The Townie is something in between the regular bike and a recumbent?
Yeah, sort of. I think the real innovators of this style were the folks at Rans:
http://rans.com/bicycles/crank-forward.html
The Electra bikes are fine for the purposes mentioned above, and it's easy to see why timid riders like being able to put their feet on the ground at stops, without leaving the sadde. The ones I've tweaked for friends didn't have high build or component quality, but they weren't terrible.
__________________
"What if we fail to stop the erosion of cities by automobiles?. . . In that case, we Americans will hardly need to ponder a mystery that has troubled men for millennia: What is the purpose of life? For us, the answer will be clear, established and for all practical purposes indisputable: The purpose of life is to produce and consume automobiles."
~Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities