Suburban commercial sites located on thoroughfare intersections near residential areas are often called "neighborhood activity centers." But inadequate pedestrian facilities, extensive buffers, dangerous streets, and site designs oriented toward automobiles entering from the thoroughfare often make the geographical proximity of the neighborhood to the shopping center irrelevant. Discouraged from walking by inconvenient or unsafe pedestrian routes, neighborhood residents drive to their errands and shopping. Once in their cars, however, residents have little incentive to be loyal to nearby businesses since the next shopping center is usually less than five minutes down the road. This increases traffic and discourages a sense of place or community in the neighborhood.

Street Layout Determines Walking Distance, Safety, and Comfort:
Suburban street networks often include many culs-de-sac and looping residential roads that branch out from a small number of connections to through roads, which concentrates traffic at the collector road intersections. Collector roads and thoroughfares, designed for high speeds to maximize throughput of the dense traffic, are typically the only routes connecting residential and commercial land uses. This often requires the pedestrian to travel a path several times longer than the direct distance between endpoints. A long walk beside a stretch of collector road or monotonous thoroughfare is made more uncomfortable by traffic, lack of shade, and a scarcity of interesting features along the way. Intersections or other crosswalk locations on these wide, multi-lane roads are few and far between, but the temptation for a pedestrian to cross mid-block to reach a destination is extremely dangerous. When the pedestrian finally arrives at the site of his or her destination, hedges, embankments, fences, woods, and a wide parking lot setback may stand between the sidewalk and the building entrance. Figure 1 below shows how the walking distances between residential homes at locations such as A, B, and C can be several times longer than the direct distance.

Buffers between Land Uses Create Pedestrian Barriers
Zoning laws and building codes in suburban municipalities typically require residential and commercial land uses to be separated by opaque aesthetic buffers in the form of wooded areas, fences, or other sight barriers. These buffers encourage the development of independent residential and commercial road networks as described above, and create physical barriers to the most efficient routes for pedestrian travel. Figure 1 shows how woods, a fence, and parking lot landscaping provide obstacles to more direct pedestrian routes. A close survey of most suburban commercial sites near residential areas will reveal locations where neighborhood pedestrians have worn paths through landscaping, climbed over or through fences, scrambled down embankments and blazed trails though the woods due inadequacies in the sidewalk network, as can be seen at Wellington Park.

Traditional Street Layouts and Site Designs Encourage Walking

Prior to post-WWII auto-centric development patterns in the US, residential neighborhoods were built with convenient pedestrian access to places of commerce. The population density of many of these areas was, and still is, similar to medium-density development in today's suburbs. However, these "traditional" neighborhoods featured well-connected grid-like street designs to minimize walking distances and avoid traffic bottlenecks, As shown in Figure 2. Sidewalks were typically installed on both sides of the streets, which were narrow and kept traffic speeds low. Another advantage of the grid design was the ability to divide property into parcels for sale and individual development, with commercial , high density residential, and detached home construction evolving as town planning or market forces dictated. A property close to the downtown "main street" was valuable due to its proximity. Although land uses would occasionally conflict, the modest scale of pedestrian-oriented activity and the high standards of aesthetic design in force during the early 20th century gave small-town America a tranquil yet dignified charm seldom found in today's suburbs.

Interest in traditional style mixed-use development is growing among town planners and developers across the country. Note that the commercial and residential areas in Figure 2, while more pedestrian-friendly than Figure 1, offer similar residential, commercial, and parking space as Figure 1. Ideally, less parking space would be needed since more residents will walk to businesses, and multiple stops would be made on foot rather than by car. On-street parking encourages sharing of parking spaces among businesses, and buffers sidewalks from street traffic. Also note that aesthetic buffers may be located between different land uses, but that these buffers do not present barriers to efficient travel between endpoints.

  In cities and towns that have maintained or are restoring their traditional infrastructures, urban living is on the rise as Americans rediscover the merits of a lifestyle that provides easy access to goods, services, employment, and entertainment. Even on a small scale, traditional neighborhood design can improve the quality of life in suburban areas. Studies such as that by the University of Washington show that demand for pedestrian facilities is often unmet by suburban-style development in areas with population densities that would otherwise generate high amounts of pedestrian travel. Instead, suburban site designs and street layouts in medium-density areas often produce unsustainable levels of automobile traffic and reduce the effectiveness of alternative transportation methods such as mass transit. It is the opinion of this author that the Town of Cary should seriously reconsider its current zoning restrictions, buffer requirements, and roadway design patterns that prohibit development of traditional mixed-use pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods.