"Walkable Urbanism" -- the New American Dream ?? (CNN)

{skip several paras about foreclosures emptying suburbs ...}
***
This change can be witnessed in places like Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, and Dallas, Texas, said Leinberger, where once rundown downtowns are being revitalized by well-educated, young professionals who have no desire to live in a detached single family home typical of a suburbia where life is often centered around long commutes and cars.

Instead, they are looking for what Leinberger calls "walkable urbanism" -- both small communities and big cities characterized by efficient mass transit systems and high density developments enabling residents to walk virtually everywhere for everything -- from home to work to restaurants to movie theaters.

The so-called New Urbanism movement emerged in the mid-90s and has been steadily gaining momentum, especially with rising energy costs, environmental concerns and health problems associated with what Leinberger calls "drivable sub-urbanism" -- a low-density built environment plan that emerged around the end of the Second World War and has been the dominant design in the U.S. ever since.

Thirty-five percent of the nation's wealth, according to Leinberger, has been invested in constructing this drivable sub-urban landscape.

But now, Leinberger told CNN, it appears the pendulum is beginning to swing back in favor for the type of walkable community that existed long before the advent of the once fashionable suburbs in the 1940s. He says it is being driven by generations moulded by television shows like "Seinfeld" and "Friends," where city life is shown as being cool again -- a thing to flock to, rather than flee.
***
more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/16/suburb.city/index.html

Los Angeles is really spread out and has a relatively small downtown area compared to the massive population surrounding it. Orange County barely has any urban areas at all. What they call cities, like Costa Mesa, Santa Ana, Anaheim and Orange have tiny downtowns of just a few square blocks, with mile after mile of strip malls and suburban developments surrounding them. High density developments will take a long time to come into being, I fear.

Silver Spring remade its entire downtown in about 18 months. It went from empty streets and wig shops to condos and theaters and high-end restaurants seeminly overnight.

Vails Gate, Five Corners New Windsor NY. There is a museum, hospital, school, post office, and multiple stores, including three grocery stores.

I live in the city of Newburgh, which is walkable, but a little more dangerous.

like here in New York where "well-educated, young professionals who have no desire to live in a detached single family home typical of a suburbia where life is often centered around long commutes and cars.." are priced out of Manhattan and so they swarm into neighborhoods like Williamsburg and move into the old factory bulidings and the new soulless condos. The factory buildings are empty because the jobs left long ago and most of the original residents of these neighborhoods have lower paying jobs then the factories ever provided. Property values rise and the working class people who lived in these neighborhoods for years are priced out of apartments. The neighborhoods become part of the great homgenizing of New York. I swear there are days when I feel like I live in a theme park instead of a city. "Oh look sweety its a native New Yorker how interesting."

New York City is now an indie theme park for bankers kids. What part of the NYU-Columbia-NewSchool campus do you live in? Native New Yorker? Hell, anyone in a hundred mile radius of NYC has moved away. Or as my girlfriend says: Manhattan is nothing more than a mall with a really long walk between stores.

I've got a pretty decent job and a rent stabilized apartment I've been in for nearly 20 years so I'm not going anywhere any time soon. Your girlfriend is right about Manhattan. I work in Times Square and yeah its been cleaned up and all but I swear you almost wouldn't know that its New York anymore. Their are chain restaurants for tourists but if they had any sense of adventure they'd head for Ninth Avenue where there are all kinds of great ethnic restaurants that they WON'T find back home in East Podunk. I STILL love living here 'cause there is no place like home.

I grew up in North Jersey and lived in the Village in the 80s and even very early 90s. Living in Manhattan was a nightmare. It was like living in an enormous bank-college-mall. The Bank of College Mall. Its like if they plowed over the grand canyon and then redug it to make it smooth and safe and put nightclubs in it. New York City is that weird Cosi-JambaJuice-H&M-Citibank where NYC used to be.

Queens is still Queens, though. I like Queens. But watch-out....... I hear Astoria is getting "discovered'.

Please also check out this link.

She moved to Canada back in the 50's or 60's and switched citizenship. (I can't recall but it might have been the case that back in the day she couldn't get dual citizenship.)

It's a shame the goofballs in city government around here don't read her stuff. I get the sense that Kansas City is an old Osage phrase meaning "but where do we park?".

About her citizenship and how stupid city planners are.

It's like they believe they have to reinvent stuff every time they design something.

Hell, even fashion isn't completely disconnected from its own past!

This is another word for gentrification. It's made for some delightful downtowns, but I'm not sure if it has been good for the residents who were there first.

I'm not calling her out, she's studying urban planning!

and wave and have them stop by to chat...and where you could walk to your local stores and visit with your neighbors where your kids and grandkids (yeah they were mixed age group targeted) could meet at the tiangular parks in the neighborhood or at the "clubhouse and pool" (too small for neighborhood of a thousand homes) and they sold like "hot cakes," on the promise of "shops and entertainment" all within walking distance for the young families with children and the older who loved to wave off front porch and commune with their fellow dwellers.

Trouble was that the "walk to shopping" was a major grocery chain, a "Cut Rate Hair Joint," a Korean "Nails to Go," a "Jumbo China" that used slave labor and a "Dollar Store, " a "Burger King" and a "Subway Sandwich" franchise.... if you want more...you really do need a car to get to it..

It was a "Bait and Switch." The Chamber of Commerce and Duke University did a great job of selling that to the Raleigh City Council. Sold them a bag of promises that never came true.

In fact, it has third-generation residents that I know of. I can walk to a food co-op, a bakery, a hardware store, four restaurants, a coffee shop, a library, a garden shop, a city park, and a shop that makes its own ice cream, in addition to a certain amount of yuppie froo-froo. Two other commercial neighborhoods are within walking distance if one's definition of walking distance extends to twenty minutes.

Google beltline project Atlanta.
Some Ga.Tech student came up with a plan to use old unused rail lines that circle downtown to bring about a non automobile centered city.While there are still delays on the rail stuff developers and citizens are already working on the housing and shopping segments.
Unfortunately,there is a lot of ethnic cleansing going on in conjunction with the project.