greendaily.com — We all know that one way to decrease our carbon footprint, as well as the fat surrounding our butts, is to walk instead of drive whenever possible. However, depending on the city you live in, this may or may not be a reasonable option. Here are the top 10 cities for walkable lifestyles..
Dec 7, 2007 View in Crawl 4
geniusjDec 8, 2007
If they were focusing on public transit, New York would have been number one by a mile instead of number 10. However, they weren't. They were focusing on the 'walkability' in the whole metro area. How DC won that, I'm not sure. I guess the rest of the country just sucks more?
geniusjDec 8, 2007
I completely agree. I think NY should have definitely been #1. I used to live in Westchester county in a little town called Croton-on-Hudson. Croton as well as all the suburbs surrounding it were all quite walkable. The reason for this is just because of the age of the towns. All of the towns have a village center with quite a few homes in walking distance to it. I know I was within walking distance of the center of my village which offered many food choices, a pharmacy, etc. When you factor in that most suburbs directly surrounding NY are built similarly, I don't see how it can lose to something like DC. DC suburbs are completely useless when it comes to walking unless you happen to live in downtown Annapolis (which is a very small percentage of Annapolis) or old-town Alexandria. Most people who work in the city in NY take public transit and walk. I don't think the same is true of DC.
Closed AccountDec 8, 2007
Put that on a tourist pamphlet. "We welcome you to beautiful Washington DC, enjoy your stay, We feel you will be pleasantly surprised to find your likelihood of getting shot or stabbed is only five times greater than in your home state! Sample our local cuisine, tour historic landmarks, enjoy every minute of your stay, because statistically speaking, every minute is ten times more likely to be your last. Enjoy your stay in DC and thank you for your tourism dollars. - The Tourism Council"(numbers adjusted for my home state of Wisconsin which is admittedly quite safe, adjust yours accordingly, it doesn't matter where you live though, because even the second worst state (Louisiana) is three times behind DC in murders)Honestly, I like DC, I go there often, but don't sell me on it's safety, statistically it is a blight on our nation, not as bad as before, but still terrible.
dcesqueDec 8, 2007
For all of you asking why DC is at the top of the list: read the study. The guy's methodology is a little strange. He counts the number of walkable places in each city and then divides by the population, to get a walkable-places-per-capita. DC has tons of walkable places (Downtown, Georgetown, Dupont, Chinatown, Silver Spring, Bethesda, Rosslyn, Clarendon, Ballston, Alexandria, Reston, etc), and relatively little population compared to other cities (Around 3 million in the metro area, I think), so it winds up with a high walkability index. New York on the other hand has a higher OVERALL number of walkable places, but has 10 million people in the metro area, therefore has a lower walkability index.Each walkable place is weighted exactly the same, regardless of size. Midtown Manhattan for example, counts the same for NY as Bethesda does for DC...which is crazy. To Leinberger's credit, he mentions this as a caveat in his paper. The study needs to be redone, weighting different places according to their sizes. Perhaps just measure acres of walkable space per city?The other flaw I noticed is that he counts walkable places that are not really part of each city. Reston VA counts a walkable place for DC, even though it is 15 miles away and not even accessible by the metro. I have lived in downtown DC for 4 years and I've never even been to Reston. He counts New Hope PA (my hometown) as a walkable place for Philly, even though its a good FIFTY miles from Center City, and almost halfway to New York. Little flawed, no?
Closed AccountDec 10, 2007
Walkable city, read the title. Not from City to Pole!