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The only place that's walkable in Charlotte is the center city inside 277. About 2% of Charlotte's population lives in that area...
So most people in northern cities live within walking distance of the CBD?
I didn't know 'walkability' was related to living downtown. Generally there are a lot of people from the suburbs that go downtown after work during week and on weekends. I don't see any issue with walking in downtown Charlotte.
I’ve noticed this. It really is unfortunate. You gotta leave the US to get warm and walkable. Barcelona is a good one. Mexico City I imagine would be too. The closest thing we have is San Francisco. I wouldn’t call that a warm climate though, but I also wouldn’t call it a cold climate either.
Famous (albeit unsubstantiated) quote from Mark Twain: "The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco."
Because air conditioning didn't used to be a thing, and mass car ownership wasn't a thing. So at that time, people needed to live in places where it didn't get hot in the summer, and with the exception of San Francisco, the west was still a frontier.
Tell that to New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah, Galveston, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Space_League
Where to start...
Houston
Phoenix
San Antonio
Dallas
Jacksonville
Orlando
Atlanta
Charlotte
Memphis
Tampa
All of these cities have walkable areas at least in their downtowns.
So most people in northern cities live within walking distance of the CBD?
I didn't know 'walkability' was related to living downtown. Generally there are a lot of people from the suburbs that go downtown after work during week and on weekends. I don't see any issue with walking in downtown Charlotte.
Most northern cities have multiple walkable areas where people live, not just CBDs that people commute to.
The South has some old, walk-able cities. Savannah, Charleston and NOLA are all very walkable and honestly maybe more pleasant to walk in that a place like NYC or Chicago.
None of them achieved the size of a NYC, or Chicago due to the historic economic differences between the industrial North and more rural South. The result of the civil war and reconstruction also played a major factor.
Don't forget that the North East is much closer to Europe which was an advantage early on which gave NYC and Boston a jump start.
I think economics played the biggest roll in what cities developed between the 1880s and 1950s.
Look at a map of rail roads before and directly after the civil war during the industrial revolution and notice they are mostly in the north. The Transcontinental Railroad went through the north.
I think AC played a smaller part since Baltimore,DC, Richmond, Savannah, Charleston and NOLA all get hot in the summer but were major cities around that time.
NOLA has been a large city for a long time, but it dropped out of the top 10 in the 1880s. Charleston made it's last top 10 appearance in the 1840s when there was still less than 30K people living there.
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