Walkable, human-scale neighborhoods shouldn’t be a luxury, but in much of the U.S., they’ve become exactly that. Places like Milwaukee Avenue in Minneapolis or Seaside, Florida, aren’t expensive because of their design—they’re expensive because they’re rare.
The real issue isn’t that these neighborhoods exist, but that we’ve made it nearly impossible to build more of them. Scarcity drives up prices, fueling the false idea that walkable urbanism is only for the wealthy. The solution? Stop treating good design as an exclusive commodity and start creating more of it.
If you’re interested in a picture of what we used to build, this piece by Daniel Herriges with Strong Towns is a pictorial review as much as it is an argument to begin doing it again.
