How many of you live in a neighborhood where you can and do walk to the local grocery store, pharmacy, library, movie theater, coffee shop, bank, etc.? If you happen to live in the suburbs of most any American city then the chances are that the idea of walking to any of these places is completely out of the question. Why? Because the houses, apartments and condominiums are set apart in isolated sub-divisions and the shops and stores are in strip-mall islands floating in a parking-lot sea. In most cases you'd take your life in your hands just trying to cross the busy thoroughfares, many of which don't even have sidewalks. Furthermore, there's no pleasure in walking from one strip-mall to another - each one is virtually identical and you have to cross busy parking lots to even get to them. All of this isolation is the end result of decades of development decisions that have placed the needs of automobiles over the needs of people and have contributed to urban sprawl and sub-urban blight.

Many people born in the last few generations haven't known any way of life but this - that when you need to buy a loaf of bread you automatically get in your car and drive to the nearest mini-mart. However, there is another way of living that still survives in some inner-ring suburbs and older neighborhoods and is jealously guarded by those people that recognize its benefits. In my neighborhood I can and do walk to virtually any store I need - and the reason I can is that my neighborhood and its main retail street has not been broken into isolated islands of strip-malls. Instead, the retail buildings form a continuous line of storefronts along the street with an unbroken sidewalk and residential housing and apartments off the side-streets. And there is still plenty of room for cars in this model, but instead of creating discontinuities the parking lots are located behind the stores - out of the way, out of sight and not interrupting the pedestrian flow. It's a simple change but one that crucially affects the character of a street and a neighborhood.

Providing a pedestrian-friendly environment versus a car-centric one costs nothing since the only change is the use of space. Picture a typical strip-mall: a line of storefronts separated from the street by a large parking lot. Now mentally re-arrange the picture: move the storefronts up to the street and shift the parking to the area behind the building. Now picture a number of these developments side-by-side along the street with a few side-roads providing access to the recessed parking lots and residential housing beyond. And consider how much easier it is to window-shop and impulse-buy if you're walking from store to store instead of driving by them - by the time you see an interesting store you've already driven past it. And when you have pedestrian traffic you have incentives to plant trees for shade, park benches and places for people to gather. The restraunts and coffee-shops start providing outdoor seating and pretty soon you start to have a city that brings people together instead of isolating them from one another.

If you visit the great and small cities of Europe, places in this country like San Francisco, Cleveland's Heights suburbs and Little Italy you'll see that this model has worked in the past and still works today. Unfortunately most people have forgotten that there's an alternate way to live and developers seem content to follow the present inertia. However, it's not too late to change - the move to this paradigm started gradually and has built a tremendous amount of momentum but can still be quietly slowed and reversed. But for this to happen people will need to demand change and developers and property owners will need to start taking pride in their work. Would you rather tell your children that you helped build the next Paris or the next dairy mart?