Houston rank top 25 walkable places to walk

[dcoolbro]

Pearland is certainly not walkable. I can't even go from my apartment to the store a half mile away without fear of getting rundown. There are plenty of trenches here, but no sidewalks. It's sad because I wouldn't mind walking to some places.

[mpope409]

I question any list that places New York as only the 10th most walkable place in the country.

[person]

Originally Posted by mpope409

I question any list that places New York as only the 10th most walkable place in the country.

Maybe if you read the methodology, you would see the explanation for that.

New York Metro Area Has the Highest Number of Most Walkable Urban Places--The New York
metro area, generally considered to be the most walkable urban metro area in the country, has the
most discrete number of places that are walkable urban (21). However, it is ranked as the 10th
most number of walkable urban places on a per capita basis. This lower ranking is due to its nearly 19
million population base (for example, compared to Washington’s 5.3 million population), resulting in
one walkable urban place for every 896, 000 people (though the major caveat mentioned above in the
methodology section needs to be taken into consideration). The extent and availability of drivable sub-
urban development, as demonstrated by the metro area’s huge physical size stretching over four states
(New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut), belies its image as the leading walkable urban
metro area in the country. However, the New York metro area has the largest walkable urban places
in size as measured by any criteria. As mentioned above, Midtown Manhattan is the largest walkable
urban place in the country regarding ofice square footage and probably many other kinds of real estate
product types. For all of the walkable urbanism that Manhattan is justly known for, the bough is only 8.5
percent of the total population of the metro area.

Playing down the list does help houston a little.

[Synopsis]

Originally Posted by texan_176

Houston used to have electrical streetcars in downtown at one time. They were crazy to remove them in the 50s when suburbanization got hot and no one had the wisdom to forecast how everyone driving a car would lead to so much gridlock no one would be able to get anywhere fast.

They need to bring that back. That would be AWESOME.

[mpope409]

You know it's funny, people that don't have cars or bus passes make a city walkable.

[RocketSci]

I believe that a good way to judge whether a city/area is walkable is to count how many people are actually walking there, and whether a pedestrian pushing a stroller can pass thru, at a minimum. Many walkable cities have sidewalks that are several feet wide, such as Houston has in the downtown area. But many other areas of Houston touted as "walkable" are miserable for pedestrians going further than one block.

Westheimer near Dunlavy is hardly a pedestrian paradise (despite the glowing news articles), as I saw only about a dozen pedestrians total between Woodhead and Mandell at 1pm today. The sidewalks are narrow, uneven, and blocked in many areas. Rice village is more of a narrow parking lot than a pedestrian area, with cars jutting into the narrow spaces in front of the shops. Sidewalks on Richmond are decorative paving stones, with trees directly in the pathway, except where there are mud pits. Alabama has sidewalks about 3 feet wide direcly against the curb, except where driveways cut into them. Kirby has irregular sidewalks, with pavement torn up at the corners and no real way for pedestrians to readily cross the street at major intersections (near Whole Foods for example). My point is that the areas which have the POTENTIAL as pedestrian friendly areas (mix of businesses and residences) do not have any decent pedestrian infrastructure.

I hope that Houston can apply some of the pedestrian infrastructure added to downtown for the Super Bowl to other major streets, and actually connect and maintain these sidewalks to each other. Some good places to start would be:
- Westheimer from Main to the Galleria
- Kirby from Inwood to Bellaire
- Shepherd from 59 to Kirby
- Alabama from Montrose to Buffalo Speedway
- Richmond between Montrose and 610