 My name is David clear. I'm the built environment coordinator for the San Antonio Metro health district and It's my honor to Introduce our next session speaker This session topic that you chose is a developer's perspective on health and quality of life and You know, it's interesting when you look around a lot of developments You don't always see developments that were necessarily seemed to really enhance the lives of our Kids and our families in terms of providing opportunities for them to to live in a livable manner But our next speaker certainly does that and does that well so Perry Bigelow is the president of Bigelow Homes and of Bigelow development Bigelow Homes received the most historic and prestigious honor in the American housing industry from professional Builder magazine each year the professional Builder magazine identifies one builder of the year in the United States and Perry received that honor in 2005 and he was identified as Doing good by doing right He was the energy builder of the year for eight consecutive years in the Chicago Suntimes And he's twice been featured on this old house Perry has been brought to San Antonio on another occasion I had a part of organizing and was able to meet him and hear his presentation then and He I believe that presentation was where I first heard the term free-range kids and so ever since then I've really been enthused anytime I can Talk to him or be involved with him. And so I'd like to introduce Perry Bigelow Can I start by finding out who's in the audience to students? students Planners Got some planners any developers No developers Did y'all check your guns at the door? I'm a developer for the students I would like to invite you to pay special attention to the references because they could I think they could have a They've had an incredible influence on the types of communities That we design and develop and I think they could have for you also What is a healthy community a healthy community is a place a place a place Where people thrive physically emotionally spiritually? socially and culturally It's not just about physical health. It's about thriving holistically in all aspects of life I'm going to approach healthy communities from the standpoint of creating communities that Encourage the social emotional and physical health of children There are many reasons why healthy children are the cornerstone of a healthy community First children are a future. They're our future and Their social and physical health is at the heart of what it means to have a community that sustains itself over the long haul Second if a community provides for the freedom and development of its children Everyone else in the community will enjoy and benefit from the same freedoms Third when children play with each other according to their natural uninhibited Childishness and inquisitiveness it draws the adults into the society that the children create Which of necessity draws the children the adults into relationships with each other Children have easier time making relationships than we do don't they for some reason I'm going to use hometown Aurora a master plan community that we developed in Aurora, Illinois to illustrate this idea because the physical arrangement of space in hometown encourages and nurtures social and physically healthy living I Want to frame the problem that children have in their neighborhoods today By reading several excerpts from Suzanne and Henry Lennard's book The Forgotten Child The increasing isolation and segregation of children in our cities and suburbs as a special significance This has meant a loss of freedom for children to explore their neighborhood and city as they get older They're exclusion from varied contacts and with diverse adults in a variety of settings and their consequent inability to learn from personal experience and observation So essential to social and emotional development The isolation of children and youth from the common adult world their exclusion from the natural learning environments of social life work Cultural activities in nature has serious consequences for their emotional and social development If the claim of children to share the city is admitted The whole environment has to be designed and shaped with their needs in mind Just as we accept the need that the needs of the aged and disabled should be accepted as a design factor In the recent past City-making decisions have favored some groups at the expense of others Considered to be less of less value to the economic well-being of cities This bias has especially neglected children and youth What we've heard today is San Antonio is really attacking that problem head-on and that is That is really great to hear Amory Loven's the brilliant physicist and founder of the EMI once asked me What kind of a house would the master carpenter Jesus build? I Think an equally good question would be what kind of a city would God develop? Listen to the answer that's suggested in the Old Testament of the Bible Zechariah the prophet wrote down God's plan for the ultimate culturally sustainable city where people live in peace and comfort Maybe I got to press it harder. Here's how we described it Once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem I heard a lot of talk today about streets Each with Kane in hand because of his age and the city will be filled with boys and girls playing in the streets This is a community that works for children and old folks Because the old folks and children are using the streets together the children are learning from the old folks The principles and values that will allow them to grow old and then teach the same principles and values to the next generation generation of children and so forth When we talk about sustainability in nature We mean that the ecology the place works in such a way that the plants and creatures of the place Reproduce themselves in such a way that the ecological balance and health of the place is maintained and sustained In other words the health of a place depends on the health and nurturance of the young In other words the nurturance and health of the next generation a Community that sustains and mains itself maintains itself and health and comfort can only happen when the community is designed for children And the children are enculturated by the adults and old folks that they are safely interacting with all the time The old folks respect and watch the children and the children venerate the adults and learn the community's traditions and values from them A healthy town has streets nested not just fenced rear yards that are totally safe for children to play in Children can safely explore a world that is much larger and more diverse than their own rear yard they can safely play in the streets and public places with other neighborhood children without constant supervision and This gives them the opportunity to experience Serendipitous natural relationships with other children not just relationships structured and managed by adults Nature is ecologically sustainable because it is complex diverse Interdependent integrated and decentralized For our human culture to sustain itself. It must be founded on similar principles As Chuck said this morning until the last 50 years neighborhoods and communities had always incorporated these age old natural values They have been temporarily and inadvertently abandoned as we have accommodated ourselves To technology in the automobile for the last 50 years Whether we want to or not We are designing and building homes and communities that become subcultures that either sustain themselves spiritually and relationally in health and comfort Or they become places of social dis ease and sickness We have the power and we have the wisdom to build safe healthy communities in which children thrive and learn and grow and Develop strong individual personalities within the context of mutual respect for everybody and everything in the community And this is exactly what the hometown community is all about underlying our philosophy of design is The understanding from Christopher Alexander that the people of a place have a common design language This language consists of design patterns embedded in their culture and in the culture or environment of a place These design patterns are like words that by themselves mean very little But when you combine them carefully you create a lot of meaning in a very few words Likewise when you combine the right design patterns thoughtfully and precisely you create what Alexander calls dense space Space that is deeply comforting in nurturing to the human spirit Dallas Willard was a philosopher and chairman. I got too many buttons here Dallas Willard was a philosopher and chairman of the UCLA philosophy department Willard in the divine conspiracy says that every person child has a kingdom or a queendom a Realm that is uniquely his own or her own Where their choice determines exactly what happens? This reaches the deepest part of what it means to be a person We are made to have and want to have dominion with within an appropriate range a domain or range of reality Willard says that our kingdom is simply the range of our effective will Whatever we have the say over is our kingdom and are having the say over something or some space is precisely What places it within our kingdom and within our domain? Did you catch that phrase the range of our effective will? Do you resonate with the idea of a child having a range a Kingdom or a queendom that moves as the child moves a Place or a space where the child has some dominion Some of us who are concerned about animal care and healthy food Eat free-range chicken and free-range eggs You probably have read the account of thousands of chickens In tiny narrow cages so narrow that they can't even turn around Kept in special bright light 24 hours a day to increase egg production. I Would submit to you that a child pinned up in his suburban six-foot solid fence backyard because the street He lives on is not safe For children due to strangers and high-speed cars and trucks is little little better off Emotionally than check caged chicken He has no more effective range He has no more relative effective freedom He has no more effective ability to learn how to reign Responsibly how to exercise his will and creativity in regards to the real world Compare the cooped-up child with these kids. This is happening in the town center in hometown Most of my range as a child had to do with country roads and town streets Whether it was riding my bike a mile to my sister's or stopping to play in the woods or throwing stones at the carpet the creek Or riding my bike up the post office to get the mail as a child I had real kingdoms and I exercised real power and did creative valuable real work My life as a child mattered This primary the primary cornerstone of a healthy community is Children who have a free range to learn through life experience how to reign responsibly Hometown provides children with a free range in hometown without Encountering a car going more than 20 miles an hour Children can walk to eight neighborhood parks and eight private innate differentiated neighborhoods They can walk to four natural prairie areas with ponds or wetlands They can walk to three larger public parks and open space They can walk to the post office. They can walk to the town center shops and stores and offices They can play in the streets and the living lanes, and they can walk to school They can do all this without encountering a car going more than 20 miles an hour And the interesting thing is that their parents let them do it These are the town planners of hometown Victorian Alexandria are The oldest of my nine grandchildren. I reviewed every element of design in hometown with these young ladies in mind Hometown is designed for children for my own grandchildren Many families buy their first house because of their children or in anticipation of having children However, very few families Make the special needs and growth potential of their children an active part of the decision as to whether to buy a home in a real neighborhood Or an average subdivision as a country the only real asset that we have is our children as Parents, there's nothing that's more important to us than our children However, most developers and builders do not design home homes and communities and neighborhoods For children because children don't make the home buying decision The primary spheres of shared human activity in home town are first the typical mini neighborhood Then the neighborhood with its neighborhood streets and neighborhood neighborhood street and park finally the town center and The school each share of activity is connected with pedestrian ways to the next larger sphere of activity Pocket neighborhoods are connected to each other as well as to the neighborhood park by oversized six foot wide public sidewalks Neighborhoods are likewise connected to each other and to the public parks with these walks Each sphere of shared human activity in their connections provide the most important element of any neighborly neighborhood the freedom and mobility of children and old people without Dependence on the automobile which they can't use themselves Along with the opportunity for children and old people to interact everywhere all the time There are lots of ways to create livable mini neighborhoods However, they all start with two patterns that were first identified to my knowledge by Christopher Alexander in pattern language a cluster of homes Overlooking common space that is owned or controlled by the people who live in the cluster of homes Ross Chapin has written a fabulous book that illustrates and provides patterns for many types of mini neighborhoods Pocket neighborhoods or mini neighborhoods as are the basic building blocks of healthy communities in hometown a Living court which you might call a courtyard is our primarily primary building block It has 12 to 20 homes just the right number of homes to provide the opportunity to develop several good friendships While recognizing that some folks just pretty much want to keep to themselves in our society The physical design of a living court can either promote or discourage interaction between people Resulting in either a lively or a lifeless place The entry to the living court is designed is defined by a gateway a trellis or some shrubbery This psychological gateway clearly Defines the transition from the public sidewalk and street to the semi-public living court. It's a very effective passageway in transition Strangers do not feel comfortable Entering it unless they have business there because they know that they are that they are on someone else's turf And they are probably being watched The five-foot sidewalk functions as the main street of the living court and as the kids street And most developments the sidewalk is only three feet wide which is so narrow that two people cannot walk side-by-side Nor can kids pass each other on their big wheels and tricycles We provide a porch or small garden patio with at least two comfortable seating places in the front of each home Overlooking the living court. This makes it easy for easier for people to spontaneously meet and greet their neighbors the fact that there are no Cars in the living court means that the living court can be designed to the human scale and a child's pace The living court is one of the few outdoor people places in the modern world that is not influenced by cars whatsoever The children and residents live in the living court the cars live out in the back Residents not cars occupy the most valuable part of the site the common space shared The living court functions like a big outdoor living room actually it functions even more like a big outdoor Great room each family has its own gathering place around the edges on their porches and all the families share a larger Gathering place near the middle where several families can sit together and talk The front door of each home is highly visible from this sidewalk and the sidewalk is highly visible from the kitchen and several other rooms in every home This makes the living court much safer and more secure as Jane Jacobs said eyes on the street eyes on the court Maximum visual access to the living court from inside the house is crucial to casual surveillance and spontaneous neighborliness Hometowns living courts are especially important places for small children The gateway to the entry is a natural Emotional barrier that small children usually won't go beyond because they can no longer see the front door of the house The entire living court thus becomes a safe playground children prefer hard surfaces like Concrete sidewalks patios decks etc to grass for 65 to 80 percent of their play The oversized walks patios porches and gathering places meet these needs The five-foot sidewalk is like a kid's street. It's wide enough for tricycles and big wheels to pass each other The outside spaces around each home are the most important for small children research has shown that children under five Feel more safe and secure if they are within eyesight of the front door of their home And within 30 feet of the front door for children develop their inner to develop their interpersonal skills They need time they need to be able to play freely with other children Where parents can observe them without interrupting them For children to develop motor skills and to satisfy their inquisitive They need areas close to home where that they can use casually for brief spurts of time without relying on adults Because adults do not have as much time as children need to meet their intermittent random development time needs a Home and a hometown living court is a special place for families with small children The living court is truly a child-friendly environment that offers more opportunities for play and spontaneous interaction than any other Housing type that I know of Now here's what's really interesting Remember I said that places that are good for children are good for everyone We are currently developing living courts up by 35 and Kyle and a master plan New urban development called Plum Creek The homes in our first floor living courts are Primarily being purchased by empty nesters and singles But it's not hard to understand Why empty nesters and singles would love living courts is it? By the way, we also have a mini neighborhood that is very appealing to families with school-aged children. They're called living lanes In addition to Alexander's pattern language, we have two other primary sources of patterns for our mini neighborhoods Many come from housing as if people mattered by Claire Cooper Marcus Others come from co-housing by Katherine McCammoth and Chuck Durrat People need an identifiable Special area to belong to they need to be able to identify where they live as distinct from others Hometown is a series of Identifiable neighborhoods each neighborhood has its own unique identity like a small town and Each neighborhood has its own little neighborhood park and each neighborhood feels and lives like a little small town Alexander's research shows Has shown that identifiable neighborhoods share several common characteristics. They have relatively small populations They are relatively small in land area They must be protected from high-speed traffic and dominance by automobiles They should have boundaries such as green belts parks or other demarcations of entry and they must have Restricted access with relatively few roads leading into them with gateways at the boundaries Most of our neighborhood streets have parking on both sides and trees in the parkway, which makes the sidewalks safer A key to a healthy neighborhood is a family-friendly sidewalk Our public sidewalks are six six feet wide Most public walks are four feet wide Two adults can't comfortably walk side-by-side on a four-foot sidewalk Mom dad and child can walk side-by-side very comfortably on a six-foot walk, but not a five-foot walk By the way, I think later on there's going to be conversations about next steps One easy next step that San Antonio could take to make its streets much more livable in the suburbs Places like where I developed Would be not to allow sidewalks up against the curb Because when a sidewalk is up against the curb it goes up and down up and down right at every curb cut Put the sidewalks at least five back five feet back from the curb make them at least five feet wide so that So that two people can walk on them comfortably side-by-side and then put trees in the in the space between in the parkways between the Curbs in the sidewalks and then in patent force an ordinance that says you get a ticket with a big fine Like littering if you park your car across the sidewalk Because one car in a block parked across the sidewalk will keep people from walking, right? Unless you have a really safe street and it's not going to be quick when all the streets in San Antonio are developed to be safe to to walk on Just a little side the closeness of houses to the sidewalk along with the house Along with the house entries porches and bay windows create a sense of enclosure for the streetscape Give the street a human scale and make the streets safer and more lively The continuity of the landscaping is hand is enhanced by the lack of driveways and garages facing the street All garages are accessed from alleys as a result driveways are a hundred and seventy to two hundred feet apart Also, since there are no garage doors facing the streets the facade of houses is much more interesting Varied and articulated the street no longer looks like a place where cars live For the first time in 50 years. It looks like a place where people live Neighborliness and pedestrian convenience and safe and safety take precedent precedence over automobile speed and use The result is a high level of varied interest along the street which encourages pedestrianism and social interaction This is the town center if the town center is first designed for the social and physical needs and use of children It will work for all ages if it is designed only for profit It will almost certainly not be child friendly or child healthy We consider town center park to be an amenity to the community Not just a viable market driven commercial opportunity The town center also consists of mixed-use condominiums and business units home occupation Live work units church site in the town center park the town center is Located in the geographical center of hometown, so it's within a half mile of all of hometown Loft condos are on the second floor The postal facility is in the town center therefore most people come to the town center several times a week Town center park is the hub of community life. It is really several parks in one The pavilion anchors the park It's the primary gathering place. It has inexpensive pattern concrete paving around it It also serves as a stage for festival park and for the intimate amphitheater We keep about 20 chairs in the pavilion, but they end up all over the park Festival park is the name of a large green lawn for our five annual festivals The amphitheater is for movies performances, etc. Interestingly the six to nine-year-olds place soccer primarily in the intimate amphitheater While the older kids play soccer in the larger festival park Perhaps the most important features of the town center park are the toddlers tot lot and the children's interactive fountain This is the only toddlers tot lot in hometown The purpose is to get children to the town center from the get-go right from when they're babies For parents with toddlers It has become part of the family walk to go up to get the mail and to stop at the park The interactive water fountain is used primarily by kids from by kids from five to twelve years old We designed it to the size of hometown, but it is so popular that kids from neighboring areas driven To come to use it so as it's often overcrowded in the summertime In our next town center, we will have a second water fountain That it's just designed for toddlers to spread its use make it safer festival park Is separated from the formal water fountain park by a stand of clump birch trees Kids seem to love the formal fountain as much as the interactive fountain In fact, it's tough to keep them from using it as another interactive fountain Scattered throughout the town center are interactive sculptures in the form of animals Many children will play with them um as they take a trip just Rontulotley through the park. They'll stop and play with all of them Now let me show you the most popular place for kids to play in town center park. Where do you think it is? that's it That little itty bitty No, now, of course, you know, we're in the plains in chicago. You can see you can see the lake from from 35 miles away But they play king of the hill on it. They roll down it the It's the only place in the park where the grass has to be replaced Let me talk for a couple minutes if I have time about safe streets Hometown is designed the way communities were built before the automobile and truck came to dominate street design A high speed residential street is an oxymoron of the worst possible kind A good residential street cannot allow high speeds Only arterial streets should be designed for high speed cars and trucks Residential streets should be primarily designed to live on and not drive on at high speeds Up until world war two residential streets were designed by planners and developers for families to live on They were designed for the people who are going to live on after world war two Specialization efficiency and engineering that were used to win the war were applied To road design by engineers. I can say that because I'm won by education As a result specialized civil engineers have designed residential streets and as roads to drive on not to live on Today streets are designed for cars and fire trucks not people The street is not designed for the houses on the street It is designed to get beyond those houses to someplace else The residential street that a family lives on Is designed for the cars and trucks of people who don't even live on the street As a result a person living on a typical subdivision street Knows that she has no control over the street. She lives on She knows that the person driving on the street Actually has more rights with respect to the street than she does She knows that the street belongs to a quote public That doesn't live there. She knows that the street is not designed for her family And that the street is safe for high speed cars and trucks, but that it is not safe for people Especially her own children who live on the street As a result she does the logical thing. She locks her children up in the backyard There's no reason why we should have to do this today This chart shows the probability of fatality for a pedestrian That is hit by at various speeds. John alluded to some of these numbers earlier At 15 miles per hour the probability of death is very small about 3.5 percent at twice that speed 31 miles per hour. That's not a very high speed the probability increases 10 fold to 37 percent I don't know about you, but I don't want to take a 37 percent risk To let that sink in At 44 miles an hour the probability of death is over 80 percent That's 23 times higher than 15 miles an hour just High school kids and young men with high testosterone High testosterone can drive over 45 miles an hour on suburban neighborhood streets I know because I used to do that to get to my girlfriend's house in chicago on our streets No wonder parents won't allow their children out the front door unattended This one chart is all the evidence anyone should need to justify full traffic calming To balance the power the unnatural power of the automobile the streets and hometown Are all designed so that they can only be safe and driven driven on safely at slow speeds of about 15 miles an hour Various types of traffic calming devices were installed to accomplish this objective When we did this we had to travel to europe because there wasn't no traffic calming in the united states Back then Traffic circles raised pedestrian crossing platforms neck downs tight curves, etc The traffic calming devices are usually about 200 feet apart This is the first device. It's the traffic circle near the entry You can only drive on that circle at about 15 miles an hour This is the second device we use a safety platform Combined with a neck down it has the design speed of 12 miles an hour according to the netherlands street design manual This is the third device neck downs combined with sharp offsetting turns at each end of a neighborhood park sometimes called chicanes In hometown we have taken the best of these new traffic calming methods and combine them with historic timeless human scale neighborhood design patterns In hometown we have restored the physical and human scale of residential streets That residential streets had before the automobile destroyed the delicate balance between the neighbor the public's needs and the residents needs In spite of the fact that traffic calming is now a proven accepted effective technique hometown to our knowledge Is still the only large-scale Fully traffic calmed master planned community in the united states. There's no reason why that should be so today 15 years ago When hometown was approved Fire marshals were the major roadblocks to approval of traffic calming our recent experience Is that the fire marshals are now basically limiting their concerns to access not lapsed Time to arrive at a site That's a huge shift and good news for safe streets The best book that we know about on traffic calming is that is the book by trap by re-ewing In conclusion I'm going to run a montage of images of home home towns free-range children Exercising their the effective range of their free will We didn't set out originally to create a child friendly community Our primary objective was to create a socially and culturally sustainable community one that was healthy As environmentalists we realized the key to environmental sustainability Was the ability Of the natural species of a place to reproduce themselves with health Early in our journey We came to realize that the long-term help of a community depended almost entirely on the nurturance and health of children What makes a neighborhood child friendly? The entire the entire neighborhood Needs to be purposely designed to be child friendly Because american towns originally were designed to the human scale and pace according to timeless patterns American towns were automatically child friendly the town that I grew up in was automatically child friendly Because modern suburban planning and engineering has come to totally favor commerce specializations and the automobile Towns will not be child friendly now unless someone is purposeful and proactive in making them child friendly The entire community must be designed for the safety and play and convenience of children Otherwise parents won't let their kids out the front out the front door unattended This represents an entirely new paradigm Prior to world war two neighborhood streets were not designed for high-speed cars and emergency vehicles They didn't need to be designed for safety Today unless streets are traffic calmed there's Automatically unsafe for people to interact with in a relaxed way in a residential neighborhood The entire community must be designed for the free range of children I love it when I go through the town center And the kid and see the kids climbing up in the trees Which the association tells them they can't do by the way Kids must be able to Explore the entire community at their own pace According to their own interests The point is a community that nurtures the social emotional and physical health of children Will nurture the human spirit and health of all people Thank you Okay, we have a time for several questions It is hard we came to texas because a city In texas came to chicago after we were named builder of the year they heard about us They came to chicago and they saw what we were doing at hometown and they said please come and do this in our town That's why we came to texas because we couldn't get another city In illinois to let us do the things that we had to do to make the community child friendly To make it healthy for people So I think the problem in texas is probably different than it is in illinois to a great extent, but I think you have I It's easier to get developments approved in texas Um I think there's still Not a folk. I don't think people are focused on designing communities that are healthy You have a an unusual development pattern in texas where you have rich people who buy land hire an engineer a bunch of specialists like an engineer a planner a traffic consultant a Quite else all of these things and those people all together with the engineer leading it Creates a subdivision plan and takes it to the city engineering department and gets approved. There is no chance in that process For A community to be developed that is child friendly because Landowner doesn't even know that that concept exists Certainly the engineer who is leading the charge to get the development approved doesn't know And frankly as an engineer I can tell you they don't Care about child friendly they care about the engineer at the city hall who's going to review his work who wants Public works to work in a certain way who wants to get the garbage trucks in and out Who wants to make the fire department happy who wants to da da da da da da There is no ombudsman For the people that are going to live on the street I once told an engineering an engineer who was a friend of mine Your wife won't allow your children to play on the street that you designed that you live on Because of the way you designed it I'll tell you we need a lot more events. I am shocked by this conference We need a lot more events like this to to create The awareness and interest and need for doing it, but you notice there isn't a single developer in the room That's very unfortunate I'm sorry. You got me going That's that's correct hometown has bus service On the arterial that's on the edge of it They have to walk at most a quarter mile Yes, ma'am I mentioned plump creek up in kyle Yes, plump creek is plump creek is a traditional neighborhood development Now called a new urbanist development. It is not designed for old folks at all It's a very diverse. It's a it's a wonderfully diverse community That's about 15 years old and there's probably 1700 1800 homes in it We brought but all of the homes were Um Public streets with alleys, you know what I mean by saying public streets with garages in the back and alleys We brought to that community two years ago The idea of of building the courtyards, which is our way of building a mini neighborhood that is that is Identifiable for a cluster of people who can control that space and come to love it and nurture it Those spaces as I described Primarily were developed using patterns that are really good for children Necked down entrances Wide sidewalks porches that are raised The porches become like Houses and shops on the street the sidewalk. That's the main street of the little town. That's the courtyard So they were designed with children in mind primarily The interesting thing about it is that Most of the buyers As a matter of fact, this is true of hometown two Most of the buyers were singles dinks and empty nesters In plum plum creek. That was the order of of market acceptance in plum in chicago In plum creek the order of of purchase is empty nesters Um singles dinks Families with small children Families with school children So there's no age restriction We do I'll tell you frankly when we go before a plan commission before a planning or zoning commission We're doing it right now. So don't tell on me But we we market that courtyard as an age targeted community Because the traffic counts are so much lower the the tax advantages to Um an age targeted community are fabulous from a school standpoint And they're just there's there's no argument you can make against an age targeted community Not restricted but targeted so But we still design them With the children with the same principles that we used in hometown for children for child friendly design Drive up the plum creek. I think And and and look for bigola homes and ask to see one of our courtyards As a matter of fact, we got it. We did something very interesting In in in plum creek when we sat down and looked at the land plan three years ago They had a boulevard that started at a Wonderful park and ended four blocks later a four lane No, uh a a boulevard with a with a Medium and it ended at the golf course with a trail that runs along the golf course for their trail system throughout the community We said Good heavens that's starting at a great place and going no place But there's no traffic reason to have a boulevard. Let's take the whole boulevard out and replace it with a linear park And set it and put into it four courtyards For four one block courtyards. It's it's it has become a fabulous place that's selling at premium over non courtyard lots Courtyards are very profitable They're very profitable from a developer standpoint. Does that answer your question? Any other questions? It's a problem with respect to nimbyism. You know what I mean by that Um We're in a zoning situation right now where the nimbies came out and said you're putting 162 houses where 104 houses were designed And we said yes, but our lots are smaller than are larger than your average lot sizes next door to what we're we're building Um, but some of our lots end up in the open space Calculation instead of a lot themselves. You see our buyers don't want large lots They want small lots, but they want great open spaces So yes, we have trouble with that, but there are ways that you can attack that And if you don't if you don't increase your density If you don't do that You can't develop the savings that you need in the market The the the value generation that you need to spend the money on the open spaces that you're building So you really need to do that Our solution to on on street parking. First of all, you got to remember that that we pump creek isn't this way But when we design a community ourselves from scratch every Street in the community will be traffic calm So that the cars Will be really angry at you if you go more than 15 miles an hour because you will hurt them, you know If you do that What we do is we make our streets wider not narrower so that we can have two cars of parking Parking on each side of the street, which takes care of all of our guest parking and non non-permanent residential need parking And it still provides adequate room for two cars to drive Does that answer your question? So we're not we're not necessarily a proponent of really narrow streets Now we have a concept that we call living lanes that I just briefly mentioned Which is similar to the Woonariffs Woonariffs in Holland. Are you familiar with those? Woonariffs, um Either chuck or john showed a picture of a Woonariff. It's a Translated that means a residential district. It means that the the the pedestrian the bicyclist and the car Have equal rights to the space in the street So They're really small in scale But then in a Woonariff or in what we call a living lane our garages are accessed from the front There's an advantage to that to For older elementary school children who love to bicycle who love to be around cars It it actually concentrates the activity of people activity In that family situation when you have a front entry garage As long as you locate the garage on the side of the house back from the front entry of the house so that it When you look down one of our living lanes it you you never see more than one garage On each side of the living lane And they all end in dead-end hammerheads. So you can't drive down a living lane and go any place You as an outsider you will go down one living lane one time Hit that hammerhead back up drive out because i'm not going to do that again So they're they're great places for Later elementary school children and and families school-age children So I think with that I think we're out of time get ready for the next session. How about a round of applause for mr. Bigelow?