Abstract
Philip Langdon, the journalist, editor, urban critic, and advocate long associated with the Congress for New Urbanism, draws on his vast experience to explore the relationships between walkability and livability in his most recent, very readable book, Within Walking Distance: Creating Livable Communities for All. Langdon begins his acknowledgements, declaring, “Walkable places have long been a passion of mine” (xi), and this passion permeates his pages. In his enthusiastic account of efforts of individuals to increase livability in neighborhoods in cities and towns as different as Portland, Oregon, and Starkville, Mississippi, Langdon extolls the virtues of walkability, and he lauds the efforts of the ordinary folks and disciplined developers who have made enduring efforts to create it.
Langdon is a gifted storyteller, and he knows that readers are drawn to stories with protagonists whose ideas and actions spark and enliven their own imaginations. For readers interested in walkability and livability and advocates and activists seeking inspiration and ideas for their own communities, there is much to be had in Within Walking Distance. For social scientists and other readers who approach the concepts of walkability and livability from more analytic perspectives, my hunch is they may come away from the book wanting more—more questioning, more skepticism, more systematic evidence. I count myself among this latter group. I enjoyed reading the book, I learned from reading the book, I would enjoy living in these places, but I found myself skeptical of a number of claims. Langdon writes, for example, that since the 1970s, the Pearl District in Portland “has become the best large, walkable urban neighborhood created in the core of an American city” (162). This may be true, and the urban aficionado in me says, “Yes! I love the Pearl District!” But the academic in me says, “By what criteria? What’s the evidence? Is it necessary to choose a best?”
Langdon begins by introducing three questions that motivated the book. He “wondered how pedestrian-scale places benefit their residents, how residents confront problems, and what people do to help these places improve” (2). He notes that “many professional publications tell how to plan streets and sidewalks that pedestrians like to use,” but what he “wanted to explore was the human element” (5). His purpose is expressly normative: “I show that places where the best of life is within walking distance ought to be our goal” (7). The six neighborhoods he describes in Philadelphia; New Haven, Connecticut; Brattleboro, Vermont; Chicago; Portland; and Starkville, Mississippi: differ in size, history, wealth, and education yet share certain traits. Most importantly, they are all densely settled; they have a mix of uses and activities; they have extensively connected, streets; and they relate well to the human eye, human size, and human gait. (8)
Each chapter includes attractive maps that illustrate each neighborhood’s geography and street network, in addition to photos of exemplars in the neighborhoods—mixed-use buildings, attractive homes, streets, sidewalk cafes, merchants, festivals, and common folks. The chapters include chronologies and facts, some of which are sourced in endnotes. Data tables do not grace the pages. If a reader wants to systematically compare characteristics of the cases—total areas, densities of street networks and populations, other elements of walkability—he or she is on their own. Though some of the data are there, their idiosyncratic presentation precludes a comparative overview that many would find useful as a foundation for better understanding the challenges the protagonists have confronted.
The reader’s journey begins in Center City, Philadelphia (chapter 1), with an overview of the area’s decline and revival. Readers are introduced to individuals and institutions associated with the city’s efforts in the 1990s to make the downtown clean and safe. Readers learn a bit of history and are introduced to the integral roles played by neighborhood organizations, foundations, and volunteer groups. Langdon then presents two faces of development: “big projects built by private capital” and “smaller patient undertakings, some of them the work of entrepreneurs, others the work of the community itself ” that, he asserts, are usually “what makes a neighborhood deeply satisfying” (37). This theme—the idea that it is the small, patient undertakings that make neighborhood life deeply satisfying—animates his description of redevelopment efforts in downtown Center City, North Liberties, East Passyunk, and Southwest Center City. The individuals the reader meets mostly share this view. For instance, David Goldfarb, who arrived in East Passyunk in 2005 when he was 24, affirms Langdon’s thesis: “For me, it boils down to this: a place you walk through is a place you know and love” (39).
To his credit, Langdon introduces some complex, controversial issues, including, among others, gentrification. He notes that the African American proportion of the population of Southwest Center City declined from 91 percent in 1980 to just 32 percent in 2010, but he then asks, “Was this change ‘gentrification’?” (46). And he continues: That word, traceable to the English word
Langdon is right that displacement is a key issue, but his disclaimer that young urban professionals who work for a living do not behave like masters of rural estates misses the point. Of course these new urban residents behave differently than the landed, rural gentry of England. The gentry were served their tea and coffee by their servants, there were no dense street networks on their rural estates, and so convivial third spaces like the Reanimator Coffee shop could not thrive. The point of the metaphor is class divide—and the political nature of the associated struggles between the haves and have-nots in urban neighborhoods. Notwithstanding Langdon’s interview with a black architect who has lived in Southwest City Center since the 1970s and believes that many of the changes wrought there have benefited both blacks and whites, gentrification remains a hot political issue in Southwest City Center and other Philadelphia neighborhoods. My point is that even in this nod to the social problems, Langdon seems to downplay the complexities and fraught economic and racial aspects of revitalization.
In chapter 2, Langdon describes gathering places in New Haven, the author’s residence, citing the efforts of entrepreneurs and residents to develop and create a local pharmacy; outdoor cafés as expansions of existing eateries; a coffeehouse that bans laptops, iPads, and tablets; bike lanes; little free libraries; and block parties. I think, though, he pays far too little attention to the issue of income inequality that is prominent in New Haven.
Chapter 3 focuses on efforts by citizens to revitalize Brattleboro, maintain the character of the community, retain stores in the downtown that provide essential services (i.e., hardware and grocery stores), and increase attractiveness to pedestrians. The vignette about a food co-op that elected to remain downtown and construct a new building with the co-op at ground level and 24 apartments on the three levels above is both illustrative and inspirational. However, I wanted to know more about the complex regional economic forces that resulted in dozens of empty storefronts in Brattleboro and whether complementary efforts were underway to attract industrial or service industry employers who will create jobs for the people needed to patronize these new businesses.
In chapter 4, Langdon describes the Little Village neighborhood in Southwest Chicago where a mostly Mexican immigrant population has replaced a predominantly Czech immigrant population. He focuses on the efforts of current residents to confront the Chicago bureaucracy and negotiate changes and services, ranging from easing regulations of food cart vendors, to the opening of a neighborhood high school, to changing transit services, to addressing gang violence. Here, the book takes on a more political tone, with a street-smart priest and hunger strikes organized with neighborhood churches to secure funding for a neighborhood high school. Langdon attributes many of the successes of Little Village to its compact, walkable network of streets, though he acknowledges that pervasive disparities in key indicators remain.
Chapter 5 is Langdon’s paean to Portland, specifically to the Pearl District, which he asserts is the “most-outstanding edge-of-downtown district created in any American city since the beginning of the New Urbanism movement” (10). Calling small blocks the “secret sauce” of redevelopment, he describes efforts to retain the historic character of the District, the role of developers to provide affordable housing, the importance of the metro, and other key features that have led to its iconic status among New Urbanists. He also notes with dismay zoning decisions by the city to permit structures that do not match the style of the District.
Chapter 6 is about Starkville, Mississippi, a university community with a population of approximately 23,000. This case is unusual: It focuses exclusively on the efforts of one entrepreneur, Dan Camp, who, with patience, creativity, discipline, orneriness, and originality, has redeveloped the 10-block Cotton District. Camp and his family own more than 100 buildings in the District—with more than 350 apartments and commercial spaces for restaurants and other businesses. The portrait Langdon paints of the Cotton District is one filled with quaint, idiosyncratic Southern charm, one that epitomizes “Lean Urbanism” (212), and it made me want to visit. At the same time, Langdon reports that Camp views his biggest mistake as the sale of a few properties because he lost control, and the buyers failed. Langdon does not ask whether the marquee development in a small town (that led to election of the principal to the office of mayor) can be sustainable or about the implications of such large holdings under control of a single family.
Langdon concludes with a set of general lessons for making human-scaled communities. These lessons explore actions neighborhoods can take, the importance of stepping up the pace, and the value of strategies such as “tactical or guerilla urbanism,” reforming local codes, and designing streets for people. He—belatedly in my opinion—devotes a couple of pages to the problem of high housing costs. I would have welcomed greater emphases on complexities and tradeoffs throughout the book.
Overall, Langdon provides readers with good, journalistic accounts of six places where variants of New Urbanism seemingly have worked. His accounts have a point of view, one shared by many individuals and organizations and undergirded by faith in knowing what is right. I would have preferred a more systematic presentation of evidence and a more balanced presentation, with introduction of critiques into the cases and greater attention to fundamental issues of economic and racial equality. With the exception of the Little Village case, these issues seem to be underplayed.