Who should be required to take the first step in suburban retrofitting? The city, in the form of providing walkable, bikeable streets, or developers, by conforming to pedestrian-oriented building standards?
"A proposed Trader Joe's in Boulder, Colorado, brought up an interesting question this week in a spirited exchange on the Pro-Urb urban issues listserv: In auto-centric places where streets and infrastructure lack any sense of meaningful pedestrian amenity, who should take the lead on turning things around?"
"That is, should developers be required to build urban, pedestrian-oriented buildings fronting streets that are currently engineered as high speed arterials, in the hopes that, over time, a critical mass of new urban construction will foster the political will necessary to overhaul the infrastructure in further service of pedestrians and bicyclists? Or should the infrastructure be required to change first before any demands are placed on the private sector?"
Scott Doyon goes on to work through both sides of the debate, and asks readers to weigh in.
Thanks to Hazel Borys
FULL STORY: Chicken or the Egg: Who takes the lead on incremental suburban retrofitting?
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