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it seems a like lot of the future assume more suburban nodes equals more walkable in the future, at least on first assumption
Yep, actually it's even worse than that.
Distribution of office and retail space by ...I want to say metro area, but they seem inconsistent in terms of how they define regions
Chicago:
61% unwalkable
27.3% central city walkUPs
1.7% suburban walkUPs
Phoenix:
94.9% unwalkable
3.5% central city walkUPs
1.6% suburban walkUPs
However, all they look at is the ratio of office+retail in suburban vs central city walkUPs, so Phoenix does better in that category. It's not even that Phoenix is being rewarded for having more suburban walkUPs, because it doesn't (1.6% vs 1.7%). They're basically saying that having an unwalkable central city is a good thing for walkability (WTF?)...
Their methodology is odd, I'm not sure what to do think of it. A lot of it just reflects how much retail and office space is concentrated in suburban subcenters.
Basically their present (not future) rankings are just based on % of retail/office in walkUPs. But walkUPs have to be big (>340k sf retail or 1.4million sf office) so I think a fair bit of small neighbourhood scale office/retail won't count. As for whether those nodes are walkable or not, part of it is walkscore (has to be >70), but for the retail nodes, pretty much anything with that much retail will have >70 walkscore. Virtually all the big malls in the GTA rank over 70 walkscore, as well as many power centres and strip mall areas, because after all, walkscore is mostly just based on having a concentration of retail. They've also taking into account whether it "looks" walkable. It's be curious to see the full list of places they said qualified. Their limited list of examples Perimeter Centre, Tysons Corners and Easton Town Centre in Columbus as walkable examples. While I could imagine worse than those 3 places, considering how much retail/office they contain, they're not that great, and certainly not the same as established downtowns.
For the present ranking, where Philadelphia ranked 13th, it only includes five suburban town centres, and parts of the city proper, i.e.. not very much compared to other cities like Atlanta and D.C. The is evidenced by the fact that Philadelphia's walkUPs all have very high walkscores, mostly above 90, with the lowest at 83. D.C. and Atlanta included a lot with walkscores in the 70s and 80s. So based off this, Atlanta should rank lower, Philadelphia should rank higher, New York should rank ahead of D.C. and Houston and KC should rank lower too.
You can actually see a few places listed as walkUPs even though they failed the report's criteria of 70 walkscore at the most walkable intersection.
-South Waterfront in Portland
-National Harbour, Baileys Crossroads and most of Tysons Corners in suburban D.C.
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