What city is most walkable? Woodland v. Roseville (Vernon: houses, neighborhoods)

[xxJosexx]

I narrowed down my choices to Roseville and Woodland. I want to be able to walk to the store or to the park, so I was wondering, which do you guy's think is more walkable?

[wburg]

Depends on where you are in either city. In both cases, they are small towns that exploded with suburbs. The small-town remnants of both cities are now their "downtown" areas. Those parts of town were built with gridded streets, small-scale houses and a mixture of uses in a small geographic area.

In both cases, the newer parts of town are car-centric low-density suburbs with shopping centers. These are the unwalkable parts of town. Both cities are pretty bikeable in that they are flat, but in both cases bike lanes are not super prevalent--stick to side streets paralleling busy roads to avoid being flattened. Public transit is kinda "meh" in Woodland and nearly nonexistent in Roseville.

Take a look at Get Your Walk Score - A Walkability Score For Any Address to get an idea of walkability. It isn't entirely accurate but can be a useful guide: The neighborhood in the heart of old Roseville gets a walkability score of 71 out of 100, while Woodland gets a 98 for their Main Street downtown. However, in each case, downtowns are generally the "walkiest" part of a city. Roseville as a whole scores a 57, Woodland a 62--in both cases fairly tepid. But walkability on a whole-city scale is very, very rare except for very small and/or very dense places: generally you're looking for pockets of walkability practical for an individual.

I'd suggest trying Walkscore for different addresses where you are looking at houses.

[iajo]

While most of Roseville is more upscale than most of Woodland, in terms of the most walkable parts of both Woodland and Roseville, I thought Woodland had a little more charm. The historic Woodland Opera House is really pretty, the historic Carnegie Library in downtown Woodland again has lots of charm. Downtown Woodland still has its historic old fashioned drug store.

Downtown Roseville has been redeveloped too many times. You have a lot of older stores in downtown Roseville that were updated in the 1950's or 60's and they no longer really have the charm of really old places but it isn't really up to date either.

[wburg]

I'd agree that Woodland has a bit more historic charm, but Roseville also has a historic Carnegie Library, across the tracks near Old Roseville. The portion along Vernon Street is largely 1930s era buildings, some older, some newer and some revamped later (plus more recent additions) but there is some nice Art Deco like the Tower Theater there too. Both have some nice residential neighborhoods with tree-lined streets and older homes, although again Woodland's tend to be a bit older (more Queen Annes etc.) while Roseville has more early 20th century bungalows. In both cases, charm is nice and encourages walking (as do shady tree-lined streets) but there are plenty of other factors like being able to easily walk to places that supply basic needs. In that case, Woodland seems to win quite handily.