Some good news about walkable urban space.

Woke up to an interesting story on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday yesterday. Host Jacki Lyden interviews Chris Leinberger, a member of the Brookings Institution and Director of the University of Michigan real estate graduate studies. They discuss the recent announcement of the bankruptcy of Border's Books and the immanent closing of nearly 400 stores. Leinberger says that retail shops in drivable suburban spaces don't fare well when they lose an anchor store. Retailers in walkable urban spaces fare much better. The pendulum is and has been swinging towards walkability. Developers realize that we have overbuilt drivable suburban retail and there is a pent-up demand for walkable urban retail, which can actually be (and has been) built to replace the former in suburban areas. Leinberger cites Belmar in southwest Denver as an example of a suburban stripmall that was razed and replaced with a walkable street grid, and Reston Town Center as a walkable greenfield development ("the best one in the country") outside of Washington, D. C. Now I've told you so much about the piece you hardly need to make the jump.