Living without a car in this tier: PHX v SD v DEN v ATL v HNL v Bmore v MSP v Vegas v PDX v PGH v DFW v HOU v SLC (best, largest)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm trying out a different way of creating tiers / rankings for urban areas in regards to living without car.
There's an obvious tier that comes after New York City and then after that there's an odd spot where areas are somewhere on the spectrum of:
- mid-sized urban areas where their cores were giants in the pre-war area before mass suburbanization hit them, but still have quite a lot intact and are mostly recovering
- large sunbelt cities that sprawled out massively in the post-war period but the car traffic in the region and value of land in the core have gotten to the point where they've been infilling their urban cores
This tier was formed via ridership counts for transit agencies in their urban area that somewhere around 50 million trips across all modes in the last quarter reported by APTA: https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uplo...rship-APTA.pdf
These 13 urban areas that had a range of about 25 million to 75 million across all modes and agencies for their respective area. It nicely takes out what I think were the urban areas that are obviously a tier ahead with the closest disqualified out being Miami at about 82 million (not including Brightline which is an oddball and also not within APTA's stats) and Seattle at about 105 million which are in an odd middle ground between this tier and the entrants in the tier above. It also takes out a few urban areas that are somewhat close to the cut-off such as Cleveland, Austin, and San Antonio that are all just a bit under the 20 million mark, so none of them are right near the edge as entrants Salt Lake City and Phoenix areas are just over the mark.
Does this tier feel somewhat consistent to you despite it pulling from very different urban areas?
For cities you're familiar with, what are the premier neighborhoods to live without a car in that urban area and what makes it the best of that urban area?
Of all of those premier neighborhoods, which one do you think is the most pleasant to live in without a car?
In which of these neighborhoods would you not mind living in without a car?
Which of these places is likely to change to be most favorable to live in without a car at the end of this decade?
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 01-31-2024 at 12:49 PM..
Atlanta is a mixed bag... You can live and fully function in Midtown alone, and if you need to go anywhere, run up and down the length of MARTA, from the airport to Buckhead, etc. I've stayed there for extended periods of time, without a car, and never really felt the need for one. Granted, that's IF you end up living in or around Midtown. The majority of the city is obviously quite different.
Baltimore, SD and Portland should walk with this one.
Great poll. At first the sprawling grab-bag of cities confused me, but I see that the poll is: which of these urban areas that log 25-75 million transit rides per year (mid-tier) have the best places to live car free?
I voted Baltimore and Portland, as they seem to have the deepest networks of non-car options and most supportive culture. In addition the Max and streetcar, Portland has a frequent bus grid and the bike network. Baltimore has frequent buses and access to the Northest rail network in addition to light & heavy rail lines.
In each of these cities not having a car is seen as somewhat normal and reasonable, which isnt true for many of the other poll options.
Vote closes in about a year's time by the way, so think it through!
I encourage people to name some neighborhoods and rationale for them so people can look at it before voting.
I do think some of the sunbelt cities, or at least Dallas, has neighborhoods that are much more walkable than I initially thought it would be. I think Uptown was the big highlight as a quite densely built out urban neighborhood that has a streetcar system alongside the bus system running through it for getting around the immediate area as well as stations for multiple light rail lines for getting to other parts of the urban area. It's also within walking and biking distance of the CBD and they had capped the freeway that used to be between the two.
I also think Baltimore which I went to last year seems to have fallen off from what I remembered before though I did not go to the same neighborhoods as previous times though I did go downtown. Downtown Baltimore wasn't always the best showcase for the city, but it seemed to have taken a visible turn for the worse. I hope that was the nadir and the coming years are great.
I think the big oddball here is really Las Vegas. It's among the smaller urban areas / metropolitan areas on the list, but it posts some pretty large numbers with its real mass transit agencies and then the not counted by APTA Las Vegas monorail and other people mover systems also post big numbers together, but they aren't really public transit agencies. The Strip and its environs are walkable, but it is a sui generis really, really weird neighborhood or "neighborhood".
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 01-31-2024 at 03:16 PM..
Atlanta is a mixed bag... You can live and fully function in Midtown alone, and if you need to go anywhere, run up and down the length of MARTA, from the airport to Buckhead, etc. I've stayed there for extended periods of time, without a car, and never really felt the need for one. Granted, that's IF you end up living in or around Midtown. The majority of the city is obviously quite different.
Baltimore, SD and Portland should walk with this one.
Yea, I'm talking about the neighborhoods that are walkable rather than the proportion of an urban area that's easy to live without a car. Do you reckon Midtown is the strongest contender for best neighborhood for living without a car in Atlanta?
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 01-31-2024 at 03:52 PM..
Yea, I'm talking about the neighborhoods that are walkable rather than the proportion of an urban area that's easy to live without a car.
If we are ranking them by individual neighborhoods in isolation, Baltimore handily walks away with this.
I know Walk Score isn’t perfect but it’s not coincidental that Baltimore has 24 neighborhoods that have a +90 score and another 34 with a +80 score where as the other cities well, don’t.
If we are ranking them by individual neighborhoods in isolation, Baltimore handily walks away with this.
I know Walk Score isn’t perfect but it’s not coincidental that Baltimore has 24 neighborhoods that have a +90 score and another 34 with a +80 score, where as the other cities well, don’t.
Isolation as in it doesn't matter if places 30 miles away on average that you can't access without a car anyways aren't very walkable, but it does matter how many and how walkable neighborhoods are for the ones you *can* get to and would want to get to without a car from the premier neighborhood for living without a car. Does that make sense? It's more about how the living from that premiere neighborhood without a car would go, but without going into a lot of personal detail about job, sector, and budget and assuming that all just works out pretty well.
Baltimore sounds reasonable though I'm not sure it handily walks away with this. There might still be some competition because downtown seems like it's considerably weakened and that's where a lot of transit goes and meanwhile I think there is some splotchiness in the connection between neighborhoods that are intact and walkable. I feel like Baltimore neighborhoods as I first saw them over a decade ago would have been a shoe in for the top compared to the rest of these cities, but the past couple of visits especially the last one sort of seems like there has been a pretty notable drop from even the previous several years while I think most of the other contenders significantly bolstered their top neighborhoods for living without a car. What do you feel are Baltimore's top neighborhoods for living without a car and what are their best attributes? Baltimore seems like a top contender for the last question about significantly improving its top neighborhoods by the end of the decade.
I do like Walk Score! I think my issue with doing it on a neighborhood count is that some cities have a lot more subdivisions into neighborhoods than others which is usually a holdover from if they were large and bustling during an earlier period of time when neighborhoods would have been defined in a smaller, walkable scale. That fits Baltimore pretty well, but that also probably ends up with a large neighborhood count for the same amount of area. I also think Walkscore has an issue where they haven't updated for about a decade which is why I stopped compiling the aggregate list of largest contiguous walkable area with walkscores over 90 which I think was a good idea, but felt kind of fruitless if the data was going to be that old.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 01-31-2024 at 04:34 PM..
Isolation as in it doesn't matter if places 30 miles away on average that you can't access without a car anyways aren't very walkable, but it does matter how many and how walkable neighborhoods are for the ones you *can* get to and would want to get to without a car from the premier neighborhood for living without a car. Does that make sense? It's more about how the living from that premiere neighborhood without a car would go, but without going into a lot of personal detail about job, sector, and budget and assuming that all just works out pretty well.
I cant think of a single neighborhood you can't get to in Baltimore thats not serviced by the MTA Bus, Light-Rail or Subway so access isn't much of an issue in the city.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
I'm not sure Baltimore would necessarily walk away with this because downtown seems like it's considerably weakened and that's where a lot of transit goes and meanwhile I think there is some splotchiness in the connection between neighborhoods that are intact and walkable. I feel like Baltimore neighborhoods as I first saw them over a decade ago would have been a shoe in for the top compared to the rest of these cities, but the past couple of visits especially the last one sort of seems like there has been a pretty notable drop from even the previous several years while I think most of the other contenders significantly bolstered their top neighborhoods for living without a car. What do you feel are Baltimore's top neighborhoods for living without a car and what are their best attributes? I do think that Baltimore is probably top contender for the last question about significantly improving its top neighborhoods by the end of the decade though.
Midtown is Baltimore's defacto transit hub (Penn Station), not downtown. DT Baltimore hasn't never been Baltimore's premier neighborhood since the 60's & 70's. It's only recently started turning the corner through office conversions, construction on Howard street, the CFG Bank Arena renovations and a new Lexington Market. The Inner Harbor has a ~$1 Billion dollar revamp proposed buts that currently in the middle of ongoing zoning approval process.
What makes you think Baltimore hasn't bolstered its top neighborhoods? Downtown, Harbor Point/East, Fells Point, Riverside, Brewers Hill & Port Covington are non-stop with construction/development and thats before touching the TOD developments going along the Light Rail, the planned construction of a E/W Red Line and potential N/S (Yellow) RST line.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
I do like Walk Score! I think my issue with doing it on a neighborhood count is that some cities have a lot more subdivisions into neighborhoods than others which is usually a holdover from if they were large and bustling during an earlier period of time when neighborhoods would have been defined in a smaller, walkable scale. That fits Baltimore pretty well, but that also probably ends up with a large neighborhood count for the same amount of area. I also think Walkscore has an issue where they haven't updated for about a decade which is why I stopped compiling the aggregate list of largest contiguous walkable area with walkscores over 90 which I think was a good idea, but felt kind of fruitless if the data was going to be that old.
Baltimore's neighborhoods/census tracks/subdivisons aren't any smaller (geographically) than any of these other cities, they are simply more walkable as a byproduct of the cities historic built form and how the buildings are used (rowhomes vs. SFH). That's really what it boils down to.
Last edited by Joakim3; 01-31-2024 at 05:46 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
