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Granny cleansing

What's really wrong with Stafford County's planned retirement community

Date published: 7/6/2003

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."

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Date published: 7/6/2003