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And obviously, the KC downtown area has some great bones and could easily blow the Country Club Plaza area out of the water in terms of walkability (good block size, historic building stock, etc), but like most American downtowns I imagine its still lacking in retail investment.
I looked at walkscore maps a while back (the scores they give are useless for comparisons since they're based on city limits--so scores for places with very small city limits like Atlanta and Miami have an inherent advantage).
Kansas City's most walkable area is around Country Club plaza (not near downtown), and if you look at the maps the area around Country club park are in the 90s/high 80s for a significant spread of territory. There are no "dark green" areas in the Atlanta map, and no area of green that compares to the Country Club plaza area. If you look at pictures/aerials of the country club plaza area (which I've never been to btw but am always impressed by photos), it's clear that there is no comparable district in Atlanta.
If anything, Miami having a smaller city-size gives Miami a disadvantage. If Miami were to annex Miami Beach which is 5mins across the causeway, than that might give Miami a boost over the competition. Miami is just large enough to have alot of ghetto neighborhoods with "urban praries"(lots of vacant lots in Liberty City) and just small enough to not include Miami Beach and other surrouding neighborhoods and towns with decent and moderate walk-ability. Miami's the one city in the South that actually get's a little more dense the further away from the core you get.
Is KC even a Southern city? That's the real question. KC doesn't strike me as Southern. I'm sure the Black community is Southern-lite as evidenced by comedian Eddie Griffiths accent, but KC doesn't strike me as Southern at all. Missouri and Kansas is hardly a Southern states. Most folks today associate Missouri with the Midwest, as evidenced by rapper Nelly(St. Louis native) always claiming the Midwest. Kansas isn't Southern either.
Ok, the tone of this needs to be changed. Any picture taken from a steep angle like that will hide alot of things.
I have two pictures of KC taken at the same altitude. One if the CBD and the other is just to the south where you see many of the older buildings popping up north of the RR station, but south of the freeway.
The CBD is surrounded by parking lots and separated from the next neighborhoods by asphalt.
The older area south also is full of parking lots, but it looks like they have great spots. Spots that probably are high in character from old buildings, but there are tons of discontinuities too.
Now for comparison I have a shot of Atlanta's Downtown CBD and another of part of Atlanta's Midtown from the same altitude. (Truth be told I would need 2-3 pictures to capture all of midtown, because of its length, and another picture or two to capture Downtown Atlanta from this altitude.)
The things I want to spot out:
-More filled in
-Asphalt parking is present, but in lower amounts
-fewer long discontinuities
-Residential areas are connected with walkable access directly into the core, particularly in Midtown (Second photo).
And I will admit at street level there are problems with 70s-early 90s era tall buildings creating walls and not adding much to the streetscape, even though there is alot going on there. There are also parking lots problems to the south of Atlanta's downtown where the land value/demand is really low. We also have discontinuities created by freeways, but also major freight rail corridors.
Now I have no doubts is Kansas City was a larger city and more built out there would be more demand to fill in the area. Atlanta is far bigger and that is partly why the difference exists. Atlanta use to be far worse.
I'm pretty sure I would get similar results if I compared other later cities, like Miami.
I will also go out on a limb and say that both Atlanta (and Miami) are more "walkable" than KC just due to the fact that both have a subway and not looking at any other metric. For a big city to function well, you need to have mass transit in the core. Unseen in the picture I posted above are two subway lines with 15 stations. Also, brick doesn't equal urban (even though Atlanta has a lot of brick underneath the shiny skyscrapers).
Anyway, for the thread topic, we don't have to base this off of subject pictures. Here is a round up from Walkscore.com of the three most walkable neighborhoods in Kansas City, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas and Houston.
1. Old Westport, Walkscore - 92, population = 1,248
2. Country Club Plaza, Walkscore -90, population = 718
3. Crown Center, Walkscore - 87, population = 763
Note: Downtown KC is fourth "most walkable" neighborhood according to Walkscore with a score of 86.
1. Sweet Auburn, Walkscore - 88, population = 1,882
2. Downtown, Walkscore - 86, population = 13,411
3. Poncey-Highland, Walkscore - 86, population = 2,133
Note: Sweet Auburn is a neighborhood within Downtown, so I'm not sure why Walkscore separated it. For the purposes of this thread, if Sweet Auburn was included with Downtown (as it should be anyway), the Buckhead Village has a Walkscore of 85 and a population of 1,343. If we're keeping it confined to the "core" however you define that, Midtown district that covers the area directly north of Downtown proper has a walkcore of 81 and a population of 16,569.
1. City Center District, Walkscore - 96, population = 1,167
2. Main Street District, Walkscore - 96, population = 1,213
3. Government District, Walkscore - 94, population = 779
So, as far as the thread question of "is their a southern city with a more walkable core than Kansas City", the answer when it comes to the four big ones (5 when you throw in New Orleans) is "yes, all of them."
Dallas neighborhoods tend to have some of the highest walkability scores. My neighborhood (oak lawn) has a higher walkability score than my friend's neighborhood in Chicago. I wonder why Dallas ended up being ranked 30th? Odd.
Only 750 people live in the country club plaza district of kc? In what, two buildings? Downtown KC is now quite walkable and ranking KCMO 43rd is a joke. They must be taking into account all the suburban parts of the city north of the river or something.
Having said that, I think most cities have comparable areas to KCMO. Miami and Atlanta still seem like car cities to me, despite all the highrises. Those hi-rises are typically locked down with parking garages and don't interact well with the street, especially Miami. But, like KC, they still have some pretty walkable districts.
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