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cnn.com wrote
Metropolitan areas ranked for walkability
Tue December 4, 2007
Young professionals are driving a national trend toward more walkable communities, says the author of a report to be released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution.
The report ranks the Washington region first among the country’s major metropolitan areas in the number of “walkable places” per capita, thanks to changes in just the past 15 years.
Leinberger attributes Washington’s success with walkability to several factors, including a large population of 20- and 30-somethings and recent strong economic growth.
But the chief factor, he said, is the success of the Metro. The 31-year-old rail system has transformed the region, shaping development and making the walkable urban model more viable.
Leinberger calls rail transit a key factor in the success of walkable places. Roughly two-thirds of the 157 places he counted are served by rail, he said.
Columbus ranked 19th in the current rankings of city walkability. 19th is pretty good considering it can be kind of scary walking around in downtown Columbus. I can’t believe LA is ranked so high (12). No one walks in LA.
Can’t say that I’ve ever been scared walking to/from work, to/from lunch, or out in the evenings.
:?
I guess if I were a single female walking alone at 3 am, I’d be a little scared, but that would be the same just about anywhere else in the world.
Hockeyfan34, just bring your hockey stick with you!
Can’t say that I’ve ever been scared walking to/from work, to/from lunch, or out in the evenings.
:?
I guess if I were a single female walking alone at 3 am, I’d be a little scared, but that would be the same just about anywhere else in the world.
Actually the crime is not the scary part. I just happen to walk through one of the most dangerous crosswalks in the area. Its underneath the catwalk that connects City Center Mall with the City Center Parking Garage. I have explicitly failed to mention that I walk through this crosswalk on my life insurance policy for fear that my premium would become unmanagable.
OSU area is pretty dangerous too. At least when I was there. (mid-90s). I got hit by a car while riding a bicycle and was witness to a car that hit another pedestrian.
well, baltimore, md is #15. i used to walk all over that town, but only with a bodyguard (my scary punk friend). i wouldn’t recommend anyone walk around that town (i didn’t have a car), especially out of towners. almost everyone i knew in school had been mugged or worse.
What I notice in Downtown Columbus is drivers not yielding to pedestrians when turning or just completely running red lights because they are on the phone—there is a yield to pedestrian sign in front of the building where I work and RARELY do drivers yield….
Denver is #4!!! :D
I don’t know. My brother and wifey live in Locust Point http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locust_Point%2C_Baltimore and it seems extremely walkable. As long as you don’t go anywhere they talk about in The Wire, I think Baltimore is much more walkable than our fair city!
Baltimore Murder Map
I see what you mean now. Sorry, I’m just a little too sensitive about people saying downtown is full of crime. The only people who say that watch the local news too much and never walk around downtown.
But yeah, drivers failing to yield is an everyday thing in Columbus. It’s gotten to be a game for me. If I see someone is about to cut me off at a crosswalk, I’ll step in front of thier car and then jump back when they realize that they’re being a douchebag. I then smile and wave as they cross in front of me to rub in their douchbagginess even more.
I’m sure I’ll end up on the hood of a car someday.
I actually got hit by a car a couple weeks ago as I was walking to work. I was walking on the sidewalk along Livingston, headed towards downtown. A guy had pulled up at a stop sign, trying to turn right. He wasn’t paying any attention as I was crossing in front of him, his eyes were glued looking for any traffic coming from the other direction. I was right in front of his car as he started to pull forward and ran into me.
He was moving slowly enough that it didn’t even knock me over and certainly caused no injuries. But nonetheless, I got hit by a car.
Not to discredit Columbus’s walkability (I think the website that does it for you rated my address a 9.3 or something close to that), but I think this report is kinda shite.
* LA is walkable if you’re staying in one 5 block radius, like the tourists do, who aren’t performing any every day functions. Anyone that has lived there will tell you, we don’t really walk anywhere, unless you count walking a gazzillion blocks to where ever you’re going because there’s never parking where you need it, but you’re too “busy” to just walk in the first place. Missing Persons even wrote a sing about it…
*NY # 10? “For example, midtown Manhattan is given the same weight as Reston Town Center, a lifestyle center outside Washington, even though the latter has only a tiny fraction of the office and retail space, residential units, and hotel rooms of midtown.” Huh? I don’t understand this guy’s reasoning. How can you compare a tiny mixed use district to an island where people walk miles and miles a day just to live their everyday life.
*The fact that Dallas and Houston even cracked the top 30 makes me 100% sure this list is based on some kind of payoff from people in the housing biz :)
Am I missing the point of this article? Does a city with 10, 15 “pockets” of walkable areas make it a walkable city?
As much blame as I’d like to place on drivers in Columbus for not sharing the roads very well with walkers and cyclists, I think we honestly just don’t have enough pedestrian and alternate types of traffic out there to make drivers more aware. If drivers were used to having to yield for pedestrians at every single stop light or sign, then they’d be more used to it and we’d probably see less incidents like Rocknrolloutlaws unfortunately had.
As people have pointed out in other threads… the walk from one side of downtown to another isn’t a long one… it’s just usually a boring one.
I honestly believe that if the question was asked “you’re at a green light and making a turn, either to the left or right, and a pedestrian is crossing the street, who has the right of way”…90% of Columbus drivers would fail.
I think their answer would be that the pedestrian has the right of way, but since there are very few people walking around (especially during non-business hours) there’s really no reason to even bother looking for pedestrians and just go.
Like Somertimeoh, I think any system that ranks the Reston Town Center and Manhattan as equally “walkable” is a system in dire need of retooling. And it would be nothing short of comic to label the sprawling Dallas metroplex walkable. That said, Reston (the 1960s planned community outside D.C. in which the Town Center sits) is both a pleasant and an easily walkable community. Bike paths and trails link all parts of the city to each other and to the Town Center (faux) downtown; and thousands of people live, work and shop there. Likewise, parts of Dallas –Uptown, Deep Ellum, and the McKinney area spring to mind — look to me much like an all-grown-up version of the Short North: downtown is no more than 1-2 miles away; the streets teem with the young professionals so many cities covet; and there’s even a trolley! Reston is a medium-density city and those Dallas neighborhoods are high density; Reston was planned and the Dallas neighborhoods were not; but all of them deserve to be complimented. As for Columbus, I’m pleased it made the list, even as flawed a list as it is.
Baltimore Murder Map
:lol:
one of my friends actually got mugged for his pizza in baltimore.
I think Baltimore is slowly slowly improving. Yes still scary, but seems to me that it has had some significant young hipster flipper-investor interest in the last few years. I worked on a project there a while ago, and it seems like the cool kids were just starting to migrate into certain neighborhoods. When I went back last year, there were significantly more “improving” neighborhoods.
The thing is… Baltimore is an inherently walkable city. It’s residential areas are tight and mixed-use pretty much everywhere.
When I was in DC (I stayed between the Dupont and Adams-Morgan districts), I walked almost everywhere (except when I caught the bus from the Hotel to G St, to go sightseeing in the rain). So, I’m not really surprised that Little “Paris/San Francisco/London” is # 1 in terms of walking cities. But them walk signs- whole other story (I actually took a picture of one).
As for C-bus; you basically HAVE to have a car to go almost anywhere outside of 270 (OK, outside of downtown). It should be ranked lower, if it weren’t for the OSU/Short North area (and I would still not walk up certain streets in the campus area).
And one morning, I walked from Westerville to Easton (don’t ask, and I was 100% sober), and it took about 2:15, and that’s at 3, 4 in the morning.
OK, Columbus is NOT NYC/DC/Chi-town/Amsterdam, and if public transit doesn’t improve, it will NEVER be.
I really do not know how to respond to that
Same report. Different headline:
Friday, December 7, 2007 – 2:45 PM EST
Columbus residents looking to catch some air might want to get behind the wheel instead, a new survey indicates.
A new field survey from the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution placed Columbus 19th out of the nation’s 30 largest metropolitan areas based on its walkable urban areas per capita. The survey, which excluded inherently walkable areas such as medical and college campuses and large corporate headquarters, considered the Short North the only “regional-serving” walkable urban space for the area’s 1.73 million residents.
READ MORE
What what what!?!?
So what about German Village, Brewery District, Downtown, Arena District, Discovery District cause them to fall outside of this classification?
What what what!?!?
+1,000,000 to the Brewmaster’s comments
Seriously the study thinks that?! man what a load of garbage. German Village at the very very least should count also. I recall reading somewhere that GV is the largest by land area historical district in America, but I guess that’s culturally insignificant now isn’t it? I’m really really torqued now. :evil: