i admire your adventurous spirit, but your post exemplifies why i so greatly enjoy living in an urban city neighborhood with a fully interconnected street grid where there's no such thing a street without a sidewalk for miles in any direction around me.

i would feel so locked-in and isolated if i had to live in an area like my sister's where a simple walk to pick-up a 6 pack of beer is such a time-consuming ordeal that no one in practice ever actually does it. everything is so far away from everything else that everyone just drives everywhere anyway, so why even bother to provide consistent pedestrian infrastructure. cars, CARS, CARS!

Yup.
And why does everyone drive everywhere anyway? Maybe because there's no pedestrian infrastructure? Vicious cycle.
Hey "vicious cycle" should be the new name for the LCF subforum. Or maybe A&S

I actually live in a tiny city of 3000 people, and I do enjoy the easy ability to walk four blocks to the CBD where there is a grocery store, a post office, some other small stores and restaurants. One reason that I like to walk and sometimes bike when I travel is because moving slowly on foot or by bicycle is a fantastic way to get the feel for an area, and to see things that one otherwise would miss by taking a cab or driving a rental car.

One of my favorite stories in that vein involves a serendipitous discovery of the Bangladesh Consulate in Queens as a result of missing my subway stop and choosing to walk back by surface streets. Subsequent reading led me to discover that there is a large concentration of Bangladesh people in Queens. I had not known! And that information primed me to try out a Bangladeshi restaurant that I happened across during some random walking on a later visit to the city. None of that discovery would have occurred had I taken a cab. Walking lets me enjoy the journey and pick up some much needed exercise at the same time.

yeah, small towns that haven't been decimated by the wal-mart out by the interstate can still be very good for walkability too.

it's really a time period thing more than anything else, at least in the US.

pre WWII: there's a good chance for decent, cohesive walkability

post WWII: odds decrease precipitously.

some of it is the lack of consistent ped infrastructure, but in the case of my sister's neighborhood, there's also the issues of land use segregation and disconnectivity, which greatly limit the options that people would even have to walk to in the first place.

she lives on a former 500 acre corn field that was plowed into 1,000 tract homes, with absolutely nothing else. one way in/one way out, off of busy busy high speed county highway with no sidewalks. within her subdivision there are sidewalks for people to stroll around on and walk their dogs, but there's nothing within it to actually walk TO. that's probably the biggest part of the problem with contemporary suburban planning: the complete and total lack of use-mixing.

"we'll put 2,000 houses over here, then we'll put the shopping center 2 miles down the road over there, and the 200 acre office park will go in back of that, and we'll connect them all with high-speed 6 lane highways."

I incessantly post about Boston as a walking "nirvana,” as often as [MENTION=195860]Steely Dan[/MENTION] touts Chicago, and decries other American cities.The black line on the street map represents one (1) mile.

I was in Boston earlier this year to work an exhibit booth at a small conference. Nice area. Some sort of university nearby, with a Shake Shack in the neighborhood. I recall a tall round thing in some sort of park area outside my hotel window. Indeed a very walkable neighborhood. I can't recall now the precise area. There was a Dalton Street. I remember that much, and I may have crossed a bridge over a river while walking from rail line to my hotel.

i don't really decry other cities though.

it's not a city vs. city thing in my mind.

the issue of walkability is much more of an urban neighborhood vs. suburban neighborhood thing.

There are also natural geographical constraints that one often forgets.

We're on Portsea Island, which is within the middle of the photograph.

And, in a lot of ways in like Boston, as the population growth is constrained by natural boundaries. We haven't initiated a "big dig" here (I remember that as a child) but instead use hovercrafts and ferries between the islands (we're old fashioned.)

I see your point, but it seems that even cities proper are walkable/liveable sans car, or not, and suburbs follow suit, e.g NYC and Brooklyn (admittedly a borough I have never visited); Boston and inner suburbs, e,g, Brookline, Cambridge; San Francisco and (?) Berkley,

I referred to Detroit, and its suburb of Southfield as the “City of Towers and Cars,” although Ann Arbor, 40 miles away is a City of Outdoor Rooms." : It seems the "non-walkable" cities are mostly Midwestern, Southern and Sunbelt, and Wesern, though When I visited Chicago, I thought Lincoln Park was a walkable/liveable sans car area though seemingly removed from the downtown.

from my understanding of the word "suburban", i would never describe places like brooklyn or cambridge or brookline as "suburban".

to understand how i'm using the words "urban" and "suburban", let's go back to the two examples from chicagoland that i used on the previous page:

A) Lincoln Square (chicago neighborhood) - "urban" - https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9721.../data=!3m1!1e3

B) Niles, Illinois - "suburban" - https://www.google.com/maps/@42.0613.../data=!3m1!1e3


in A we have a tight and fully-connected street grid, with tightly packed multi-family residential buildings mixed with single family homes and commercial, retail, and institutional uses mixed into the urban fabric along the major street corridors with a minimum of parking lots to encourage pedestrian activity which in turn encourages a real sense of place.

in B we have residential, commercial, retail, and institutional uses all segregated from each other into their own super-blocks, with very poor interconnectivity, and as such very poor walkability. because everyone drives everywhere, each discreet destination needs to accommodate large amounts of car storage and we end up with parking lot hell.

Quote:

Originally Posted by acidfast7

There are also natural geographical constraints that one often forgets.[.]There are also natural geographical constraints that one often forgets]We're on Portsea Island, which is within the middle of the photograph.

And, in a lot of ways in like Boston, as the population growth is constrained by natural boundaries. We haven't initiated a "big dig" here (I remember that as a child) but instead use hovercrafts and ferries between the islands (we're old fashioned.)

@acidfast refers to the big dig, which was a massive project in the 90s-00’s to relocate an elevated highway that cut through downtown, to a tunnel, freeing up a swath of land to become the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a pedestrian mall.

However, even in a mecca like Boston, walkable areas to live without a car are limited, though sizeable enclaves:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

...However, even in Metro Boston, last weekend I spent two hours in freeway traffic on a normally one hour errand.

Quote:

Originally Posted by I-Like-To-Bike

Why didn't you use your bicycle for transportation for this errand?

Could you have transported the same passengers and/or shopping bags, packages and other errand related stuff by bicycle?

How long would the same errand trip taken if you had traveled by bicycle?

God, that looks horrific until reaching the Old Town from Lincoln Square when one heads toward the centre. It's just urban sprawl. I'll accept your vernacular of urban sprawl instead of suburban sprawl, but either way, it's really sprawl and it's horrendous.

**shivers**

It might as well be LA.

You win, I think the post-automobile cities are mmmm.

I'll take a Boston any day.

That's just ridiculous. Obviously it's not ideal in all respects, but there is a continuum and this is way better than the worst

It's absolutely bottom-tier compared to the Northeastern US. But still better than this **** that I must listen to for the next week.

i guess boston, NYC, philly, and DC might as well be LA too.

it's all just sprawl and it's all horrendous according to resident "expert" on US urbansim.



boston @ 7 miles outside of downtown: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.2726.../data=!3m1!1e3

NYC @ 7 miles outside of downtown: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6326.../data=!3m1!1e3

philly @ 7 miles outside of downtown: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0181.../data=!3m1!1e3

DC @ 4 miles outside of downtown: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9273.../data=!3m1!1e3 (DC gets too suburban at 7 miles out to have much in the way of pre-war urban neighborhoods at that distance)



for reference:

chicago @ 7 miles outside downtown https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9721.../data=!3m1!1e3

Thanks for you comments. I don't know the geography of other cities to comment on "far" suburbs, but in Boston outer suburbs are doable "car free," but proximity to the town center becomes more important. Perhaps that holds for the outer suburbs of other "carfee" metropolitan areas, e.g NYC,

In Detroit, I think that becomes nearly impossible without some kind of access to a car or other motorized vehicle.

Nonetheless, I have quipped,

I'd consider Boston the Northeast, NYC a global city like London, Tokio, Seoul or Mumbai (and thus not inherently uncomparable) and slap anyone in the face that considers DC the Northeastern US.

it's theoretically possible to live car-free anywhere, it's just a matter of how much inconvenience one is willing to tolerate relative to where they live.

as a general rule, the more urban the environment one lives within, the less inconvenience one will have to tolerate.

there are lots of traditional town centers built around commuter rail stations throughout suburban chicagoland, places like Elmhurst being a fairly representative example: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8919.../data=!3m1!1e3

these places offer a good tweener environment between my previous A (city neighborhood) and B (auto-centric suburbia) examples.

though they're still probably better as car light than entirely car-free for your average person.

All cities that saw a great deal of their growth from the 60s onward. After everyone had a car. The immediate post war expansion in the 40s and 50s tended to hold to more urban density development patterns.

I agree with this, and I will even say I almost never like the looks of newly constructed buildings either. They just lack the small flourishes and attention to detail of architecture built 100+ years ago. I used to think it would be cool to live in the Southwest until I went to Phoenix and saw how terrible the urban sprawl was compared to what I was used to, and how every house looked exactly the same. The reality is that European cities have had hundreds of years to develop before cars. US cities had cars and a ton of empty space to expand into.

Lincoln Park in Chicago has a 24hr subway stop and continuous bike lanes on major thoroughfares all the way to the loop. Seems pretty accessible to me...

New houses (even prefabricated) and high-density developments can look nice and be very efficient but it often comes at an increased cost.

Baufritz (Germany) comes to mind: https://www.baufritz.com/uk/architecture-and-homes/

Riedberg (suburb of Frankfurt) has some interesting high-density units like:

so.what: https://www.bien-ries.de/referenz/so-what/
take.5: https://www.bien-ries.de/referenz/take-5/

But, I guess that taste is very personal. Some people won't like these.

Very nicely, [MENTION=195860]Steely Dan[/MENTION] , you describe IMO a third "compartment of Metropolitan urban living, those town centers / inner suburbs, and for walkability / livability, they follow suit with the central city, essentially dependent on the regional mass transit.

In Boston; Brookline, Cambridge, and Newton, etc are examples. In fact the prosperous inner suburb of Newton is said to be a coalescence of nine villages each served by a light rail / Commuter Rail stop.

The aerial view you posted of Boston included the Town Center of Roslindale, a neighborhood in Boston City Proper, and nicely serviced by bus and Commuter Rail. In fact, "Rozzie" is about midway on my cycle commute to an outer Boston suburb where I work, 14 miles from home. Having a reverse commuter route is a nice situation.

From my limited Chicago experience, Lincoln Park and Oak Park seem to be such. In Detroit, there are nice inner, and slightly removed walkable suburbs such as the Grosse Pointes, Royal Oak, and Birmingham, but they lack a good regional mass transit.

So besides the first compartment of Metropolitan urban living, downtown, city proper; the second of “outer” suburbs; the third of inner suburbs / town centers, I think there is also a fourth “compartment” of Metropolitan urban living, I call exurbia; less walkable, and at the periphery of the regional mass transit, but good for road cycling. I can be in Boston’s exurbia in about one hour on a training ride, and,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

… On a happier note, the Transportation Authority (MBTA) allows bikes on subways and commuter trains [and buses] with certain restrictions and that's a nice way to get out of town without city riding. MBTA > Riding the T > Bikes on the T

And then there is rural; not walkable (to get somewhere) and with no mass transit…say no more.

For me,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

...I am occasionally asked by suburban colleagues who live closer to work, why I don’t move out there from downtown. My reply is that for cycling purposes, the distance and routes are perfect, meanwhile thinking to myself, “Why do you think they call it ‘sub-urban’ living (like ‘sub-human’)”?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

...I once heard a quote to the effect that, “I like living in the City, and though I don’t go to the Opera, I like knowing it’s there.”

The outer suburbs and exurbia are too far from the Opera.

I'm 36 and I've never owned a car although I have driving license since turning 18. I live in a rather small town, around 80k people and most of the places can be reached on foot or by cycling. Despite that, not many people cycle. They would rather sit in a car and drive 500 meters. To me it is some kind of absurd to see a young man or woman sitting in her car driving around instead of using his or her legs. People are more isolated from other people and nature that way. I've grown up in a family that didn't own a car too. It's not that I can't afford a car, I can of course but my needs are very simple and I like the exercise of cycling. Also, it's super fun and has always been. Sometimes it's hassle without a car especially if you want to carry heavy stuff or regularly commute to nearby city due to work, but I don't have to do that since I work from home. I lived abroad as well in a city with over a million for long 9 years and managed it without a car. Cycled there as much as I could. I guess at one point I might be really tempted to buy a car if I have a kid, but I say again, we as a family were perfectly fine without a vehicle. I might accept electric car much more easily than a fossil fuel one, it seems cleaner technology though...

I totally agree with this. I find there's even a big difference between driving with windows open or closed. With windows closed, even though I can see out, external sounds are muffled, my stereo is probably playing something just for me, and I feel like I'm in my own cocoon (like everybody else). But with windows open, I've often got an elbow sticking outside, eye contact through the open window feels more direct, I am hearing the stereos of any other people that might have their windows open, and more conscious that my stereo is audible to others, etc. Maybe more importantly, I drive slower, and feel more like I'm 'cruising' or 'touring' the neighborhood, participating in road use along with the others around me, rather than with windows closed I'm driving faster and focused on getting 'through' or 'out' of the neighborhood, competing for roadshare with others around me.

It's not hard to understand how this leads to a lot of bad cager behavior.