Back to the Future: Walkable Urbanism

by Christopher B. Leinberger, The Brookings Institution

The 1985 film Back to the Future reflects both of the two ways the built environment can be developed. Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox), the lead character, is a teenager growing up in fictional Hill Valley in 1985. His life revolves around the regional mall and his single-family home in the suburbs.

He lives in a drivable sub-urban place, a well-understood place where people rely on car transportation for nearly all trips from the home (Marty McFly hitches rides behind cars on his skateboard).

Drivable sub-urban is a development pattern that was introduced in the 1950s and became virtually the only kind of development in the U.S. since then.

McFly goes to the 1985 downtown at one point in the movie; it is down on its luck with X-rated movie theaters and boarded up storefronts. That was the condition of most American downtowns in the 1980s; they had been thrown away and most people stayed away.

Back to the Future: Walkable Urban Places

The movie transports Marty McFly back to 1955 Hill Valley—a very different place. The downtown is the heart of the community; the city plaza with fountains, restaurants, businesses, City Hall, apartments, clothing stores, the high school; virtually everything needed for daily existence is downtown or within walking distance of downtown. The 1955 downtown Hill Valley was a walkable urban place.

Drivable sub-urban and walkable urban places are the only two types of built development available. Drivable sub-urban places are all low density and have a “could be anywhere” character, since they are built according to well-understood national formulas.

Walkable urban places have great variability, starting with the lower-density small downtowns like Hill Valley and many suburban town centers throughout the country, through higher-density places like LODO in Denver or Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., to much higher density places like the traditional downtowns of Seattle, Chicago and, at highest density, Midtown Manhattan.

Adapted from the Introduction of The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream (Island Press, 2008)