Saint Petersburg residents object to survey results of "walkable urban places"

St Petersburg certainly is a "walkable urban place" say residents, condemning the results of Christopher Leinberger’s survey. Leinberger paints "Tampa Bay" with one wide brush, and says "The Tampa Bay area has nothing".  When asked by one reporter if he had even visited St Petersburg he responded that it had been many years since he had.  How dare he!

Downtown St. Petersburg is vibrant, and the envy of downtown Tampa. You can walk from where you live to where you work to a Publix grocery store and a butcher shop, to world class museums, to the theater, to art shows, to the waterfront, to restaurants and ice cream shops. We have bicycles and Segways and a downtown Looper trolley. I love working downtown - I walk to the nearby luxury condos when showing property there. The only thing we can’t walk to is a public school - but we can walk to both St Petersburg College and the University of South Florida St Petersburg. So we don’t have light rail - in an area of less than ten square blocks, who needs it?

Therein lies the issue, I believe. Leinberger is talking about metro areas with 30 Million, 60 Million, 90 Million people.  That’s not downtown St. Petersburg! We aren’t trying to get to downtown Tampa - we love it in St. Pete.

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