How To Make "Edge Towns" Affordable And Sustainable
We love living on and visiting "the edge" -- close to the ocean and other beautiful but fragile natural places. But can we really keep these places going in a way that doesn't break the bank?
On Monday, I wrote about the lure of “Edge Towns” – a phrase I used to mean towns on the edge of something beautiful but fragile, mostly oceans and the Great Lakes.
A lot of people thought I meant towns on the edge of a city or metropolis – sorry for the confusion – but I really meant places like Miami Beach, Santa Monica, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and other locations where a kind of urban hardscape (or at least beachy suburban hardscape) run up against a compelling natural environment. You could apply the same term to “Edge Towns” adjacent to, say national parks (which are sometimes called “Gateway Towns”) or anyplace else where human settlement and nature confront each other.
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In Monday’s Substack newsletter, I noted that these places are so compelling and so fragile that they face twin and even opposing problems: affordability and sustainability.
Affordability and Sustainability
Edge Towns face an affordability problem for two reasons: first, they are very popular places not only to live but to visit; and second, because of the ocean or other natural feature they are adjacent to, the normal “360” development opportunities don’t exist.
Vulnerable houses on stilts on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
Housing markets in Edge Towns have changed dramatically in the post-COVID/AirBNB era for several reasons, including:
1. More remote or hybrid workers with flexibility on where to live.
2. The rise of AirBNB-type platforms, which have opened up homes in pretty locations to short-term renters in a way that was never possible before.
3. Concentration of wealth has led more households to seek second homes
Edge Towns face a sustainability problem for the very reason they exist: They are adjacent to beautiful but fragile natural environments that are vulnerable to major storms, hurricanes, wildfires, and all kinds of other natural disasters. There are lots of reasons for this, including
1. For whatever reason (climate change or “weird weather”), fragile natural environments are being hit with more extreme weather events.
2. Overtourism is pushing Edge Towns closer … well, closer to the edge.
3. Nature is beginning to push back in places where we probably never should have built in the first place.
So how is it possible to maintain both affordability and sustainability in these places – or, perhaps more to the point, is it possible at all?
Here are four ideas to make Edge Towns most affordable and sustainable.