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The New Jersey suburbs are absolutely up there though. Essex and Bergen Counties in particular. Places like Maplewood and South/West Orange, Short Hills and Wayne comet to mind. Many NJ suburbs are more walkable than Boston suburbs simply because theyre denser and have more cute shops. Also NJ Transit is a bit more practical to use and more centrally located in town than most MBTA commuter rail stops
The difference between say, Boston suburbs and NJ ones are that in Boston ones many people walk downtown and can self sustain themselves around them from just the way they were designed (Not to mention significant more greenery).. while NJ suburbs are more reliant on NYC/Philly and contain more of a sprawly like pattern. Sure Montclair, Maplewood and Short Hills are exceptions... but places like Bostonn and Philly have better examples lol
I'm amazed the twin cities has any votes!!!! Tons of trails and parks, but certainly not character. It's modern big box over and over. Now the city itself has some great neighborhoods.....
Are you sure you're familiar with the Twin Cities? The Minneapolis-St. Paul metro has tons of suburbs with character. Just off the top of my head:
Excelsior
Wayzata
Hopkins
Anoka
Hastings
Stillwater
White Bear Lake
Columbia Heights
Edina
Saint Louis Park
Shakopee
Chaska
The downtowns of all of those suburban cities are very walkable and virtually all of them are connected to the regional bike trail network along with countless parks and waterways.
I don't get why New York is limited to the NJ 'burbs. There are a ton of NYC 'burbs on Lon Gisland, Westchester, and into lower Fairfield County where you get off the train and have a nice walkable town center.
On the Boston list where I've lived, I'd add Andover, Winchester, and Portsmouth NH.
I'm biased since I'm from there, but I have heard other people say that Chicago's suburbs feel like they have more character than most cities' suburbs because of the "Main Street USA"-type downtowns, many of them centered around Metra stations.
My experience has been that DC's suburbs also have some character, Denver's and the Twin Cities' less so.
Besides Evanston, though, are Chicago's suburbs really walkable and urbane, though? Obviously places like Skokie aren't what I'm talking about, but are the thin strip of towns along the coast in Lake County? I not surprised about Boston and Philly, but Chicago does surprise me in this poll
Definitely Oak Park meets this standard. From my recollection of years ago, OP's downtown area is as dense, if not denser, than Evanston (although I understand Evanston has seen an explosion of mid/high-rise office buildings in its core, recently. 2 CTA L lines and a couple Metra stops enhance OP's walkability. I was also pleasantly surprised to find walkable nodes, away from OP's downtown, along the Blue Line L even though it's sandwiched in between I-290 ... areas like this:
Definitely Oak Park meets this standard. From my recollection of years ago, OP's downtown area is as dense, if not denser, than Evanston (although I understand Evanston has seen an explosion of mid/high-rise office buildings in its core, recently. 2 CTA L lines and a couple Metra stops enhance OP's walkability. I was also pleasantly surprised to find walkable nodes, away from OP's downtown, along the Blue Line L even though it's sandwiched in between I-290 ... areas like this:
The drawback to Oak Park, and many Chicago suburbs, is the latter criteria "access to parks/green spaces". Though Chicagoland suburbs do have plentiful playgrounds, ball fields, and some designated areas of conservation land, it's leaps and bounds behind some others on this thread. The North Shore- Evanston on up- is the exception to me with the waterfront.
Even still, it's not the same as the suburbs in Boston, where you have a ton of towns in all directions with walkable cores and surrounding neighborhoods, that also feature bodies of water, intricate bike paths, conservation land, kayaking, ocean front beaches, etc.
Sorry, I usually appreciate your posts. But this comment is way, way off.
Chicago suburbs are every part as walkable as Philly's or Boston's, every bit as educated, and even more affluent than those in Philly's.
Just a nit that Philadelphia and Chicago are actually pretty similar in metro area terms relative to median income/affluence (they're almost precisely even on MHI, but the Philly metro actually has a slight edge on MFI):
What's more is that Chicago proper has more relative wealth than Philly proper, so the level of wealth in the Philly 'burbs is clearly pretty high to be at parity with the Chicago area overall.
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