Reprinted with permission by Paul Akers from The Free Lance-Star. |
