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I wouldn't call that area suburban, not even too sure about auto-centric...I guess as auto-centric as the average California urban neighborhood...with it's wide roads, abundant parking, driveways, SFH-style homes. But from the looks of it, it seems pretty walkable to me, and having a car would be a huge convenience but not really a necessity as it seems to have decent transit coverage as well. Not my cup of tea personally, but a nice compromise for someone who likes using their car but wants to have a relatively easy transit commute and values density/walkability over sparsity/true "driveability".
However, I do get the gist of what you're describing: suburban neighborhoods in the city limits, I think something like Ingleside Terraces would be a better example, though I say this as someone who has never been to San Fran, so go figure.
Sunset District walkable? Not really. You can walk around there for an hour on any day and not encounter another soul on the sidewalks. It can be a lonely feeling because you feel like you're the only one out there walking around. Other than the occasional person out walking their dog or kids walking to and from school its feels like any normal suburb outside the city. The streets are nearly devoid of pedestrians. Outside of the downtown area, Mission District, and touristy areas like Fisherman's Wharf and Chinatown there's really not a lot of pedestrian activity in the city.
Sunset District walkable? Not really. You can walk around there for an hour on any day and not encounter another soul on the sidewalks. It can be a lonely feeling because you feel like you're the only one out there walking around. Other than the occasional person out walking their dog or kids walking to and from school its feels like any normal suburb outside the city. The streets are nearly devoid of pedestrians. Outside of the downtown area, Mission District, and touristy areas like Fisherman's Wharf and Chinatown there's really not a lot of pedestrian activity in the city.
I've never been to the area, so I can't comment on things like vibrancy and the amount of people walking around, but looking at the general layout of the neighborhood and it's Walkscore, it seems to be pretty damn walkable to me...especially compared to a traditional auto-centric suburban neighborhood like this, that 'cisco kid' was trying to compare it to. I don't doubt that it's probably not as vibrant and bustling as a neighborhood like this and again, I've never been there...but judging by it's urban form, it looks pretty walkable to me.
Oh and Haight-Ashbury is pretty walkable too and the Castro District (gay district). Those are really nice vibrant areas for walking but somewhat spoiled by the wide streets and really busy fast-moving automobile traffic, from which there seems to be no escape lol.
Walkscore is a joke. Its a score assigned by a computer program, not by people who have any real world experience with the neighborhood. its pretty much worthless.
They are just as autocentric and not very walkable.
Those places may not be very walkable, but we should be aware that there is a difference between walkable and having people walking in large numbers. Sure, the two almost always go together, but it is not outside the realm of possibility for a place to be walkable but not have many people taking advantage of that ability.
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To me those are people who want to get away from urban life and the noise and congestion of urban life as much as they can. They just happen to be within city limits.
Get away from urban life and congestion? Come on. Those houses in that picture are packed in like sardines. There's virtually no yard, no privacy, and no seclusion, and I bet the streets aren't all that quiet . A house that close to other people isn't much better than an apartment, and can hardly be said to represent a suburban way of life. Is it suburban? I'd say yes, but it's on the fringe of the suburban form.
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Originally Posted by Hickory patrick
but got to laugh' my wife is from Poland, and last summer we went to a block party near mid way airport in the city, and my wife was freaked out how small the lots were and tiny the yards are
When I first saw a Google Street View of homes in California I was freaked out by how small the lots were. A typical lot of that type is around 1/8 of an acre, which leaves no room for a yard to the side of the house, and frankly such a lot seems pointless to me if you're after less crowded and more secluded areas. I've lived in homes on 1/4 acre lots, and my neighbors were still too close for comfort.
Those places may not be very walkable, but we should be aware that there is a difference between walkable and having people walking in large numbers. Sure, the two almost always go together, but it is not outside the realm of possibility for a place to be walkable but not have many people taking advantage of that ability.
Get away from urban life and congestion? Come on. Those houses in that picture are packed in like sardines. There's virtually no yard, no privacy, and no seclusion, and I bet the streets aren't all that quiet . A house that close to other people isn't much better than an apartment, and can hardly be said to represent a suburban way of life. Is it suburban? I'd say yes, but it's on the fringe of the suburban form.
Those are single-family detached homes, in a very quiet neighborhood, on very boring quiet streets. They are not apartments and not anything close to being apartments. If you want to know what an actual urban neighborhood is like go to the Mission District, Chinatown or Haight-Ashbury which are dense very walkable urban areas that have a lot of street life. And a lot of car traffic. The sleepy Sunset neighborhood is the total opposite of that.
If you want to know what a neighborhood is like, go live there. Or ask someone who has. Don't rely on a dumb computer program that spits out a score based on a narrow set of criteria. You know what they say about computer programs. Garbage in, garbage out
Walkscore is a joke. Its a score assigned by a computer program, not by people who have any real world experience with the neighborhood. its pretty much worthless.
True. There's an old post of mine floating around here somewhere where I posted two walk scores.
One was my neighborhood in Philly. The other was a neighborhood in Cherry Hill, NJ.
The scores were surprisingly similar because the Cherry Hill address I used had a giant strip mall across the highway with a pharmacy, grocery store, restaurants, etc. No one ever walks around there.
Coates doesn't stray that far from his black panther roots and it's clear in articles like this one where he tries to pretend that blockbusting was some sort of public policy and that the money wasn't actually stolen from white people - that it was all some big conspiracy.
That's not an issue. Cities that were highly developed in the pre-war era are more than able to accommodate an influx of residents in the urban core since average household sizes are smaller; this will be the case even if central cities start becoming more attractive to more families on a widespread basis. And even cities that weren't so highly developed in the pre-war era, such as Sunbelt cities, have enough land in and around the urban core to build denser residential developments.
Coates doesn't stray that far from his black panther roots and it's clear in articles like this one where he tries to pretend that blockbusting was some sort of public policy and that the money wasn't actually stolen from white people - that it was all some big conspiracy.
I don't have Black Panther roots and to me, it's pretty clear that public housing projects, redlining, steering, discrimination in lending, etc. were all deliberate efforts on the parts of mostly local government leaders to deprive Blacks in particular of wealth-building opportunities via home ownership in neighborhoods that were recipients of infrastructure investment that resulted in overall higher home values.
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. A house that close to other people isn't much better than an apartment, and can hardly be said to represent a suburban way of life. Is it suburban? I'd say yes, but it's on the fringe of the suburban form.
