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I read it. My point is, there isn't really another true walkable city in the south. Cities like St. Augustine, Galveston, Savannah, and Charleston are the true ones. I don't consider Miami walkable, I know nothing in Houston is walkable. A shabby downtown and one gentrified neighborhood doesn't cut it.
I think everyone is making things too white and black in terms of walk-ability.
Sure Savannah is a walkable city, but Atlanta has more walkable spaces for more people....but a much lower percentage of the whole city/region live in a walkable area. (caused by difference in city size).
Miami and Atlanta both have plenty of walkable spaces and plenty of problem spaces even just within theirs cores.
I would say Kansas City is in the same boat. I looked at the overhead aerial images of that space. There are plenty of open asphalt parking lots in between those buildings. In fact the dominate large parts of the area. There are just enough old buildings sticking up from that angle to hide them well. The spatial area Kansas City's core takes up is so small... I'd say Miami and Atlanta both have more walkable area... but in all fairness.. that is a reflection of the sheer size difference in the region.
The other important thing no one is talking about are the residential areas around the core. In many cities they are just old single family homes on small lots with trees, but they can still be walkable. Atlanta's midtown and Virginia-Highland neighborhood are this way. The Midtown area south of the Piedmont can easily have a pleasant walk into the Midtown CBD if they choose to do so.
The one thing I will note about Kansas City is they managed to -completely- cut off their residential neighborhoods from the core.
Don't get me wrong... I like what I see. There definitely looks like some great places in Kansas City. The buildings look amazing!
Austin, San Antonio, and Fort Worth would fit the bill. Of course once your outside the very core, it's not walkable at all, but that's no different from KC.
KC is pretty comparable in terms of walkability to most large cities in the south, with the exception of outliers like New Orleans. Its small urban core (about 250K residents) is built denser and is more walkable than is typical of comparable core areas in southern cities, and is more similar to older midwest cities like Cincinnati or Cleveland.
Austin, Atlanta, San Antonio, Richmond, Dallas, etc. are pretty much equal to KC in terms of walkability.
Fort Worth, Houston, El Paso, Louisville, Nashville, Memphis, Charlotte, Tampa, Jacksonville, etc. are not as walkable as KC.
So it's more urban simply because it has more pre-WW2 buildings? It still looks like it has a myriad of parking lots to me. This looks more urban to me.
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Pics like the one you posted don't fool most urbanites....the KC photo looks more urban than this one!
Austin, San Antonio, and Fort Worth would fit the bill. Of course once your outside the very core, it's not walkable at all, but that's no different from KC.
I've been to Austin and SA and neither are as urban as KC.
I will also go out on a limb and say that both Atlanta (and Miami) are more "walkable" than KC just due to the fact that both have a subway and not looking at any other metric. For a big city to function well, you need to have mass transit in the core. Unseen in the picture I posted above are two subway lines with 15 stations. Also, brick doesn't equal urban (even though Atlanta has a lot of brick underneath the shiny skyscrapers).
Anyway, for the thread topic, we don't have to base this off of subject pictures. Here is a round up from Walkscore.com of the three most walkable neighborhoods in Kansas City, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas and Houston.
1. Old Westport, Walkscore - 92, population = 1,248
2. Country Club Plaza, Walkscore -90, population = 718
3. Crown Center, Walkscore - 87, population = 763
Note: Downtown KC is fourth "most walkable" neighborhood according to Walkscore with a score of 86.
1. Sweet Auburn, Walkscore - 88, population = 1,882
2. Downtown, Walkscore - 86, population = 13,411
3. Poncey-Highland, Walkscore - 86, population = 2,133
Note: Sweet Auburn is a neighborhood within Downtown, so I'm not sure why Walkscore separated it. For the purposes of this thread, if Sweet Auburn was included with Downtown (as it should be anyway), the Buckhead Village has a Walkscore of 85 and a population of 1,343. If we're keeping it confined to the "core" however you define that, Midtown district that covers the area directly north of Downtown proper has a walkcore of 81 and a population of 16,569.
1. City Center District, Walkscore - 96, population = 1,167
2. Main Street District, Walkscore - 96, population = 1,213
3. Government District, Walkscore - 94, population = 779
So, as far as the thread question of "is their a southern city with a more walkable core than Kansas City", the answer when it comes to the four big ones (5 when you throw in New Orleans) is "yes, all of them."
I looked at walkscore maps a while back (the scores they give are useless for comparisons since they're based on city limits--so scores for places with very small city limits like Atlanta and Miami have an inherent advantage).
Kansas City's most walkable area is around Country Club plaza (not near downtown), and if you look at the maps the area around Country club park are in the 90s/high 80s for a significant spread of territory. There are no "dark green" areas in the Atlanta map, and no area of green that compares to the Country Club plaza area. If you look at pictures/aerials of the country club plaza area (which I've never been to btw but am always impressed by photos), it's clear that there is no comparable district in Atlanta.
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