In Search of the Walkable Exurban Downtown

The Walkable Exurban Downtown is the darling of the 21st century American built environment. It sits at the intersection of two contradictory trends: the US’s insatiable urge to sprawl yet love of dense, quaint, clean walkable environments. This combination has made Walkable Exurban Downtowns (WEDs) some of the hottest, fastest-growing communities in the United States, giving Americans—or at least those who can afford the down payment—the best of both worlds.

But while legacy WEDs—often the output of late 19th / early 20th century planning— are beloved, creation of new WEDs has been largely regulated away by a combination of de-facto greenbelts, onerous land use rules, building code requirements, and commercial lenders skittish of anything too far away from an urban center.

But with the WED at a premium, some ambitious real estate entrepreneurs are looking to make new walkable exurban centers despite heavy regulatory and capital markets headwinds.

Today’s letter will explore the WED in all its contradictory glory. Specifically, we’ll look at:

• Defining the WED in the context of exurban growth;
• Examples of the WED in action;
• Finding and evaluating new, “undiscovered” WEDs;
• WED “failure states”;
• Barriers to the creation of new WEDs and “new city” entrepreneurs doing it anyway.