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I currently live in a military town that has an ungodly amount of car dealerships. New soldiers come in and are almost demanded that they go get a new vehicle, especially the younger ones. Pretty much everyone here drives and as such walking is not done. In fact, the majority of the city doesnt even have sidewalks.
Their downtowns don't look empty... Canadians seem to walk places more than Americans do, even though it's so cold up there.
I'm not talking about the major cities only... take a look at small towns in Ontario, they look neat and very walkabe.
Generally speaking Canada is a Different country,different attitudes,cities designed with the pedestrian in mind rather than the car. You learn to dress for winter.
They might seem more walkable because generally Canadian downtowns aren't overrun with freeways. It seems to be an American trait to have freeways slice up the downtown areas.
Also people actually live in the Canadian cities whereas many American downtown cores (not all)are just a collection of office buildings that become vacant after office hours and every one heads to the suburbs leaving many American downtowns vacant after business hours.
Also people actually live in the Canadian cities whereas many American downtown cores (not all)are just a collection of office buildings
Good point. I like to use Vancouver B.C. versus Seattle in terms of their waterfronts as my example.
My girl always wondered why Vancouver B.C. has a downtown waterfront full of grassy parks whereas Seattle's waterfront has a bunch of cruise ship ports, railroad tracks, and industry. I explained that in Vancouver, having a more "livable" waterfront was the top priority as opposed to American cities like Seattle where making money is the top priority. The cruise ports and industry generates millions of dollars for Seattle so by American standards that takes priority over making the waterfront a pretty little park for grandmas to go jogging on. Seattle is redesigning its waterfront to make it more green and pedestrian friendly, yet still it will in no way interfere with the waterfront ports and industry because that's where the money is.
I explained that in Vancouver, having a more "livable" waterfront was the top priority as opposed to American cities like Seattle where making money is the top priority. The cruise ports and industry generates millions of dollars for Seattle so by American standards that takes priority over making the waterfront a pretty little park for grandmas to go jogging on. Seattle is redesigning its waterfront to make it more green and pedestrian friendly, yet still it will in no way interfere with the waterfront ports and industry because that's where the money is.
Granted, a lot of US cities really effed up their downtowns by driving freeways/interstates right through them but Canadian cities also suffered from a similar pattern of urban flight from the 50s-80s and had a lot of half-baked renewal schemes.
Vancouver especially was a completely different place 30 years ago.
Canadians didn't build an interstate system not because they're smarter than Americans - the Canadians didn't build them because their country is enormous with 1/10 the population of the US. Toronto to Winnipeg is a 25 hour drive. 21 hours if you cut through the northern tier of the US. The closest cities west of there - Regina and Calgary - are 8.5 hours apart.
Where the cities in Canada are closer together - Windsor/London/Hamilton/Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal/Quebec you have a freeway system pretty much the same as what you'd see in the US
If the population of the US was just the Northeast Corridor, Kansas City, Denver, SLC, Boise, and Portland we wouldn't have an interstate system either.
Most of the expressways within cities were meant for local, or at least regional traffic. If the US were the Northeast Corridor and only a few scattered, the within expressway system might be the same. Toronto has one giant expressway but doesn't really as big a network as most American cities of similar size would have.
The walk mode share of Toronto is 7% in Vancouver it's 12%
Boston is 14%
Portland, Chicago, DC, SF, NYC, Philadelphia, Seattle and dozens of other smaller cities have walking mode shares the same as or higher than Toronto.
That's looking at work trips, which is more based of how close people are to work. Comparing Toronto with Boston looking at city limits is silly, Toronto includes about half of its metro while Boston is much smaller. Looking at metro-wide stats, there's little overlap:
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