SF rated #1 walkable city (restaurants, shops, housing)

[calidude]

San francisco is a very walkable city.I myself have walked from union square to pier 39 and the embarcadero many times very easy to get around natives arent as nice as DOwn the coast but its ok.

[ubringliten]

Originally Posted by tkindred

I love visiting NY because my friends are there but there is NO way I would live there. What part of NY were you in?

I visited NYC once, and I loved it too. So, I decided to move there to give it a try. I lived in Spanish Harlem. Although the public transit and walking were great, it was just too difficult to get around with all these people and the really cold weather.

[Daisies]

San Francisco is definitly walkable and has a great transit system. I remember a friend and I went into the city to go see a free concert in Golden Gate Park. We ended up getting lost and walking from City Hall all the way to the end of Golden Gate Park, and almost back again. Now that was a workout!

[stiga9]

i saw this in the NY forum: "SF has no true subway system. In NY, you walk anywhere two seconds and there is either a cab, subway, or bus. In SF, besides downtown, you have to walk like 20 mins to find those fun disney looking trolleys, or walk even further to find a BART station. they're right, SF is WAY, WAY more walkable then NY!

Actually, I would put Los Angeles at the top of the list. In LA, you would have to walk about 3 hours to get to the next rail. =)"

LoL kinda funny and true.

[Jonotastic]

I definetly agree...NYC is the only other city that comes to mind that is truely walkable as well.

[rah]

Originally Posted by stiga9

i saw this in the NY forum: "SF has no true subway system. In NY, you walk anywhere two seconds and there is either a cab, subway, or bus. In SF, besides downtown, you have to walk like 20 mins to find those fun disney looking trolleys, or walk even further to find a BART station. they're right, SF is WAY, WAY more walkable then NY!

Actually, I would put Los Angeles at the top of the list. In LA, you would have to walk about 3 hours to get to the next rail. =)"

LoL kinda funny and true.

How is it true at all? SF has a real subway, in fact it has two (Sure BART and MUNI are nothing compared to NYC's system....but that's the case for almost all other US cities' subways too). Also, no where in SF do you need to walk 20 minutes to find public transit. There's usually at least one bus stop within a couple blocks of where ever you might live, most of the time there quite a few. Also those "disney looking trolleys" only serve a very small part of the city, and most SF residents never use them. I've lived in SF my whole life, and have been on the cable cars twice. MUNI has about 700,000 riders a day, which is a pretty high number. I doubt all those passengers would be riding if you had to walk 20 minutes to get on the bus.

[Jonotastic]

Originally Posted by rah

How is it true at all? SF has a real subway, in fact it has two (Sure BART and MUNI are nothing compared to NYC's system....but that's the case for almost all other US cities' subways too). Also, no where in SF do you need to walk 20 minutes to find public transit. There's usually at least one bus stop within a couple blocks of where ever you might live, most of the time there quite a few. Also those "disney looking trolleys" only serve a very small part of the city, and most SF residents never use them. I've lived in SF my whole life, and have been on the cable cars twice. MUNI has about 700,000 riders a day, which is a pretty high number. I doubt all those passengers would be riding if you had to walk 20 minutes to get on the bus.

Very true! You can't compare only subways because more San Franciscans (sp) use the MUNI (bus). In NYC, you usually have to take multiple subways to get to your destination. Where San Francisco because it's so compact, you could walk 20 minutes from any muni line and be at your destination vs having to take multiple munis (if you choose to). It takes less than 20 minutes to walk from Union Square to North Beach, which passes through Chinatown. That would be like walking from Times Square to Little Italy to Chinatown, you can't walk that in 20 minutes. Subway, Bus etc is still transporation, not true walking.

[redwoodlvr]

The way I interpret this and maybe why they chose SF as #1 is perhaps because you can easily walk from one end of the city to another within 2-3 hours depending on the shape you're in. I mean from corner to corner. Bay to ocean. I've done it for fun a few times.

But as far being walking friendly in general, I agree that NYC ranks higher than SF, even though I'm a native.

[CiNYC]

Originally Posted by Jonotastic

I definetly agree...NYC is the only other city that comes to mind that is truely walkable as well.

Look at the others in the top 5; Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia. All extremely walkable with dense, compact neighborhoods and efficient public transit. DC's definitely up there too. After these, I'd say there's a pretty big drop to the next tier (generally speaking).

Originally Posted by redwoodlvr

The way I interpret this and maybe why they chose SF as #1 is perhaps because you can easily walk from one end of the city to another within 2-3 hours depending on the shape you're in. I mean from corner to corner. Bay to ocean. I've done it for fun a few times.

Here are the criteria:

Walk Score uses a patent-pending system to measure the walkability of an address. The Walk Score algorithm awards points based on the distance to the closest amenity in each category. If the closest amenity in a category is within .25 miles (or .4 km), we assign the maximum number of points. The number of points declines as the distance approaches 1 mile (or 1.6 km)—no points are awarded for amenities further than 1 mile. Each category is weighted equally and the points are summed and normalized to yield a score from 0–100. The number of nearby amenities is the leading predictor of whether people walk. [http://www.walkscore.com/how-it-works.shtml]

The size of the city doesn't really affect the ranking. It's the composite scores of neighborhoods with a lot of nearby amenities (shops, restaurants, etc). SF is dense with housing and retail all the way to its borders.

[bigdave01]

Originally Posted by Jonotastic

I definetly agree...NYC is the only other city that comes to mind that is truely walkable as well.

Thats rediculous there are a lot of walkable cities: NYC, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, etc.