For the hip home seeker who longs to be near great food and culture, neighborhoods in a city’s downtown area hold a nearly irresistible attraction. The “urban core” typically has a higher crime rate and less favorable schools than the suburbs, but many downtown areas across the country are undergoing a revitalization of sorts, as cities invest in projects and amenities to attract new residents. And as more people look for alternatives to long commutes and urban sprawl, homebuyers are flocking to the urban core. Homes in urban core neighborhoods come in a variety of styles, such as these brownstones in Boston.
Advantages of Urban Core
Professional writer Toni Kamins has owned a co-op in Manhattan’s trendy West Village for 16 years. “What I most appreciate is the constant availability of just about anything you want,” she says. “I know I miss that when I go out of town.” In a centrally located urban neighborhood, you can typically walk or take a bus, taxi or subway to restaurants, bars, shops, museums, libraries and parks — not to mention use public transportation or your own two feet to get to work each day.
About the Neighborhoods
Homes in the urban core can be skyscraper apartments, converted lofts in old warehouses, spaces above operating businesses, row houses, brownstones — if someone can build it, someone else will figure out a way to live in it. Neighborhoods often vary widely in demographic and socioeconomic development, sometimes even from block to block. Bob Eychner, a real estate broker and owner of Eychner Associates, Inc., in Greenwich Village, remembers trying to sell homes in a very different West Village in the early 1980s. “I can vividly remember the last block of West 12th Street,” he says. “I’d drag customers over there to try to sell them something. There was a banner up that read, ‘Hookers and johns beware! We are taking your license plate number.’ So I trumpeted the strong neighborhood watch system. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.”
But the West Village experienced a fairly common phenomenon for cities: a series of historical landmark designations began to prohibit old buildings from being torn down and new high-rises from going up, preserving the neighborhood’s architectural character. This move eventually attracted buyers and crime rates fell. “We moved to the West Village because it’s charming,” Kamins says. “It’s sort of got a small-town feel within Manhattan. It was, at one point, a lot quieter than other parts of the city.”
Climbing Popularity — and Prices
Trouble is, urban core neighborhoods by nature have defined geographic limits, so it’s difficult to keep a great little spot all to yourself. “In the last eight to 10 years, this area has become white-hot,” Kamins says. “It’s absolutely ridiculous. We get a lot of TV and movie crews — Sex and the City was always filming here.” Demand for such unique space can attract crowds and everything that comes with them: noise, congestion and skyrocketing prices.
“Prices are nuts,” Kamins admits. “We paid high prices 16 years ago for this place but nowhere near what they’re paying now.”
Cost of living in the urban core is a major issue to consider, because the real estate market there may not reflect what’s going on in other parts of the country — or even other parts of the same city. “The average number of days on the market for homes in Manhattan has increased in the last year,” Eychner says, “but our inventory has not increased.” Translation: prices aren’t rising as fast as they were, but they’re rising. In vibrant cities, someone will always covet access to great spaces.
Living downtown can sometimes mean getting rid of your car and all the expenses it entails, but the savings can be more than offset by steep mortgages, monthly condo or co-op fees, and increased living expenses. “Co-op and condo fees in Manhattan generally run anywhere from $1 to $4 per square foot per month, depending on the level of service provided by your building,” Eychner says. (In smaller cities, fees tend to be less than $1 per square foot.) “You should also budget for more expensive restaurants. And if you do have a car, parking can be insane.”
In smaller metropolitan areas, core neighborhoods often feature a diverse selection of properties with a wide price range. But be advised that in a given neighborhood, converted lofts and condominiums may arrive long before the amenities do; you may buy into the urban aesthetic but end up waiting a few years for jobs, restaurants and shops to follow your lead.

Turfgrass lawns help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it as organic carbon in soil, making them important “carbon sinks.” However, greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices are similar to or greater than the amount of carbon stored by ornamental grass in parks, a UC Irvine study shows.
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These emissions include nitrous oxide released from soil after fertilization. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that’s 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, the Earth’s most problematic climate warmer.
“Lawns look great – they’re nice and green and healthy, and they’re photosynthesizing a lot of organic carbon. But the carbon-storing benefits of lawns can be counteracted by greenhouse gas emissions,” said Amy Townsend-Small, Earth system science postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study, forthcoming in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The research results are important to greenhouse gas legislation being negotiated. “We need this kind of carbon accounting to help reduce global warming,” Townsend-Small said. “The current trend is to count the carbon sinks and forget about the greenhouse gas emissions, but it clearly isn’t enough.”

Turfgrass is increasingly widespread in urban areas and covers 1.9 percent of land in the continental U.S., making it the most common irrigated crop.

In the study, Townsend-Small and colleague Claudia Czimczik analyzed grass in four parks near Irvine, Calif. Each park contained two types of turf: ornamental lawns (picnic areas) that are largely undisturbed, and athletic fields (soccer and baseball) that are trampled and replanted and aerated frequently.

The researchers evaluated soil samples over time to ascertain carbon storage, or sequestration, and they determined nitrous oxide emissions by sampling air above the turf. Then they calculated carbon dioxide emissions resulting from fuel consumption, irrigation and fertilizer production using information about lawn upkeep from park officials and contractors.

The study showed that nitrous oxide emissions from lawns were comparable to those found in agricultural farms, which are among the largest emitters of nitrous oxide globally.

In ornamental lawns, nitrous oxide emissions from fertilization offset just 10 percent to 30 percent of carbon sequestration. But fossil fuel consumption for management, the researchers calculated, released almost as much or more carbon dioxide than the plots could take up, depending on management intensity. Athletic fields fared even worse, because – due to soil disruption by tilling and resodding – they didn’t trap nearly as much carbon as ornamental grass but required the same emissions-producing care.

“It’s unlikely for these lawns to act as net greenhouse gas sinks because too much energy is used to maintain them,” Townsend-Small concluded.

Previous studies have documented lawns storing carbon, but this research was the first to compare carbon sequestration to nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide emissions from lawn grooming practices.

The UCI study was supported by the Kearney Foundation of Soil Science and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UCI is among the most dynamic campuses in the University of California system, with nearly 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,100 faculty and 9,000 staff. Orange County’s largest employer, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3.9 billion.

News Radio: UCI maintains on campus an ISDN line for conducting interviews with its faculty and experts. Use of this line is available for a fee to radio news programs/stations that wish to interview UCI faculty and experts. Use of the ISDN line is subject to availability and approval by the university.

But never fear, there are ways to make the most of a small space. You just have to be a little creative with the space you have. Here a few tips to help you make the most of a small space:

1. Buy storage-friendly furniture. There are many items you can buy that have hidden storage in them. Coffee tables that open up into a trunk, beds with drawers underneath, end-tables with drawers and shelves, TV consoles with DVD storage underneath. These types of furniture will provide a home for your things while keeping them hidden from view so you don’t have to look at a lot of clutter.

2. Make use of the space under your bed. If you don’t have built in drawers under your bed, you can pick up some cheap plastic containers that are made to fit under beds. You can store out of season clothing here to make room in your closets, or store other things that you don’t use every day.

3. Use your closet space. Closet space may seem limited, but you can optimize your closets. Make good use of the space above and below your clothes by adding a shelf for your shoes. Fold your sweaters and put them on the top shelf or simply use it as storage. The floor of your closet can also be used to store boxes.

4. Think small. Many stores sell storage units that are made to go in small spaces. You can buy narrow shelves that are meant to go in tight spaces in kitchens. These are good for storing canned or dried foods.

5. Use the walls. One place that many people don’t think of to use as storage is the wall space. You can easily mount a spice rack to the wall in the kitchen. You can also mount shelves to the wall to store books or family photos.

6. Feng Shui. It might sound cheesy, but this ancient Chinese practice can really make a huge difference in the way a small space feels. By using feng shui principles to arrange the furniture in each room, you can make a small space seem larger and more homey.

Keep in mind that in order to make your new home feel spacious and clean, it’s important not to have a lot of clutter around. Using these ideas will help improve the amount of storage space you have and help make your new home be a pleasant place to live. With a little creativity you can easily make your new home a clutter-free place and organized place to be.

High fuel prices and walkability are key factors in many downtown buyers’ decision.

The quintessential American dream used to include a suburban house with big yard, but homebuyers are increasingly dreaming of a walkable urban lifestyle along with their dog and two kids.
Flight from urban areas began after World War II, when thousands of returning soldiers and their young families needed inexpensive housing. In Leviitown, an early Long Island, N.Y., suburb, developers built more than 17,000 virtually identical Cape Cods. The development served as a model for later ‘burbs, and the middle class migration out of the city continued until a peak in the 1980s.
A decade ago, downtown dwellers were rare outside metropolitan hubs like Philadelphia, New York and Chicago. Today, even in a struggling real estate market, property values are high for downtown listings — and so is buyer demand.
“The housing market collapse really hasn’t impacted Denver urban buyers. Inventory is low, and lots of buyers are sitting on the sidelines waiting for a property,” says John Skrabec, owner of Live Urban Real Estate in Denver, Colo. “If a downtown home is priced right and shows well, it sells quickly.”
So what’s driving buyers towards the city? Changing demographics are part of the puzzle. The children of the first generation of suburbanites are now aging empty-nesters, and they’re increasingly trading in their plot of land in the suburbs for sleek downtown condos. The birth rate dropped by almost 50 percent between 1950 and 2000, so there are fewer families with children to fill the spots in suburbia.
Rising fuel costs are another major factor. After payments on mortgages or rent, owning and driving vehicles is the second-biggest expense for most households.
Housing costs tend to fall as you move further from urban employment centers, but transportation costs rise. Once you reach a certain distance, typically 12 to 15 miles from the city center, the increase in transportation costs outweigh the housing savings, according to a report from the Center for Neighborhood Technology. As fuel costs rise, living in the suburbs gets more and more costly.
Living in a walkable area with access to public transit also decreases the total number of miles you drive per year. According to the Housing and Transportation Index, an average downtown dweller in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood drives average 7,000 miles per year. Though Dedham, Mass. is still in “greater Boston,” drivers there log almost three times as many miles on the odometer — an average of 20,500 per year. Urban living can save you thousands of dollars per year in fuel costs and vehicle maintenance.
The price difference makes the old real estate adage “drive till you qualify” seem as “outdated as buying a gas-guzzling SUV,” quipped a recent article from the Congress on New Urbansim. In a June 2008 Coldwell Banker survey, 78 percent of sales associates said that rising gas prices are increasing their clients’ desire to live in an urban setting. The agents also said clients had increased interest in walkable communities with access to public transit.
For the same reasons — walkability, shorter commutes and access to amenities — new urbanist towns and mixed-use suburban developments are becoming another attractive option for buyers. Throughout the United States, small neighborhoods that combine residential, retail, cultural and educational spaces, like Kentlands, Md.; Celebration, Fla. and Stapleton, Colo. are gaining in popularity.
“If gasoline and heating costs continue to rise, conventional suburban living may not be much of a bargain in the future, said Christopher B. Leinberger, an urban land use expert and real estate developer, in a recent article in The Atlantic Monthly. “And as more Americans, particularly affluent Americans, move into urban communities, families may find that some of the suburbs’ other big advantages — better schools and safer communities — have eroded.”
Over the next 20 years, developers will likely produce many millions of new and renovated townhouses, condos and small-lot houses — as well as modify current large-lot suburbs — to meet changing demands.