City Planning’s Greatest Innovation Makes a Comeback
Growing up in Lexington, Kentucky, my best friend and I lived only a quarter mile apart as the crow flies. We had nearly identical houses, both clad in a blend of brick and vinyl that allowed our newly minted middle-class parents to signal status without breaking the bank. Getting to each other’s homes should have been simple.
The trouble was, we lived on opposite ends of two cul-de-sac neighborhoods, each fronting a busy corridor that had once been a farm road. A strictly legal trip from his house to mine involved a 25-minute, mile-long trek along aimless streets, largely without a sidewalk. So we cheated, cutting through backyards to the howls of homeowners. This was the early 2000s; privacy fences have since been installed that probably would have ended our friendship.
Ours was a problem that city planning was supposed to prevent: Cities were meant to grow along a coordinated pattern of easily navigable streets and public spaces.
