sidewalk

Because of President-elect Obama’s plans to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure, some recent discussion of smart growth has focused on proposals for huge projects, such as rebuilding America’s rail network.

But walkability often depends on much smaller steps, steps that require changes in tiny increments of space.

Last Friday, I was in two different suburban environments in Atlanta. Both are sprawl by any normal definition of the term - car-oriented environments where residential streets are separated from commerce, sidewalks are rare, and densities are low. But the two places are as different as sprawl and new urbanism.