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The rankings are for metro areas, so if you have near-rural suburbia within your metro, I guess that counts right?
As for the cities themselves, the basin portion of Los Angeles city (about 250 square miles) is almost certainly denser than Philadelphia city over a smaller area, and then that basin portion of the city is surrounded by even denser suburbs (while Philly has stuff like the link I posted surrounding it).
We also have sights like this inside Philadelphia's "extremely tight and dense" city limits:
Los Angeles also typically gets more per capita ridership in both light and heavy rail than Philadelphia, so I'm not sure where a Philadelphia argument would even begin for this matchup.
LA has had a pretty stunning recovery metro, weekday is at 84% of its pre pandemic levels, and ~90% for weekend ridership
Since the rankings are at the metropolitan level, Philadelphia won't rank as highly as many think it will based on its very dense (and heavily populated — 3rd largest "downtown" population in the country) city core and many rowhouse neighborhoods.
Like in many other Northeastern metros, the density of development drops off significantly when one leaves the core city. In Philadelphia, it begins to drop off before you leave it: Northeast Philadelphia, which was largely developed along autocentric lines after World War II, accounts for about one-third of both the city's population and its land mass.
And when you get out to places like upper Montgomery County, where you will find the streetscape AshbyQuin posted, or head north of the railroad tracks that give the Main Line its name, you will find huge swaths of territory developed as large estates — not walkable at all.
Something I keep pointing out is that California suburbs are built at a uniform density that's higher than that of many, even most, East Coast suburbs. Thus their metro-level population densities are higher: the LA MSA is almost twice as dense as the Philadelphia MSA.
What hinders walkability in the LA Basin suburbs is the suburbs' design, where the houses are packed on dendritic streets that branch out like a tree from the main roads. The lack of interconnected paths makes walking impractical in suburbs otherwise built densely enough to support it.
OTOH, when you consider suburban cities like Long Beach (also posted above) and Pasadena, LA may well have more walkable suburban nodes than East Coast cities do because the suburban cities are so populous.
Chicago suburbs have some pretty extreme suburban sprawl despite the compact urban core, so it probably gets dinged by that.
If you look at the table, what boosts Seattle a lot is "office share". It's more about the employers being concentrated in walkable areas than the residential density.
Since the rankings are at the metropolitan level, Philadelphia won't rank as highly as many think it will based on its very dense (and heavily populated — 3rd largest "downtown" population in the country) city core and many rowhouse neighborhoods.
Like in many other Northeastern metros, the density of development drops off significantly when one leaves the core city. In Philadelphia, it begins to drop off before you leave it: Northeast Philadelphia, which was largely developed along autocentric lines after World War II, accounts for about one-third of both the city's population and its land mass.
And when you get out to places like upper Montgomery County, where you will find the streetscape AshbyQuin posted, or head north of the railroad tracks that give the Main Line its name, you will find huge swaths of territory developed as large estates — not walkable at all.
Something I keep pointing out is that California suburbs are built at a uniform density that's higher than that of many, even most, East Coast suburbs. Thus their metro-level population densities are higher: the LA MSA is almost twice as dense as the Philadelphia MSA.
What hinders walkability in the LA Basin suburbs is the suburbs' design, where the houses are packed on dendritic streets that branch out like a tree from the main roads. The lack of interconnected paths makes walking impractical in suburbs otherwise built densely enough to support it.
OTOH, when you consider suburban cities like Long Beach (also posted above) and Pasadena, LA may well have more walkable suburban nodes than East Coast cities do because the suburban cities are so populous.
I think it’s basically Rowhomes are not multifamily housing. Because Boston is set up pretty much like Philly where it fades pretty quickly to exurban sprawl outside town centers. Yes, Transit ridership/walk share in Higher in Boston but it’s number two mostly because Triple deckers/two families are multifamily housing and count towards their stats. Similarly loads of Chicago is two flats, and LA has tones of Garden Apartment style buildings
If you look at the table, what boosts Seattle a lot is "office share". It's more about the employers being concentrated in walkable areas than the residential density.
And if that's the case, then I could give you a good explanation of what accounts for this difference:
Compare Bellevue, Wash., with King of Prussia, Pa.
Both of these are the biggest edge cities in their respective metros. But Bellevue actually has a traditionally planned and built downtown, with a grid of streets and residential districts very close to it.
King of Prussia is an archipelago of office parks, shopping malls (including the nation's largest in terms of actual selling space, even after American Dream Mall opened in the Meadowlands, I believe) and subdivisions scattered across seas of parking. It does have one Instant Urbanist development that puts the shops, offices, tons of apartments and some clusters of townhouses all within walking distance of one another, but it too is an island in an autocentric sea.
Unless you live and work in that Instant Urbanist island, you are going to drive to work (unless you work in the shops in that mall, in which case some of you will take one of three bus routes that connect Philadelphia and its close-in suburbs to that mall).
I think it’s basically Rowhomes are not multifamily housing. Because Boston is set up pretty much like Philly where it fades pretty quickly to exurban sprawl outside town centers. Yes, Transit ridership/walk share in Higher in Boston but it’s number two mostly because Triple deckers/two families are multifamily housing and count towards their stats. Similarly loads of Chicago is two flats, and LA has tones of Garden Apartment style buildings
Yep. Baltimore gets nerfed the same in this regard.
I used to worry about this but I'll be honest. With all this talk about stuffing everyone into 15 minute cities I'm starting to think that walkability isn't as important as freedom and elbow room.
I certainly don't want to live in a place like Hong Kong ir Manilla or Mumbai where it's very walkable nut your packed in like sardines and everything is highly regulated. No thanks that's a form of institutional living.
15 minute cities doesn't mean you can't get further out and it also doesn't mean having everyone live in that kind of development. It just means that more places have the option of not taking the car to conveniently get day-to-day things done.
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