Our City Is a Success

In a March 2005 paper from the Brookings Institution (Brookings, among nerdy friends), urban strategist Christopher Leinberger argues that the defining characteristic of “successful” cities is “walkable urbanity.” The successful-cities bit struck Austinist as a bit Newspeaky, but Leinberger goes on to blame big-box stores like Wal-Mart for “the miles of deteriorating strip commercial littering American arterial highways,” which is something we can get behind.

Anyway, walkable urbanity basically means having a downtown in which you can run around all afternoon and not suffer either of those twin peaks of modern malaise: getting knifed or getting bored. And in Leinberger’s reckoning, Austin stacks up well: “If 30 percent to 50 percent of the market cannot get walkable urbanity, why would they come or stay in a place without that lifestyle option when Austin, Boston and Seattle beckon?”