America's Most Walkable Cities - Richard Florida - Business - The Atlantic

America's Most Walkable Cities - Richard Florida - Business - The Atlantic1 person liked this. LIKE REPLY

America's Most Walkable Cities
DEC 15 2010, 11:00 AM ET32
The great economic reset we are in the midst of extends even to Americans' choices of places to live. The popularity of sprawling auto-dependent suburbs is waning. A majority of Americans--six in 10--say they would prefer to live in walkable neighborhoods, in both cities and suburbs, if they could. Writing in The Wall Street Journal a few months ago, I noted how changes in our economy and demography are altering "the texture of suburban life in favor of denser, more walkable, mixed-use communities." Christopher Leinberger has shown the positive effects of walkability in cities, towns, and suburbs; the architects Ellen Dunham Jones and June Williamson have detailed ways that older car-oriented suburbs can be retrofitted into more people-friendly, mixed-use, walkable communities. And walkability pays. According to research by Joe Cortright, housing prices have held up better in more walkable communities.



San Francisco wins
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/12/americas-most-walkable-cities/67988/


Judas Peckerwood 5 months ago in reply to Chucklepants
Funny!
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Michael_42 5 months ago in reply to Chucklepants
"Walkable." You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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liberalrob 5 months ago in reply to Michael_42
I have no idea what "walkable" means. At all.
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EliRabett 5 months ago in reply to Chucklepants
Walkability means that you can find the things you need and want within walking distance, not that you can walk from one end of the city to another.
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liberalrob 5 months ago in reply to EliRabett
Walking distance for who? What is "walking distance?"
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Brent 5 months ago in reply to liberalrob
I really don't think these terms are that confusing. The "for who" is "people who are capable of walking." For people who cannot walk or who find walking difficult, then there is no such thing as walking distance for their personal context. But I have no idea why such a distinction is meaningful or necessary in this conversation. It is just as true for people who cannot drive that there is no such thing as "driving distance."

As for the definition of walking distance, that would be a distance that is relatively reasonable for a person to consider walking on a regular basis and for non-extraordinary tasks. I might consider walking to the gym or to the corner store for instance if it were a half mile away and reachable by sidewalk. I would be less likely to do so if it were 5 miles away and only accessible over rough terrain or highway.

None of this, by the way, is especially mysterious or difficult to interpret. Even if phrases like "walking distance" weren't entirely common and well understood items in every human language for basically the history of human language, one need only click on the link for walkscore, which Florida includes in this post, to determine exactly how "walkability" is defined within this context.

I hope that is helpful for you

corrected spelling error