Most mayors, city managers, and municipal planners feel a responsibility to their entire city. As a result, they tend to sprinkle the walkability fairy dust indiscriminately. They are also optimists—they wouldn’t be in government otherwise—so they want to believe that they can someday attain a city that is universally excellent. This is lovely, but it is counterproductive. By trying to be universally excellent, most cities end up universally mediocre. Walkability is likely only in those places where all the best of what a city has to offer is focused in one area. Concentration, not dispersion,
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