05-29-2026SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

Billionaire urbanism: How Walmart heir Alice Walton engineered a small-town paradise

A tour of Bentonville, Arkansas, where one of the most remarkable urban transformations in America has taken place, courtesy of the Walton family and their architects.

On any given day, a visitor to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, could encounter something uncommon. Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton and the current richest woman on Earth, is known to stroll the galleries of the world-class art museum she built in a ravine in the Ozark Mountains. Since its 2011 opening, the admission-free Crystal Bridges has turned Walmart’s modest hometown into a global arts destination, and kicked off a remarkable 15-year spree of cultural and civic development.

It’s impossible to miss the scope of transformation that’s happened in Bentonville, population 63,000. From the downtown square alone, one can see two high-end hotels, a pedestrianized street lined with public art, a large public park under construction, a stretch of the 40-mile Razorback Greenway bike........

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