Strong communities, independent seniors
An excellent Star front-page article today tells us the story of Dorothy Gooding, a 92-year-old whose driver’s license was revoked. “When they took my wheels, they cut off my legs,” Gooding said. “I felt trapped.”
By 2010, almost one-third of our residents will be seniors, and almost one-half of them will be unable to drive. In Tucson, we have created a community with very few transportation choices besides the car. That means those who cannot drive are too often condemned to lives of isolation and dependence. I know of seniors living up in Continental Ranch who feel imprisoned in a neighborhood designed only for those with wheels.
This is one of the reasons I led the Citizens Transportation Initiative (to dramatically increase public investment in SunTran, VanTran, light rail, sidewalks, bikeways, and neighborhood street maintenance at a cost to the average household of less than $29 a year) which we placed on the ballot in November 2003. We must create the community resources that we all will need to maintain our independence as we age and to enable all seniors to contribute to our society. I continue to push for better public transit regionwide as a member of the Regional Transportation Authority Citizen Advisory Committee.
St Luke’s Hospital has a policy branch which in 2002 released a study (1.6MB PDF) on the implications of Arizona’s aging population for public policy. While much of the report deals with public health policy, large sections talked at length on the need for us to develop comprehensive public transit systems, and to change the way we build neighborhoods and commercial districts to increase walkability and sustainability.
Please allow me to quote the report at length, because this is important for all of us, no matter what our age:
America has presided for fifty years, without any conscious plan, over a pattern of incipient separatism — the affinity principle running rampant over traditional community form. For many Americans with the affluence to choose, homogeneity is a real estate goal. It’s been seen as the key to safety and stable property values.
In recent years, however, recognition has taken root that such places may not be communities with the capacity to support residents. While many will continue to prefer that lifestyle, there are serious signs that the market is shifting. Now, people are looking increasingly for places to live that are not anonymous house collections, where it is possible to walk without competing with cars, where some of life’s amenities don’t require an automobile to get you there. This “new urbanism” has become the hottest trend in real estate. It’s not all that new, since, it is really a return to the traditional structure of a community. Even older suburbs are scrambling to retrofit community gathering places where none ever existed.
What’s the connection of this trend to aging Arizonans? These are communities that accommodate the full life cycle of housing. They’re comfortable with differences. You expect to see old people, along with young. The grocery store and dry cleaners are within walking distance, as are the library branch, drug store, post office and maybe a small clinic or a school with continuing education courses. Today’s elders remember these communities. Most grew up in them. Many are nostalgic about the old neighborhoods, while others who are younger are seeking to capture a sense of community they feel they’ve lacked.
The problem is that typical city planning remains hostile to nearly every aspect of this kind of community development, from the width of streets to lot and house sizes and to mixing the uses in a town center.
This can be changed, as can any other policy problem, with political pressure. Pressure to replace those ordinances with a code that describes the kind of community people want. These codes are now beginning to be adopted in cities and towns across the country.
In addition to rebuilding a sense of community through the design of housing, streets and town centers, communities could do a hundred other things to make themselves friendly places for elders to live — better lighting and larger type on critical signs, for example. Communities are where volunteers live, too, and where community organizations whose mission it is to assist elders can best reach them. Most Arizonans responded to this project’s survey with a strong sentiment to stay where they are. Strengthening communities may be the most cost-effective strategy for shoring up Arizona’s capacity to care.
This is also my vision for Tucson’s community form. And it is all the more important that we act now, as we face rising oil prices, decreasing federal support for community programs, sprawl-threatened open space, increasing pollution and congestion. We need to strengthen our communities in physical and spiritual ways to solve our problems together. We can do this.