A well done story and a reminder that liveable, walkable communities aren't just about those of us who are agile and mobile.

 

August 14, 2007

A Grass-Roots Effort to Grow Old at Home

By JANE GROSS

 

WASHINGTON — On a bluff overlooking the Potomac River, George and Anne Allen, both 82, struggle to remain in their beloved three-story house and neighborhood, despite the frailty, danger and isolation of old age.

 

Mr. Allen has been hobbled since he fractured his spine in a fall down the stairs, and he expects to lose his driver’s license when it comes up for renewal. Mrs. Allen recently broke four ribs getting out of bed. Neither can climb a ladder to change a light bulb or crouch under the kitchen sink to fix a leak. Stores and public transportation are an uncomfortable hike.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/health/14aging.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

This is silly.

 

 

pd:

 

Strolling around Cleveland area

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

 

Curious about how walkable your neighborhood is, according to www.walk-score.com? We were.

 

Here's what we found.

 

1. If Plain Dealer employees lived at work -- 1801 Superior Ave. in downtown Cleveland [swa: ok with betsy: ]-NT%>-- (sometimes it seems like we do), we'd have a fairly high rating: 77 out of 100.

 

2. Most Lakewood neighborhoods rated well. Northland Avenue scored 80 out of 100.

 

3. Going rural has its benefits: Less traffic, less noise. Then there are the pitfalls: nothing, except parks, within walking distance. Rogers Road in Willoughby Hills had a rock-bottom score, 2 out of 100.

 

4. Coming back closer to Cleveland, we hit Fairmount Boulevard in Shaker Heights (11 out of 100) and then Berkshire Road in Cleveland Heights (65 out of 100).

 

5. Going south of downtown, Krueger Avenue in Parma scored 42 out of 100.

 

-- Plain Dealer staff

 

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/other/1187168689257600.xml&coll=2

It kills me that they're publishing this crap weeks after it appeared on this (and other related) boards :roll:

I posted scores for Cincinnati neighborhoods on my blog:

http://buildingcincinnati.blogspot.com/2007/08/most-city-neighborhoods-require-car.html

 

It kills me that they're publishing this crap weeks after it appeared on this (and other related) boards :roll:

 

Given that the vast majority of people don't read this or or other related boards and that the PD is a general interest newspaper, it's not all that bad...  Might actually make people think about walkability more.

 

In general, while the site has many obvious flaws, I think we're being a bit harsh here.  These guys try to crawl and we yell at them because they're not walking yet.  Yes, it should include churches, museums, markets, etc. and it should clean up the data to cateogrize things correctly, and it should, blah blah blah.  It's a start.  It's much much easier to be critical than to actually build the thing.  Lots of good suggestions have been made here - hopefully they'll hear them and make the thing better.

 

In any case, despite its flaws, it seems directionally correct - places with higher scores do tend to be, in reality, more walkable than those with lower scores.  Some outliers (e.g. Parma v.s Shaker Sq), but generally directionally correct.  BTW, here near Coventry in Cleveland Hts, I got a 72, although it gives no credit for any of the museums in University Circle nor the restaurants in Little Italy (which are a little far, but I have walked to them, but it does give credit for the Starbucks in Univ Circle...)

 

Back to the criticizing... One other thing it would be nice for the site to do is to consider the mix of things in the neighborhood, not just the quantity.  I.e. is a neighborhood iwth 40 restuarants in it really more walkable than one with only a handful of restaurants, but with a laundromat, grocery store, dry cleaner, video store, hardware store, bookstore, clothing store, access to transit (and a movie theater :-) )?  I think the way the site works now, it would say the the first neighborhood is more walkable, although most people would say the 2nd is.

^Yeah, a mall would make walkability go through the roof. Yet, most malls have to be driven to.

^Yeah, a mall would make walkability go through the roof. Yet, most malls have to be driven to.

 

on that note, cracker park scored a 74

 

http://www.walkscore.com/get-score.php?street=25+main+street%2C+westlake%2C+oh&go=Go

^ LOL.  Didn't you have to walk three miles to get coffee and Zippo fluid?

^ LOL.  Didn't you have to walk three miles to get coffee and Zippo fluid?

 

pretty much, had to jump over 4 ft brick walls and walk through alleys and dumpsters to get from one half to the other. (good memory)

This sort of straddles the line between this and the Peak Oil thread, but it felt like a nice companion to the weird Times of London spin piece (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2195538.ece):

---

Higher gasoline price seen trimming down Americans

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Higher U.S. gasoline prices may slim more than just wallets, according to a new study from Washington University in St. Louis.

 

Entitled "A Silver Lining? The Connection between Gas Prices and Obesity," the study found that an additional $1 per gallon in real gasoline prices would reduce U.S. obesity by 15 percent after five years.

 

The report, written by Charles Courtemanche for his doctoral dissertation in health economics, found that the 13 percent rise in obesity between 1979 and 2004 can be attributed to falling pump prices.

 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070911/ts_nm/gasoline_obesity_dc;_ylt=AuSR7nUMP3V_TDmNdeMU1INg.3QA

---

 

^Yeah, a mall would make walkability go through the roof. Yet, most malls have to be driven to.

 

on that note, cracker park scored a 74

 

http://www.walkscore.com/get-score.php?street=25+main+street%2C+westlake%2C+oh&go=Go

 

ooo.. my apartment in Little Italy beats Crocker Park (75/100!)

 

EDIT:  On a side note, I was curious which Cleveland neighborhood would score the highest and thank God it's the heart of Downtown.  E. 4th scored a 98/100

^Yeah, a mall would make walkability go through the roof. Yet, most malls have to be driven to.

 

on that note, cracker park scored a 74

 

http://www.walkscore.com/get-score.php?street=25+main+street%2C+westlake%2C+oh&go=Go

 

ooo.. my apartment in Little Italy beats Crocker Park (75/100!)

 

EDIT:  On a side note, I was curious which Cleveland neighborhood would score the highest and thank God it's the heart of Downtown.  E. 4th scored a 98/100

 

I still don't understand how Edgewater, Shaker Square or Ohio City scored so low

^or you could have read the last five pages where we all point out the faults in their methodology and the underlying database

LOL.

 

This website has become very well known in the planning world. I just wish it were more accurate.

On weekdays I jog at night and it's perfectly safe. 

On weekdays I jog at night and it's perfectly safe. 

 

What neighborhood do you live in?

Presently Lyndhurst - hoping to move to East 4th within the month though so I wonder how that will affect my nighttime runs

Presently Lyndhurst - hoping to move to East 4th within the month though so I wonder how that will affect my nighttime runs

 

I live just across the bridge in Ohio City. I love my early morning jogs in downtown and the Flats.

my address got a respectable 85/100, although Linda's Superette is my closest grocery  :roll:

 

E- I see runners all hours going over the well lit Detroit Superior Bridge.

I got a 23 in Euclid, a friend of mine also lives in Euclid and he got an 88... He wins :-(

 

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003950475_cars15e.html

 

As traffic gets nastier, many of us are shifting gears

By Peyton Whitely

Seattle Times Eastside bureau

 

After years of commuting from his Greenwood-area home to his downtown job, Steve Kaiser decided last year to move closer to his office near Pike Place Market.

 

He now walks the few blocks to his job. His Volkswagen Jetta sits in its garage five days a week, and his driving has plummeted to about 4,000 miles a year — about 80 percent less than before.

 

"It just seemed excessive to be driving every day," he said.

 

A growing number of fellow King County residents apparently feel the same way...

 

 

Another list... :roll:

 

Cleveland ranks at bottom in 'walkable' places

 

Posted by Laura Johnston December 04, 2007 12:12PM

Categories: Breaking News, Impact

 

Of the 30 largest American metropolitan areas, Cleveland ranks 29th in walkable places -- neighborhoods with work places, medical facilities, stores, restaurants, entertainment, culture, schools and homes, according to a study released today.

 

What a ridiculous study. I believe we are poor. I believe that we have a lot of crime. But we do have walkable neighborhoods.

What a ridiculous study. I believe we are poor. I believe that we have a lot of crime. But we do have walkable neighborhoods.

 

That's hilarious! Got to love the media!

This study is about as dumb as the one that ranks "dangerous cities."  Doesn't use all the data, isn't objective, and leaves some cities completely out of the equation.

The report can be downloaded here: http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/1128_walkableurbanism_leinberger.aspx

 

Brookings is great, but rigorous scholars they are not.

Here is the list:

 

Walkable cities

A Brookings Institution survey ranks the 30 biggest metropolitan areas according to the number of “walkable urban places” relative to the area’s population:

 

1. Washington

2. Boston

3. San Francisco

4. Denver

5. Portland, Ore.

6. Seattle

7. Chicago

8. Miami

9. Pittsburgh

10. New York

11. San Diego

12. Los Angeles

13. Philadelphia

14. Atlanta

15. Baltimore

16. St. Louis

17. Minneapolis

18. Detroit

19. Columbus, Ohio

20. Las Vegas

21. Houston

22. San Antonio

23. Kansas City, Mo.

24. Orlando, Fla.

25. Dallas

26. Phoenix

27. Sacramento, Calif.

28. Cincinnati

29. Cleveland

30. Tampa, Fla.

No offense to Atlanta but when Cincinnati, Baltimore, St. Louis, Columbus, and Cleveland rank below ATLANTA and SEATTLE, you know it's questionable.

so uc is the only walkable neighborhood in town, eh? ridiculous. silly.

Can we re-name this "Metro Cleveland ranks at bottom in 'walkable' places?"  The study was about metro areas, not the cities themselves.

 

No offense to Atlanta but when Cincinnati, Baltimore, St. Louis, Columbus, and Cleveland rank below ATLANTA and SEATTLE, you know it's questionable.

 

Not to mention when New York City ranks below Pittsburgh...

we are less walkable than HOUSTON

 

have these people ever been to these cities.  When I lived in Houston people could not give me walking directions from Downtown to Rice Village.  After offering me rides, asking me what was wrong with my car, ect, the only directions people could give me involvled freeways.

 

BTW, to get from Downtown Houston to Rice Village....walk down main street 3 miles. 

Haha more worthless lists.. NYC is 10th?! Come on..

How in the world are Miami, Denver and Pittsburgh more walkable than NYC?

Wow, Brookings Institute is usually fairly good, but this list is so damned off.  I wouldn't even consider UC to be among our most walkable areas, let alone the most walkable.  I don't even need to cite with exasperation the list of places they say are more walkable.

BTW, after reading the article, Midtown Manhattan and Plano Town Center are considered equivalent for this list.  And any place that the author doesn't feel can support development without subsidies doesn't qualify- though I'm not sure how he determines that.  The list is just plain bunk, and tells us little about what's really key about a walkable city- how much stuff (homes, jobs, shopping) is easily navigable by pedestrians.

LA, Vegas beats col cle cin

 

do they just make these things up?

 

(lets expand the thread name to all three cities)

this is utterly ridiculous. I lived in Tampa...and we should not be anywhere near this city on the list. It truly is terrible. Orlando might be the worst (few sidewalks or cross walks other than the theme parks). I would dismiss this as foolishness.

tampa does have a streetcar that has created hundreds of residential units along line

they are trying, but still have a long way to go. I lived in the city (about 2.5 miles from city center) and you still had to have a car to get around due lack of sidewalks and public transportation (very limited to the point  of useless ).

Even beyond the city of Cleveland, there is Lakewood, parts of Rocky River, some parts of Parma, Berea, parts of Garfield Heights and Maple Heights, much of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, parts of Beachwood, all of Chagrin Falls city, much of South Euclid, parts of Euclid, Wickliffe and Willoughby.

 

The list is so useless that I wouldn't even line my cats' litter box with it. My cats might think I don't love them anymore.

I visited Tampa this summer, and I would say that while a few housing projects have popped up along the line in the Channel District and around Ybor City it is still a ways from being anything notable.  Of course, the article notes that Tampa has no real walkable regional centers, which is all they are measuring in this study.  It wouldn't include Cleveland neighborhoods like Ohio City, Tremont, or Lakewood, which are primarily local centers, though it is debatable where that line should be drawn.

Why were malls included in this study??

 

[shadow=red,left][shadow=red,left]Leinberger, who also teaches urban planning at the University of Michigan, counted 157 such "walkable places" -- including Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts; Coconut Grove in Miami, Florida; and the Houston, Texas, area's Sugar Land Town Square, one of many built-from-scratch "lifestyle centers" to make the list.[/shadow][/shadow]

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/12/04/walkable.communities.ap/

I quite honestly don't know if I've ever seen a worse research methodology in my life ... This is the kind of thing that could keep a graduate student from passing their capstone/exit project/thesis. Quite clearly in the report, they indicate that sites were chosen by the author based pretty exclusively based on his 30 years of real estate experience, supplemented with web searches. He also argues at one point that walkability is being encouraged as much in suburban greenfields through mixed-use lifestyle centers as in city centers. In some metros, he lists entire cities as being walkable (such as in the Miami metro, citing Ft. Lauderdale in its entirety as a "walkable suburban town center". Really?! Riverwalk? Maybe. The city at large? Outside of the small downtown, one of the least pedestrian-oriented places I've ever visited.). It should also be noted that he cited only one walkable neighborhood in 8 of 30 metropolitan areas; these 8, then, were ranked solely based on their metropolitan population. Cleveland's large population (being the largest of the eight) is what led us to be ranked so poorly. For Cleveland, I can only imagine that the strange caveat that only neighborhoods that required no development subsidies be included worked against us ... hope no one tells him about UCI, Cleveland Foundation, Charter One, etc. in the "Uptown" area.

 

Seriously, boo this man.

^yeah, how walkable is a city if most of thier roads do not have sidewalks?

In some metros, he lists entire cities as being walkable (such as in the Miami metro, citing Ft. Lauderdale in its entirety as a "walkable suburban town center". Really?! Riverwalk? Maybe. The city at large? Outside of the small downtown, one of the least pedestrian-oriented places I've ever visited.).

 

Exactly. The only walkable place in South Florida is South Beach (Miami Beach). Other studies have shown that South Florida is one of the least pedestrian friendly areas in the country. I saw this Brookings study yesterday morning before this thread was started and deiced not to post it because it seemed so out of line.

SPURIOUS

I live in Atlanta and enjoy walking from my car across a sea of parking to Target...If no one drove,  I'd be able to park so close to the store, I wouldn't walk nearly enough.

 

Actually, in my opinion the "urban" areas of Atlanta are on par with Cincinnati and the suburban areas are probably the same, however there are many more TND style shopping opportunities in suburban ATL than there are in Cincinnati.

I agree that ATL has more TND style shopping opportunities than cincinnati, but a TND style shopping opportunity is like putting a band aid on an artery wound.

 

Downtown ATL is okay, underground is scary, midtown is nice but you won't find another person walking on the street.  The area around peachtree park is nice, little five points is much like Cincinnati's northside, but, as I have said before, atlanta is a metro of 5+ million and cincinnati can punch its weight against it. 

 

Atlanta is the capital of the new south and much of the national wealth is flowing there. 

 

The question is, will they have anything to drink?

Okay. We've probably droned on about this enough, but I agree that this list is bunk. NYC is the most walkable city I've ever been to, aside from cities in Europe. You need to spend literally 5 seconds in NYC to realize this is the case. Cleveland, WHILE MOST PEOPLE DON'T TYPICALLY WALK IT, is very much a walkable city.

 

In other words .. whatever.

It's always remarkable that when these BS rankings go in one's favor, people rave about how great their city is, etc...etc, and when they aren't as complimentary people bash the logic and integrity.

 

I do think this survey is BS. I would agree with jpop and most reasonably logical people. Hands down, NY is number one, and it's not just Manhattan, all the borroughs except Staten Island are extremely walkable, and considering the that 8.2MM people live in the city in a metro area of +/- 18MM; over 45% live in walkable neighborhoods. (42% if you take out the 500,000 on SI. (This is at a very high level. There are probably places you can walk to on Staten Island and parts of the Bronx you can't))

 

Using the same logic for #1 DC, which is very pleasant city to walk in. Lets reason that with 400,000 living in the District and a metropolitan area of +/- 6MM,  only about 7% of the population live in largely walkable communties. The same can be said for Boston, SF and number of other top cities on the list.

 

Cetainly, older suburbs such as Arlington and Alexandria are walkable, but the fast majority of the people in Greater DC living in the far reaching suburbs of MD and VA.

 

Just a thought.

 

This survey sucks, but Tampa probably does deserve last place....on a lot of surveys.