Originally Posted by
jon c.
People walk a lot more in places where there is somewhere to walk. But in much of the US, housing is relatively far from anywhere people want to go. And if you want to walk from your home to a nearby restaurant and that involves crossing a six lane highway and walking across a large parking lot, the journey is much less appealing.
Some cities are seeing revitalization of urban neighborhoods that allow people to walk to shops and restaurants. But these will never accommodate more than a small percentage of the population. The best way to encourage people to do things without a car is to put those things closer to their homes. But the US has developed in such a way that it's now much harder to do that.
Some cities never lost those neighborhoods, like Boston. It seems to me that in order to be an attractive place to support a variety of restaurants and shops to which to walk (and not drive to visit that neighborhood…the basic premise of this thread) a neighborhood must be a large area with a substantial, dense population living there, likely that
evolved in the pre-automotive era.
I think a lot of urban
revitalization projects tend to
create enclaves as driving destinations to walk around in such large cities like in my native Detroit. One of my greatest complaints about the automotive industry/culture is that by by intent, or just popular acceptance, previously vitalized neighborhoods just whithered away, and deprived the citizens of the
choice to Live Car Free.
