We don’t walk in Michigan.
We live in suburbs, far-out exurbs and rural areas where we drive to the office, shopping centers and soccer practice.
We’re the home of the auto industry, for gosh sakes. Bicycles and public transportation are for losers.
Those perceptions, while still fairly accurate, are giving way to a new reality: Economic development is gravitating to denser, walkable communities.
And many of the state’s residents want more of it.
A recent study by Christopher Leinberger and Patrick Lynch, of the George Washington University School of Business, found a big increase in the percentage of new income property occurring in walkable urban sections of Michigan’s metro areas over the past 23 years.