Pittsburgh #9 in walkability (California, Oliver, Highland Park: homes, buy, school)

[TheYO]

Originally Posted by gortonator

What about Highland Park? And Downtown? And the North Side? Apart from these, what have the Romans done for us?

If you live in these areas, which are reasonably substantial in area, it's very walkable indeed. You pays your money, makes your choices.(And some of us like hills - weird, eh)

I forgot the North Side has a Giant Eagle. I guess you could add it to the walkable neighborhood list.

Downtown and Highland Park have no grocery stores. I consider grocery stores a vital part of a walkable neighborhood. They are automatically excluded because of that.

[ferraris]

Nice map eschaton. I'm not really following the difference between light green and dark green, though. The descriptions sound like two ways of wording the same thing.

[gortonator]

Originally Posted by TheYO

I forgot the North Side has a Giant Eagle. I guess you could add it to the walkable neighborhood list.

Downtown and Highland Park have no grocery stores. I consider grocery stores a vital part of a walkable neighborhood. They are automatically excluded because of that.

So many criteria. I regard walkable as needing a decent bar and a Japanese restaurant. Highland Park and Downtown are in my list

[SammyKhalifa]

Originally Posted by TheYO

I actually agree with ATC. I'm surprised Pittsburgh is ranked so high on the walkability list.

Everyone who says Pittsburgh is a walkable city is kidding themselves. Pittsburgh has maybe five neighborhoods that I consider truly walkable, meaning you could eat, drink, shop, get groceries, go to the doctor, etc. on foot. Outside of the South Side Flats, Shadyside, Lawrenceville, Oakland, Bloomfield, and parts of East Liberty and Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh is not very walkable. It's all about the topography. The hills are a major PITA and are unpleasant to walk. It's downright miserable to walk in the winter, but that's not unique to Pittsburgh.

There are a lot of great things to saw about Pittsburgh. Being a walkable city is not one of them.

When I lived on Mt Washington I seemed to be able to walk places just fine. You couldn't live there without a car or anything (at least I couldn't) but it wasn't bad. Add in the mon incline (a "mass transit" option that is overlooked by many of the metrics) and it's pretty damn connected.

[PghYinzer]

I would have never assumed people in Pittsburgh were so afraid of hills. Brookline falls low on the walkable scale, even though it has a huge business district that has pretty much everything you need (outside of a full scale grocery store). And what makes part of Brookline unable to be walkable? Hills? I would say along McNeilly may be since there are no sidewalks, but I would say walkable means you can (even sometimes with some effort) get there from here. If a street has stairs or a sidewalk is it not walkable?

Either I am an Ironman, or the majority of people are lazy, or unable to put a little effort into walking.

My neighbor is at least 90 years old, and he climbs the hills of Brookline multiple times a day and looks very fit. I guess the obese kids who drop their candy bar wrappers in my yard are the ones that don't consider it walkable....wait, they are walking when they do it, so even they can climb the "mountains" of Brookline.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by ferraris

Nice map eschaton. I'm not really following the difference between light green and dark green, though. The descriptions sound like two ways of wording the same thing.

I guess more of a spectrum thing than anything, but I was thinking the dark green are areas which have functional business districts which are fairly built out. In contrast, the light green are ones which don't have their zoned business districts heavily built out.

Admittedly, thinking about it more, I'm not even sure if I should have included many of the dark green areas as such. Greenfield, Highland Park, and Point Breeze have business districts which still need lots of improvement - improvements which in some cases are coming along right now. Squirrel Hill and Brookline are really the only business districts in semi-walkable neighborhoods which have reached full potential.

FWIW, I'm aware that Brighton Heights is doing better around California Avenue, but the other two business districts along Brighton, along with the storefronts in Woods Run, still are looking kinda shabby.

[Moby Hick]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Here's a quick map I drew up, detailing what's what in terms of walkability, or more accurately, walkability and potential walkability.

I don't agree with your map, especially as far as it hits the parts of the city I frequent. And I have data. See page 7 of this report (page 6 is also interesting, if slightly off topic). Much of the area of Squirrel Hill that you have marked as "semi-walkable" has actual rates of walking to work in the 7 to 15% category. That is, more people walk to work in those areas that walk to work in a great deal of the area you have as "walkable". This map covers walking to work only, but I sort of doubt someone willing to walk to work from Squirrel Hill is unwilling to walk to the Giant Eagle or that they drive to Pamela's.

http://www.ucsur.pitt.edu/files/peq/peq_2011-12.pdf

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Red are neighborhoods which just will not ever be walkable without substantial zoning changes, due to a mixture of topography and their built structure.
.

I think you are showing a bit of bias in favor of "traditional" business districts.

My mum lives in Westwood and that's where I was raised, and the Noble Manor shops as well as the large Shop n Save over there are certainly walkable and a lot of people walk to them in the neighborhood.

Just because something doesn't look like the older districts elsewhere in the city, doesn't mean that it is totally unfriendly to the pedestrian masses.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by PghYinzer

I would have never assumed people in Pittsburgh were so afraid of hills. Brookline falls low on the walkable scale, even though it has a huge business district that has pretty much everything you need (outside of a full scale grocery store). And what makes part of Brookline unable to be walkable? Hills? I would say along McNeilly may be since there are no sidewalks, but I would say walkable means you can (even sometimes with some effort) get there from here. If a street has stairs or a sidewalk is it not walkable?

Either I am an Ironman, or the majority of people are lazy, or unable to put a little effort into walking.

My neighbor is at least 90 years old, and he climbs the hills of Brookline multiple times a day and looks very fit. I guess the obese kids who drop their candy bar wrappers in my yard are the ones that don't consider it walkable....wait, they are walking when they do it, so even they can climb the "mountains" of Brookline.

Walkability is generally defined in urban planning as it taking you less than 10 minutes to walk to a business district, because studies have found that if it takes you longer than that to walk, you'll preferentially drive as an option. Under that metric, the densest portion of Brookine is walkable, but once you get north of Belle Isle, or as far east as Brookline Memorial Park, the walkability basically drops to zero.

Originally Posted by Moby Hick

I don't agree with your map, especially as far as it hits the parts of the city I frequent. And I have data. See page 7 of this report (page 6 is also interesting, if slightly off topic). Much of the area of Squirrel Hill that you have marked as "semi-walkable" has actual rates of walking to work in the 7 to 15% category. That is, more people walk to work in those areas that walk to work in a great deal of the area you have as "walkable". This map covers walking to work only, but I sort of doubt someone willing to walk to work from Squirrel Hill is unwilling to walk to the Giant Eagle or that they drive to Pamela's.

The map also has Westwood, Ridgemont, Saint Clair, and Mount Oliver (borough) in the walking to work category, and few people would consider any of those neighborhoods walkable.

Regardless, in the case of Squirrel Hill there are a few major apartment districts South of Forbes which have very high population densities and which are right near Murray. This can up the percentage of people who find the neighborhood walkable, but it doesn't change that given the sheer size of Squirrel Hill there are large areas where it will take 15-20 minutes (or longer) to walk to the nearest edge of the business district.

[gortonator]

Originally Posted by Moby Hick

I don't agree with your map, especially as far as it hits the parts of the city I frequent. And I have data. See page 7 of this report (page 6 is also interesting, if slightly off topic). Much of the area of Squirrel Hill that you have marked as "semi-walkable" has actual rates of walking to work in the 7 to 15% category. That is, more people walk to work in those areas that walk to work in a great deal of the area you have as "walkable". This map covers walking to work only, but I sort of doubt someone willing to walk to work from Squirrel Hill is unwilling to walk to the Giant Eagle or that they drive to Pamela's.

http://www.ucsur.pitt.edu/files/peq/peq_2011-12.pdf

I live in a the 'semi-walkable' part of Sq Hill on you map. And believe me, the locals walk a lot, many with Giant Eagle grocery bags in hand. We have new neighbors who moved in this week who specifically bought that house because it was 'walkable'. They moved here from Portland. Undulations can be walked up and down - it is possible folks, honestly. It's not like Pittsburgh is in the mountains ...