Cities that aren't surrounded by tons of suburban sprawl (living in, versus)
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I'm talking about cities where you can drive out of downtown and be in rural areas within 20-30 miles or so. Only cities with more than 100,000 residents, though. Does this exist?
St. Louis.
Overall there's plenty of sprawl, but the Illinois side of the Mississippi is not as built up as the Missouri side, and downtown St. Louis is sitting on the state line. For that reason you can find yourself in farmland and still easily be within 20 miles of downtown St. Louis.
A lot of the suburbs on the Illinois side also look more like small towns than stereotypical suburbia, although that sort of suburbia certainly does exist.
Albuquerque's suburban sprawl is limited to the west/northwest because the city is surrounded by national forest and Indian reservations in all other directions. You can travel 20 miles in almost every direction from the city and be in nature.
The best examples are outside the US. Freiburg, Germany (pop. 230,000) and Bergen, Norway (pop. 265,000) are two cities where I walked out of the central area (bustling sidewalk cafes, packed public transportation, very urban feel) into forested wilderness within about a half hour. I'm sure there are plenty of other European cities that are like this.
Santa Barbara comes to mind. City population is 90,000 but metro population is around 200,000.
25 minutes east of Portland the Columbia river gorge protected area
25 minutes south the wine country
25 minutes west Washington county farm land
25 minutes north Clark county farm land
within the city theres Forest Park
I was gonna say, how has Portland not been mentioned yet? Oregon's land use laws really help mitigate sprawl.
Plenty of areas in the Northeast and Midwest are like this, with some allowing you to go from the heart of the city to a rural area within even 10-20 minutes. Syracuse and Lansing to mind in this regard.
If you drive west from downtown Miami and head straight along the Tamiami Trail for 25 miles straight you will hit the beginnings of the Everglades with virtually no development. Not sure if that counts.
Manchester, NH population 110k, There is some suburbia (by NH standards)(2+ acre lots) but doesn't take long to get rural.
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