Good walk-able cities, with public transit in the US. (Los Angeles, skyscrapers, building)
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OP: even though you had said you weren't interested, I would consider researching Portland. I just moved here earlier this year and while there are some issues, most of what is shown in the media is completely overblown and sensationalized. It's still an awesome city with a lot to offer.
For a medium sized city, it has a very strong public transportation system. It has 5 light rail lines, 3 streetcar routes, and an extensive bus system that covers most of the metro. There's also several very walkable neighborhoods. For example, I live in inner Southeast, and in <5 minutes of walking, I have access to a grocery store, coffee shop, ice cream shop, multiple bars and restaurants, record shop, and a small movie theater. I also live in a quiet single family home.
You also indicated that you were interested in outdoor recreation, and the Pacific Northwest has some of the best scenery and outdoor activities in the entire country.
OP: even though you had said you weren't interested, I would consider researching Portland. I just moved here earlier this year and while there are some issues, most of what is shown in the media is completely overblown and sensationalized. It's still an awesome city with a lot to offer.
For a medium sized city, it has a very strong public transportation system. It has 5 light rail lines, 3 streetcar routes, and an extensive bus system that covers most of the metro. There's also several very walkable neighborhoods. For example, I live in inner Southeast, and in <5 minutes of walking, I have access to a grocery store, coffee shop, ice cream shop, multiple bars and restaurants, record shop, and a small movie theater. I also live in a quiet single family home.
You also indicated that you were interested in outdoor recreation, and the Pacific Northwest has some of the best scenery and outdoor activities in the entire country.
I said I was not interested in because of a lot if the issues I heard about. However if these issues are way overblown and are in fact not that much an issues to day to day life, and the people are nice then I will have to look into Portland.
Avoiding the 7th and 9th wards of New Orleans is pretty easy to do.
Also Atlanta is not nearly Old World enough, not sure how that made the list but NYC didn't. Both are heavily Americanized, with Atlanta being the most sprawled city in the entire US. Yes, Atlanta sprawls worse than Phoenix, but you don't see Phoenix making this list either. A + sign for a subway map is not enough.
Salt Lake City also needs to be removed. SLC is known for ridiculously wide roads. When the Mormons first populated the area, roads were designed so that a horse-drawn wagon could do a full U-turn. Narrow wandering streets (like in Lisbon) definitely does NOT exist in the heavily gridded, wide road SLC. Mesa was built the same way as SLC so that's why I'm familiar with that. Whoever said that has clearly never been to Europe.
Again any old city in the US that's been even remotely popular by national standards for the past 100 years needs to not be on OP's list. The car-centric American Dream has destroyed any type of neighborhood that could've been this. Boston is probably the only exception to this, but that's because Boston has rigorously prevented any development. Which is arguably a bad thing, Boston is now extremely unaffordable.
Philadelphia and New Orleans alike have been unpopular compared to other nearby metros,... NYC and Houston respectively.
I know Salt Lake City doesn't resemble any European cities. However, is there a chunk of the city that isn't car depended? That has its light rail + walk-ablity? I love the look and feel of a European city but non car depends is what I am looking for. I mainly like Lisbon for it walk-able as well as Montreal (a Canadian city with many parts not looking like europe.) Plus there is plenty of walk-able and transit oriented cites in Asia that looks nothing like a European city. So can parts of Salt lake be walk-able without looking like Europe?
They're overblown in Portland....and ALL of the traditionally-urban cities.
Yeah, most critiques are overblown.
"Portland is a mess and is a riot!!" .. not true, you haven't been there.
"New York/Boston are so mean and rude!!" .. not true, you haven't been there.
"San Francisco is a third-world country!" .. not true, probably haven't been there.
"Chicago is basically Iraq!" .. not true, you haven't been there.
Then when people actually go there, they love them.
I live in a suburb of Charleston, SC and I would not include it on your list (or Savannah). There is no public transit AT ALL and the "core" walkable area is pretty small. So is the city as it's only @ 125K in pop. Yes, the metro is bigger but you would hate it. Talk about sprawl. it's the epitome of strips mall sprawl with no "towns" to speak of. It's also not cheap. At all. We moved from the northeast (coastal MA) and the COL is nearing what we were paying there in many regards.
I didn't see anything about extreme weather. Depending where you look - certainly coastal NC, SC and sometimes GA, you will have the hassle of hurricanes and hurricane evacuations and all that that entails.
SC is very red, so it satisfied your wishes in that regard.
Unfortunately, coming from the north and moving south, the public transit after you move beyond VA tends to be abysmal. I am not sure where you lived in the northeast, but I'm really sorry that you "hated EVERYONE". There are some very nice people that live (or used to live) there.
I totally get what you mean about European cities. I love Europe for a lot of reasons, one of the most is the walkability, outdoor cafes, and great public transit. I agree with whoever said that's going to be difficult to find here. Have you considered Canada, or some of the NW cities - Seattle, Portland, Vancouver Canada (have not been there, but only hear great things about it). They are not red, and not southern, but by all accounts beautiful, walkable in some regard and fairly good public transit.
I second whoever mentioned DC. I love DC. It's not as compact as I imagined, but there's a lot to do there, the public transit is great, and it has lots of "neighborhoods" that are walkable. You might want to take a look at cities by state that are walkable by using Walk Score. Just type in Google "walkable cities in NC" (of which there are few) and it will give you a list of all the cities in the state ordered by walkability and lists the population. Maybe something like Wilmington, NC would work for you, but again, I think it's small like Charleston, crime is fairly high, and I don't know if there is any public transit. And Wilmington often gets slammed by hurricanes.
Best of luck! Let us know where you end up.
Good to know that Savannah and Charleston is not that great. The way you describe it, it kind of sound like where I am going to college, great walkablity on campus or downtown, but both are surrounded by ether massive highways, ghettos or Both. I tried first looking around Florida(my state), but beside a few downtown area which are only a few blocks large, I am out of luck. The rest of the south doesn't look good either. Ether the crime rate is too high like New Orleans and Atlanta; or the walk-able area does not go out far enough. I rember loving downtown Nashville, but with out good reliable public transit, it hard to go any where else. I was thinking maybe Portland or Salt Lake. They both have light rail, access to nature without a car, downtown food and seem to have a low crime, though I have to check with Portland. I would have to visit these cities first though. I was planning visiting them last year, but you know 2020 got in the way.
As far as anything else, the list is depressingly small. Maybe there a hidden jem in the south I am missing. However, it starting to look like I may have to find a city abroad. Maybe Montreal, Canada or somewhere in Europe. I don't how many English speaking entry-level Data Analytics job are there in Montreal or Europe. I know there plenty in the US, which why I been looking for a city after college to move too, which still a few years away for me. But either being in the Northeast or in a car depended place just, where I have grown up just does not appeal to me. I been trying to find someplace different.
Seems like things have gotten way off track here. Here's what the OP said he/she wanted to hear about:
"Every time I look for cities in the US, it always seems to bring up cities like NYC, Chicago, Boston, Portland and San Francisco. But I am not interested in these cities. They have a lot of people moving way from them and seem to be having a problems in the last few years "such as overly stricken covid lock downs, high cost of living, mass protest, high taxes, and corruption". Maybe these issues are over overate? Please let me know. But, I am looking for other cities, preferably a more mid size one
Seems like things have gotten way off track here. Here's what the OP said he/she wanted to hear about:
"Every time I look for cities in the US, it always seems to bring up cities like NYC, Chicago, Boston, Portland and San Francisco. But I am not interested in these cities. They have a lot of people moving way from them and seem to be having a problems in the last few years "such as overly stricken covid lock downs, high cost of living, mass protest, high taxes, and corruption". Maybe these issues are over overate? Please let me know. But, I am looking for other cities, preferably a more mid size one
name other cities that are both walkable and have a good public transportation and rail system.
Also, what OP was saying about these cities was just plain out wrong.
As far as anything else, the list is depressingly small.
Yep, it's disheartening to find more urban choices in Canada -- whose population is 1/10 the size of the US. The US went all-in on sprawl, despite its immense cost to our society, leaving a few remnants of pre-war city behind, and mostly in the northeast and midwest. That anti-urban bias lingers in today's media, so as others have mentioned, "most [anti-urban] critiques are overblown." International surveys don't show that US cities are particularly crime-ridden or riot-prone or corrupt, for instance.
One smaller city that hasn't been mentioned but has a very compact core is Providence. Some college towns have very high transit ridership per capita, including Ann Arbor, Madison, and State College.
Buffalo, Ann Arbor, New Haven, Albany, Lansing/East Lansing, Rochester, Cleveland, Madison and Eugene, among others. These are cities with relatively decent public transportation/ridership, where a decent amount of people walk or bike to work in terms of mid sized/smaller cities.
The last 3 list likely need to be updated, but can give a rough idea of some places that are more likely to fit your criteria, OP.
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