Walkability’s comeback

Planetizen links to an article in Governing Magazine that says what anyone in Adams Morgan or Park Slope or San Francisco knows: walkable neighborhoods are on the rise. But it’s not just old cities: Plano, Texas has a booming Smart Growth development. And “it’s not just the New Urbanists who are talking the language of walkability now,” writes the author, Alan Ehrenhalt. “It’s developers, Realtors, chambers of commerce, transportation agencies.” Toll Brothers, builders of big traditional single-family houses in distant suburbs, even established a “Walkable Urban Housing” division.

But the article is not all unabashed walkability boosterism. Old European cities like Istanbul evolved to what they are because people there had no home theater rooms and the Internet and air conditioning, so they turned to the streets. (I’d add the point that New York is so lively partly because almost everyone’s apartments are so small that they have to go out.) Walkability will look different in the future than the past. But that’s an opportunity to figure out the best form for the walkable neighborhood of the future. Clearly, if we can build them, many people want to live in them.