The fine balance between what men want in a new home versus the choices made by women is changing.
And some architects and planners seem to have figured it out — at least, in terms of community life, home location and interior layout.
Research provided in November by members of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a Washington, D.C. based real estate research non-profit organization, zeroes in on a number of factors that are increasingly important to women.
Topping the list: community location and house layouts that let them more easily manage their many responsibilities; security, especially for single women; and intimate retreat spaces within a home.
A primary reason for the research is that the members of a typical household are changing.
Developments of all sizes typically have been organized around the stereotypical family with a male wage earner and a stay-at-home wife, said members of the ULI panel, all experienced planners and architects.
In single-family home developments, lots of space between houses, each house serving as a tiny kingdom, and isolation from everyday amenities, notably convenience shopping and access to train service, are all characteristics that are usually no problem for men but complicate the lives of women, especially mothers.
“The tighter you can make the circle of connections for daily life, the easier it is for the mothers and children,” says Karen Alschuler, principal , and director of planning for SMWM, a planning and architecture firm based in San Francisco and a member of the ULI panel.
“It’s the 20-minute rule: Women don’t want to be more than 20 to 30 minutes away from their children. If it’s more, then they can’t have an integrated life.”
So how does that apply to the placement of housing?
In Alschuler’s opinion, the 20-minute rule argues for well-designed family units in both the city and suburbs. They must be well integrated into the greater community.
Many of the trends detected by ULI are already driving sales near downtown Chicago.
Single women account for about 20 percent of the buyers at The Heritage at Millennium Park , reports Andrew Warner, director of sales and marketing with Equity Marketing Services Inc., the marketing agent for the 365-unit condo building.
Maria Gee, a home loan specialist at Bank One in the Loop, recently bought a three-bedroom unit in the complex.
She can hardly wait to move in for the master bath alone. But the everyday utility services that will be in the building — a convenience store, food court and dry cleaner — mean that once she is home for the night, she won’t have to go out in the dark to run errands.
“I don’t have a lot of time to do a lot of things. It’s important to me to have those features,” she said.
Though the ULI research resonates with Chicago area architects and planners, they also point out a major barrier to rearranging suburban developments to create a wider variety of housing units.
Local zoning ordinances often specify half- to one-acre lots. That makes it all but impossible for developers to, say, cluster houses with relatively small yards to free up space for a common playground that is managed by a community social director.
John McIlwain, senior resident fellow for housing with ULI, reported that there is starting to be a growing desire among both women and men for smaller yards, though most still want a large house.
That trend conflicts with most current suburban zoning ordinances.
One result is that women, who must stretch lower lifetime earnings over a longer lifespan, are the ones who are left with fewer housing options as they age.
“I believe that communities should design for the future needs of their current residents and women are more affected by this because they live longer,” said Susanne Tauke, president of New American Homes Inc., based in Hawthorn Woods.
Women widowed in their 50s or 60s often don’t want and can’t afford to hold onto their suburban estates.
Yet, because zoning restrictions allow for, at best, only a few smaller housing units on smaller lots, those women are forced to move out of their communities to find appropriate housing.
“I think women want to have roots in a community and grow older in it, and not be forced by lot restrictions to leave their churches, their dry cleaners, their neighbors, and move to another suburb,” said Tauke.
“To me, this is a tragic flaw in our zoning and building policies.”
ULI panel members hope that their findings will prove pivotal for planners and architects as they consider ways to make communities and houses more serviceable for the people who live in them.
One key finding is that women want housing that works for each stage of life, but within the same community, said Jacinta McCann, managing principal of EDAW, a San Francisco planning firm.
While houses and suburban developments are typically designed for full-nesters age 30 to 55, single women of all ages are much more likely to own their homes than are single men.
A prime difference among their tastes is in the way men and women exercise. The No. 1 fitness activity for women is walking, according to the ULI research. That translates directly to a desire for safe walking trails.
But walking trails are often overshadowed by the bigger physical presence of sports complexes designed to accommodate the team sports that men prefer.
More and better-lit trails would draw women of all ages, not to mention older men who downshift from running to walking.
Women also want richer community life, partly because they want to know their neighbors and partly from a desire to share responsibility for security.
“Men join homeowners’ associations because there is a problem they want to fix. Women join because they want to connect with their communities,” says McCann. “You want men and women on the homeowners association board, but that balance is important. Women are always looking for ways in which they can become connected.”
Even completely developed communities and neighborhoods can revamp part of their open space to make room for gathering places, says Melissa Masson, president and chief executive of the Merit Cos., a Mission Viejo, Calif.-based firm that manages 210 communities.
Masson participated in the ULI research project.
Winning plans include connector parks among buildings and shelters that invite small groups to form, such as gazebos, she said.
The next step is to transform clubhouses from plain boxes used occasionally for events like childrens’ birthday parties to environments for richer social occasions that draw together smaller groups from the community, such as hobby clubs, she said.
Time-pressured dual-income families can’t fit more volunteer responsibilities into their lives, so the role of the paid community social director is likely to emerge to do the grunt work of engineering events so that residents can show up and enjoy each others’ company.
“Women bond by knowing who their neighbors are and they know that they want to say to their kids, `Go out and play.’ That means that they have to be comfortable that their children will be safe,” Masson said.
Single women are among the most interested in social programming because, to them, it is intrinsically linked to safety, she added.
They crave a sense that members of the community are looking out for each other, she said.
In house layouts, the top priorities for women are the kitchen, family room and front entry, the ULI research found.
The top priorities for men are the garage, backyard and bonus spaces.
Because women’s domestic lives rotate around the kitchen, their home offices must be integrated into the kitchen hub, says Evanston architect Julie Hacker.
What works is a hub that includes an office immediately adjacent to the kitchen; a kitchen open to a family room; and a laundry/mud room that can corral all the flotsam of family life, from umbrellas to clean gym shorts, Hacker said
“All of that acts together so that you can do all those things simultaneously — paying bills online, working laundry through, while dinner’s in the oven, ” she said.
What doesn’t work is the “den” office that is isolated from the rest of the first floor or, even worse, she said, an office adjacent to the master bedroom.
Perhaps because so much is happening in the kitchen hub, the master bedroom has grown as the essential “retreat” space for the woman in the house.
That means that whirlpool tubs, spa-like amenities, plenty of space for dressing and getting ready for the day, are all becoming necessary, even in smaller houses and condo units.
“We have one developer who felt that bathtubs were no longer a necessity,” Masson said. “Boy, did he have to back away from that way of thinking.”
