Urban Model for the Nation

Christopher B. Leinberger, a visiting fellow with the Brookings Institution, believes the move into urban corridors that is occurring in the Washington area is being used as a model for urban centers across the country.

"Washington, D.C., and the region here is literally setting the pace for how we're building our metropolitan areas throughout the country," Leinberger said Friday at the Urban Land Institute's inaugural Urban Marketplace conference. "If you want to know where metropolitan areas are going in this country, you need to understand Washington, D.C."

Increasingly there is a demand for "walkable urbanism" over "drivable suburbanism," said Leinberger, a developer and professor in the University of Michigan's real estate program. And the recent development of once-neglected corridors could help solve issues as diverse as poverty and climate change but institutional mindsets in government and private enterprise still favor strip malls and office complexes along major freeways, he said.

The conference at Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center was held to discuss urban development themes including walkable space, gentrification, preservation and public-private partnerships. As many as 1,000 academics, community organizers, developers and government workers attended.

One theme that emerged was that cooperation among private enterprise, community groups and municipalities -- groups that can often be in conflict -- is needed for such revitalization projects. In keeping with that theme, Zach Dobelbower, a neighborhood planning coordinator for the District's Ward 2, sat with Al Hedin, senior vice president of development for PN Hoffman, and Patty Rose, executive director of GreenHome, a nonprofit organization that promotes green construction design. The three were discussing how full neighborhoods could now be certified "green" communities by the U.S. Green Building Council, which sets standards for this kind of development.

"It's kind of the next step," Hedin said. "It's taking it from a project-based format to a neighborhood."

Alejandro Lazo covers commercial real estate. His e-mail address islazoa@washpost.com.