What people don’t want, [planner Anton] Nelessen affirms, are places that look like strip malls. They don’t want concrete islands or wide streets. What they do want are older places, the shaded sidewalks, houses with detail, Main Streets with life and texture. They want the amenities of car-free architecture on the small scale. This is what altering zoning to allow a new kind of land use can allow.


Jane Holtz Kay, an author, journalist and architecture critic for The Nation, has written widely on the built and natural environment. Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America, and How We Can Take It Back. New York: Crown, 1997. p. 298