So Arlington Really Is For Walkers

Arlington may officially be a suburb, but it thinks of itself as urban. "A lot of people from a suburban mind-set believe they should be able to drive to their restaurant and park right in front," Fisette says. "That's not our concept."

Restaurateur Joe Corey, who owns Faccia Luna and Boulevard Woodgrill in Clarendon, says that at night, about a third of his customers arrive on foot or by Metro. At lunch, almost all do so. Over 13 years, Corey has watched Clarendon change from a sleepy strip of used-car lots to a cool nightspot where people come to walk around.

Arlington is far from perfect; it is home to two glaring examples of stultifying urban design -- Crystal City's failed attempt to put city life underground and Rosslyn's inept effort to relegate pedestrians to overhead skywalks. "From those experiences, we learned that life belongs on the ground," Fisette says.

Both mistakes are being dismantled, to be replaced by developments aimed at repeating the successes of Ballston, Clarendon, Shirlington and Pentagon Row, the residential-over- retail project next to the Pentagon City mall.

I'd still pick Washington, New York or San Francisco to wander, but our pleasant walk proved that big cities can learn from little Arlington. Adams Morgan and Georgetown, for example, cry out for wider sidewalks.

Footnote (groan): The podiatrists picked Brownsville, Tex., as the nation's least walkable place. Maybe they haven't visited Tysons Corner.

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