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Small, dense, walkable. Does it exist in America? I don't think so.
by 1270018080 5y ago
Small, dense, walkable. Does it exist in America? I don't think so.
- kaesar14 5y agoI'd plug New Haven here!
- gwill 5y agomid sized cities like Milwaukee could make the list. Not sure if that's dense enough though.
- endisneigh 5y agoSomerville, MA. Manhattan, NYC, etc.
- thatfrenchguy 5y agoSan Francisco obviously. Perfect density, access to nature, perfect climate. You just have to pay for it.
- ngokevin 5y agoWouldn't say walkable though. Public transit doesn't feel super well-connected. If you have the cash to Uber everywhere, it's good though it's a lot of traffic to go through to go a few miles. The time of the slow sparse public transit or the costly Uber ended up having me still just drive everywhere, and then worry about parking everywhere I went.
- wholien 5y agoI found walking + biking + buses + muni trains to do pretty well in San Francisco. Figure out the major muni train or bus stop I'm trying to get to, and then either walk to it or walk to a shared bike dock and bike to it. Same thing on the other side, if necessary. Often I just bike the whole way to get some exercise and see the city: "it's about the journey, not the destination", right? The hills make it less walkable than other cities, but if you are healthy you should get used to the hills pretty quickly. I loved walking back to Nob Hill or biking back to NoPa after work. The hills are daunting at first. Sometimes you'd need to get off your bike and walk up parts. But once you get used to it it's not a huge issue. The cool weather also helps cooling down after you get to your destination. Compare that to somewhere like Austin, TX, where you start sweating the minute you get out of the AC and into the year-round humid weather...
- ngokevin 5y agoI used to bike Outer Richmond to Mission daily. It's okay, but not ideal. SF isn't very well known for being bike-friendly outside of the major bikeways (worried about getting doored heading down Mission or Valencia). Some stretches were great (GGP, Page). Weather is nice for it, although a bit chilly at night. I used to take Muni daily as well, but just doesn't run active enough for me, and was not competitive with UberPool pricewise. Experience with docks wasn't often good, sometimes it wouldn't register my bike was docked, or the dock is full, or the dock is empty, or the bike is out of battery or smeared with poop. Plus was worried about sharing bikes with COVID. Just personal experience.
- drstewart 5y agoMadison Santa Fe Burlington
- 1270018080 5y agoI've been putting together a list of walkable cities to potentially move to, and Madison and Burlington are on the list. Most of America is a 1/10, they're 6/10s, which isn't bad. All ranked by my totally arbitrary scale. But what I'm looking for is a 9+/10. Aspen, Colorado is a good example, but I would never be able to buy a house there as they start at $8 mil.
- pivo 5y agoBoston fits that description well, it’s why I love living here.
- zumu 5y agoPortland, OR is pretty close.
- bradlys 5y agoDefinitely not dense. Portland is extremely sprawly. Have lived in Portland for years - no one there thinks of it as dense - as that’s one of the main draws of it.
- zumu 5y agoNot super dense no, but denser than most places in the US. In fact, there are actually laws on how far it can sprawl. I lived there for 14 years or so and never lived there more than walking distance from a grocery store. I think the farthest I lived from school or work was a 40 minute walk or 20 minute bike ride. I wasn't rich either. I worked through college at PSU.