Is walking only for adults?

National trends always seem more real when they come to the city you call home. In New Haven, Connecticut, the 124,000-population city where I live, the market for housing near the center suddenly is running remarkably strong — making local people feel that urban revival is not something reserved for bigger and better-established places. Just over the sunken railroad tracks from downtown, the Strouse- Alder factory where women used to make Smoothie corsets has been converted into dozens of apartments. From the rambling orange-brick structure, the mostly youthful residents can walk to Yale events, commuter and long-distance trains, the burgeoning restaurant life, and everything else the city center has to offer. Meanwhile, a block from the downtown green, a beautiful Art Deco building that served as headquarters for the Southern New England Telephone Company is being turned into apartments of a more deluxe variety, for an affluent and probably older clientele. From the building’s lobby on Church Street, residents can walk to coffee places, theaters, banks, offices, museums, bars, churches, small markets — most of the destinations of daily or weekend life. Everything from sushi to shoe repair is close at hand. rolling, not strolling But one major segment of the city’s

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