Rethinking our suburbs

Haya El Nasser writes in today's USA Today how rising gas prices are inspiring suburbs like Maricopa, AZ; Rancho Cucamonga, CA; and Huntersville, NC to consider redesigning themselves into self-sustaining communities. The article even mentions a website, http://www.walkscore.com that evaluates the "walkability" of some 2,500 neighborhoods, proposing that our nation's tolerance for driving vast distances between bedroom, work, and market is rapidly declining. Here's a snip:

"We're sort of stuck with retrofitting the suburbs," says Scott Bernstein, head of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, which for years has urged that transportation costs be a criterion for mortgage qualification. "That's not all that bad. … There's nothing like a crisis to get people to try something."

Incidentally, my neighborhood (Scotts Valley, CA) has a Walk Score of 63/100 ("Somewhat walkable"). I hope that number will increase with the addition of our long awaited Skypark Town Center. It's a literally perfect illustration of this article: the transformation of an empty lot and two ill-placed propane businesses into a real downtown.

Read the entire piece: Gas prices drive push to reinvent America's suburbs