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Main Street, Galena, Illinois (photo by Robert Manson)

Bob Manson's latest entry on his terrific blog survey of independent bookstores, The Indie Blog Spot, takes him to Galena Book and Paper in downtown Galena, Illinois. Bob describes at as "a very comfortable space... a beautiful, well-lit store with a creaky wooden floor" in "an excellent location, nestled on Main Street alongside many other fine local businesses."

Bob's picture of downtown Galena is arresting. It shows a highly walkable district with numerous mostly local businesses in historic buildings that have been purposed and repurposed many times. Go up the bluff about two blocks and you're in a residential neighborhood, making Main Street eminently walkable albeit crowded during peak tourist season. Ironically, it was made possible because when the river town fell on hard times, it couldn't afford to tear down its old buildings, until eventually they became attractions. Galena's Main Street, along with historic downtown Dubuque, are the two most widely-known of their type in the region, perennial tourist magnets, and have been models for other towns (including New Bohemia and Uptown Marion).

So its success has led to replication, but largely as tourist districts. All of the districts named above have independent bookstores, and good coffeeshops, but no grocery or hardware stores. (There are specialty food stores on Main Street, but locals buy their groceries at the Piggly Wiggly with the gigantic parking lot in an unwalkable location on the edge of town.) Schools are rare. (Yay, Marion.) These are places to visit, not to live. Residential choices remain largely between houses in single-use residential districts, high-end condos, and low-end rentals.

It's possible that Main Street Galena and New Bo only attract people for the experience of an afternoon, but we seem loath to try urbanism on any scale, with the partial exceptions of small college towns (e.g. Decorah, Fairfield, Mt. Vernon). If people find showplace urbanism attractive for shopping and dining, why wouldn't at least some of them want to live in organic urbanism?