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Old 01-09-2014, 03:43 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by skiffrace View Post
More on the subject of "walkability".

Most European cities are truly walkable due to the density of population. People live in apartment flats, often 5 or more stories tall. This allows the concentration of businesses, services and public amenities (like public transit) in an geographical area small enough to be reachable on foot in relatively short time.

How does it look in Portland? Most people here live in a single-family homes. Only a few places in Portland, such as downtown and Pearl District have enough density thanks to the preponderance of multi-story apartments or high-rises.
Most of the supposedly "walkable" Portland neighborhoods are overwhelmingly composed of single-family houses, with an apartment complex thrown here-and-there for a good measure.

With people spread over large are like that, how can they be truly walkable then?
Structural density is what matters more than population density. No one has claimed that Portland is anything like a European city--a lot of it remarkably average neighborhoods full of ranch homes once you get further out. The places that are considered "walkable" are without exception all old street car neighborhoods. Homes are fairly close together and you have an old commercial district maybe some old apartments along the old street car routes--now usually a bus line. It's a semi-urban environment that you'll find in Midwestern inner suburbs in parts. It's varies from place to place though whether there's anything worth walking to, you can find old streetcar neighborhoods in the central areas of Portland suburbs as well.

Quote:
Also, labeling an area as walkable or not seems to largely depend on where within the PDX area it is located, even if everything else is similar.
It appears that if the coffee shops\stores\restaurants (commerce) are located on the ground floor of an block of houses, it is called a" walkable" neighborhood.
OTOH, if the commerce is located within a "strip mall" (a very pejorative word), somewhere in the "suburbs" (another bad word), it is "not walkable", even if in both cases the commerce center is surrounded by extensive areas of said single family houses.
You can find places to walk to in the suburbs sure. Maybe somewhere like Central Beaverton isn't that bad, when I stayed in Raleigh Hills I walked places--I suppose it just matters how close you live to a commercial area. Though a lot of the suburbs is just huge swaths of single use residential areas---places like that often it's just too far to walk places and there isn't much to walk to within a resonable range. SE Portland(and parts of NE or N Portland) gets a rep for walkability because it's not that far from Burnside to Hawthorne to Belmont to Division and you have commercial areas on all those strips(including places on Stark and Clinton as well) in a grid pattern. Newer constructed areas buit in the last half of the century often have winding residential streets that don't go through or end in cul-de-sacs, making direct walking sometimes more of a challenge and then it's a longer distance to a commercial area. But hell, you probably can live in Aloha and walk to stuff, though walking down TV Highway might not be as pleasant as a stroll through some older neighborhood...

Last edited by Deezus; 01-09-2014 at 03:51 PM..
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Old 01-09-2014, 03:48 PM
 
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Originally Posted by EnricoV View Post
What's the "Far East side" that you think is walkable?
My mistake... I meant the Western part of the East side like Buckman, Hawthorne, East Burnside area
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Old 01-09-2014, 04:14 PM
 
Location: Winter nightime low 60,summer daytime high 85, sunny 300 days/year, no hablamos ingles aquí
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Quote:
Structural density is what matters more than population density...The places that are considered "walkable" are without exception all old street car neighborhoods. Homes are fairly close together and you have an old commercial district maybe some old apartments along the old street car routes--now usually a bus line.
But isn't the 'populational density' almost 100% related to 'structural density'?

How many people can occupy an acre built up with 'Homes are fairly close together'?
Here in Washington County you can typically build 3 to 4 single family homes on one acre. I assume Multnomah County is similar. Let's also assume there are 4 people per house. That gives you 12 to 16 people per acre.
Build an apartment\condo complex on that same acre, and the number of people may rise as much as 10-fold.

So again, by definition you cannot have "walkability-sustaining density" in an area of single-family homes.

Also, it is all about the definitions. To many people, "walkability" means "I can walk to grocery store and coffee shop".

My definition of "walkabilty", closely followed by "high livibility" is "I can live a perfectly convenient daily life without a car".
"Perfectly convenient" means "my work\school commute does not involve 2 hours and 3 different bus lines".
"Daily life" means "I can rent a car for the weekend getaway".

Last edited by skiffrace; 01-09-2014 at 04:41 PM..
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Old 01-09-2014, 04:15 PM
 
Location: Pacific NW
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Yankeemama View Post
My mistake... I meant the Western part of the East side like Buckman, Hawthorne, East Burnside area
Ah, that makes more sense. The "Far East" has always seemed like the least walkable area.

Oh, and dent_arthur_dent another area that hasn't really been mentioned is Hollywood.
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Old 01-09-2014, 04:22 PM
 
Location: Lakewood OH
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I wouldn't call them "mini down towns." They are just typical city neighborhoods that have a small density of living quarters and some commercial establishments.

In Portland, more and more people are able to live in these areas because more and more large apartment buildings are being built to accommodate them. The caveat is they are expensive to rent and have very small units. Some, as in my neighborhood, replace larger houses that were used as commercial property or living quarters. They are not conducive to family living.

The days of city neighborhoods that contained the ma and pa butcher shops, small grocery stores, bakeries, etc are long gone. I saw some of this when I visited my friend's London neighborhood in 2000. But unless you are talking about New York in the more ethnic neighborhoods, these things are mostly a thing of the past. Large neighborhood supermarkets have taken their place. I don't know if the OP had these in mind. But the "walkable" neighborhoods include these supermarkets and in some cases, super stores that meet just about every need one can want in some cases selling food, clothing and just about everything else.
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Old 01-09-2014, 05:33 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by skiffrace View Post
But isn't the 'populational density' almost 100% related to 'structural density'?
Yes, for the most part and inner Portland neighborhoods have both a higher structural and population density then most of the surrounding suburbs. Structural density to what I'm referring to though is related to commercial areas--where you have a lot of businesses close together, people are more likely to walk obviously. This is more common in older areas than built out suburbs.

Zip Codes with the Highest Population Density in Oregon | Zip Atlas
Note this data is actually sort out of date, current levels for these places would be higher actually.

http://sightline.wpengine.netdna-cdn...t_CS05m_hi.jpg

Quote:
How many people can occupy an acre built up with 'Homes are fairly close together'?
Here in Washington County you can typically build 3 to 4 single family homes on one acre. I assume Multnomah County is similar. Let's also assume there are 4 people per house. That gives you 12 to 16 people per acre.
Build an apartment\condo complex on that same acre, and the number of people may rise as much as 10-fold.

So again, by definition you cannot have "walkability-sustaining density" in an area of single-family homes.
The urban planner type kids discuss this topic ad naseum over on City vs. City and Urban Planning threads on here and claim the same thing you're saying---there will be plenty of people willing to take up the discussion with you on those forums. The question to me is just whether you have anything worth walking to nearby. There are a lot of apartments in inner SE actually(some of them are pretty crappy garden apartments from the sixties, some are older brick walk-ups), they're building plenty more condos and apartments all over the area to varying degrees of success. But I really don't care about the idea that an neighborhood full of mostly single family homes can't be considered "walkable" when plenty of people live in those neighborhoods and walk to places easily. Portland isn't New York or Europe obviously, yes everyone knows that, but you do have a fairly compact layout close in(and at least we don't have the giant vacant lot and boarded up home neighborhoods found in some Midwestern cities)

Quote:
Also, it is all about the definitions. To many people, "walkability" means "I can walk to grocery store and coffee shop".

My definition of "walkabilty", closely followed by "high livibility" is "I can live a perfectly convenient daily life without a car".
"Perfectly convenient" means "my work\school commute does not involve 2 hours and 3 different bus lines".
Are you writing this in your own voice or someone the hypothetical voice of someone else? My commute is about 15 minutes, if I was working at Intel longterm or somewhere out there permanently I might move to Washington County, so personally the scenario isn't my problem. I had a guy I used to work with downtown who lived in Vernonia and rode his motorbike to work every day, cool guy, he lived where he wanted and worked where he could, he said the long commute woke him up in the morning...

Anyhow, this is all getting a bit offtrack isn't it? We know what "walkable" means in Portland, it means you can easily walk to bars, restaurants, a grocery or two, some stores, a nice park, maybe a movie theatre, possibly some music venues and so on--and you're close to the transit lines. People pay for the attraction of being close to "stuff". (My grandparents paid for the attraction of living near a lake in the Sierra Nevada foothills that they rarely set foot on)...

Dent_arthur_dent just asked where these certain sorts of neighborhoods are, some of us provided helpful suggestions, others........

Last edited by Deezus; 01-09-2014 at 05:51 PM..
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Old 01-09-2014, 05:46 PM
 
Location: Winter nightime low 60,summer daytime high 85, sunny 300 days/year, no hablamos ingles aquí
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Quote:
Dent_arthur_dent just asked where these sorts of neighborhoods are
The correct (and short) answer....only the downtown Portland, and a few neighborhoods immediately adjacent are truly walkable.
The rest of metro PDX area: it's pretty much the same, with only marginal local differences.
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Old 01-09-2014, 05:55 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by skiffrace View Post
The correct (and short) answer....only the downtown Portland, and a few neighborhoods immediately adjacent are truly walkable.
The rest of metro PDX area: it's pretty much the same, with only marginal local differences.
Here's what the OP was looking for:

Quote:
little hubs of nice local small businesses/cafes/grocery stores etc, or maybe a library/pool.
Nothing too complicated and we provided examples of places like that in Portland.

Last edited by Deezus; 01-09-2014 at 06:05 PM..
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Old 01-09-2014, 06:10 PM
 
Location: Portland Metro
2,318 posts, read 4,601,911 times
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Based on some of the definitions here, I think Ladd's Addition (built around the turn of the 20th century) would be considered not walkable. So, arguably, was any neighborhood in Portland ever built with European-style walkability in mind? To take it a step further, are there any neighborhoods anywhere in the US developed in the last 100 - 120 years that have European-style walkability? (Serious question! I don't know!). Would Tanasbourne count?

For me, a big component of walkability is a separation of pedestrians from street vehicles. Hence, sidewalks are mandatory for good walkability. It takes me about 10 minutes from our suburban home in Washington County to walk (on sidewalks) to a couple of different shopping centers with a grocery store, drug store, fitness centers, and several restaurants (Chinese, Mexican, American). In about 8 minutes I can be to a bus stop that includes an express bus to downtown and a local bus that goes to the Washington Square Mall. However, it does take me about 15 minutes to get to donuts and good coffee. But all in all, I think my neighborhood is certainly more walkable than many that are in Portland city limits--especially those neighborhoods that don't have sidewalks.
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Old 01-09-2014, 06:28 PM
 
Location: Lakewood OH
21,695 posts, read 28,309,077 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jjpop View Post
Based on some of the definitions here, I think Ladd's Addition (built around the turn of the 20th century) would be considered not walkable. So, arguably, was any neighborhood in Portland ever built with European-style walkability in mind? To take it a step further, are there any neighborhoods anywhere in the US developed in the last 100 - 120 years that have European-style walkability? (Serious question! I don't know!). Would Tanasbourne count?

For me, a big component of walkability is a separation of pedestrians from street vehicles. Hence, sidewalks are mandatory for good walkability. It takes me about 10 minutes from our suburban home in Washington County to walk (on sidewalks) to a couple of different shopping centers with a grocery store, drug store, fitness centers, and several restaurants (Chinese, Mexican, American). In about 8 minutes I can be to a bus stop that includes an express bus to downtown and a local bus that goes to the Washington Square Mall. However, it does take me about 15 minutes to get to donuts and good coffee. But all in all, I think my neighborhood is certainly more walkable than many that are in Portland city limits--especially those neighborhoods that don't have sidewalks.
Absolutely! I lived in such a Chicago neighborhood in the 40's and 50's just like that. There were small family operated stores just like European stores. There was a green grocers that had all kinds of dry goods and produce, a butcher shop that had meat as in beef, pork and lamb, a poultry store, a fish store, a tavern, a drug store, a candy store and a playground all within walking distance. Oh and a park just about five blocks away. For things like clothing, hardware and items like that, we could take a nearby bus or streetcar to a little shopping area that contained more stores and restaurants.

I think these smaller ma and pa stores still exist in the larger cities today in some of the more largely population ethnic neighborhoods but I don't know for sure.
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