Talking the Walk: Building Walkable Communities

Leslie writes ..... Have you ever visited a town that you just knew was special? Maybe you weren't even aware of why you felt that way - you just knew you never wanted to leave. These special places always had a welcoming feel about them with their tree-lined streets, children playing on the sidewalk and neighbors sharing gossip on the front porch. I bet it even had a lovely little downtown where shoppers could spend all day wandering around looking through the brightly decorated windows of the shops there. You didn't need a car to get around, your feet worked just fine, and after all, what would be the sense of driving when eveything was so close and convenient? While it seems that in this day and age towns like this can only be found on television, there are still places in this world where they exist.

Five years ago, I began to research and find out more about the sense of place that makes some towns in Michigan so wonderful, and why others remain in a state of deep failing and fatigue. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and so keeping this in mind, I've written this book to show you how we can turn our sometimes forbidding and hostile urban landscapes into the types of welcoming places in which we all wish we could live.