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Huh? Say a hipster bar is three miles from your house. So what? It's probably right around the corner from someone else's.
I don't understand the whole "hipster bar" thing?
In my neighborhood, I can conveniently walk to my bank, church, library, barber, park, pool, convenience store, dentist, and eye doctor. That's what I feel makes it walkable.
(Personally, I rarely visit bars and am certainly not a hipster.)
It's a common urbanist "need", mentioned to provide drama. Surely the mention is just as valid as describing suburban dwellers as soulless, another common term you see tossed about here right and left.
It's mostly a dumb stereotype, as you just said. I haven't brought up it in my posts, nor has anyone else. But mostly it's frustrating to hear as I've emphasized lots of other things, I wish those would get responses instead, it'd be a more interesting conversation.
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Since when is your choice of exercise (bike) more valid or interesting than someone else's (walk)? Surely you jest.
I didn't say it was more valid, you're deliberately misinterpreting my post. I was explaining why I don't value walking for the sake of health much.
Huh? Say a hipster bar is three miles from your house. So what? It's probably right around the corner from someone else's. I don't get that line of reasoning. I think I said early on that personal safety is my biggest concern with walking. That means different things to different people. Some say "sidewalks". Some (you) say they're not necessary everywhere. Some freak out at curb cuts, some think having to walk some feet across a parking lot is an impediment to walking (though they think kids should play in the street), some think cars parked on the street are necessary. If it's that personal, e.g. if it's three miles from YOUR house it's not walkable apparently for anyone, nothing's walkable.
I'm not sure why this is so complicated. If most destinations are a three mile walk away, anyone who values their time wouldn't walk to them, it's not a walkable spot. Three miles is completely impractical for just about anyone. Perhaps there are a few, but I think high distance is one of the least subjective thresholds possible. I'd consider distance far more than any of the things mentioned above, except maybe safety.
At the point half this thread is semantics arguments, but I would have assumed three miles was far enough to be obviously impractical.
I don't know what is so difficult, either. Sure, three miles is pretty far to walk. There is a Kohl's department store 3.1 miles away from my house. Yeah, that's too far for me to consider walking down there (and uphill back home). BUT, there are many people that live within 1/2 to 1 mile of the place, so why would you say Kohl's isn't walkable? It has sidewalk access from anywhere in town.
Re: the hipster bars-access to bars has been used if not in this thread, in others about walkability as one amenity that is almost a necessity to make an area walkable. Heck, there's another thread going where someone said when he wants to drink to get drunk he rides his bike so he won't get a DUI. Ha, ha! He could get one here for biking under the influence.
I do NOT understand why people feel they must be constantly entertained on a walk. Some post that in order to get people to choose walking over driving, the walk has to be "interesting". While I disagree, what does that say about walking? I can tell you from growing up doing a lot of walking, walking is frequently seen as drudgery. But if you're making a choice to walk, you should be walking for the sake of wanting to walk, not b/c you can listen to street musicians or whatever on they way. Isn't choosing walking for health a good enough reason?
It's not applicable to walkable neighborhoods (except for maybe low-ish ones), which was the subject of the forum discussion.
The authors felt the Phoenix neighborhoods they studied were walkable. The study didn't give the answer urbanists want. That's the problem with this study, in the opinion of many.
Huh? Say a hipster bar is three miles from your house. So what? It's probably right around the corner from someone else's. I don't get that line of reasoning. I think I said early on that personal safety is my biggest concern with walking. That means different things to different people. Some say "sidewalks". Some (you) say they're not necessary everywhere. Some freak out at curb cuts, some think having to walk some feet across a parking lot is an impediment to walking (though they think kids should play in the street), some think cars parked on the street are necessary. If it's that personal, e.g. if it's three miles from YOUR house it's not walkable apparently for anyone, nothing's walkable.
Since you passive aggressively called me out, I'll chime in.
You confuse what discourages walking with things which prohibit it entirely. Of course people can walk across parking lots. Or curb cuts. Or through or past a variety of things. They're not impassible, but they do inhibit walking. When we have certain features or combinations thereof, walking is discouraged.
In a walkable place, it's not strange to walk half a mile between shops. Quite the opposite, the stroll can be a kind of pleasure or entertainment--window shopping. What we see, however. in shopping centers where stores are separated by large areas of parking is that many people will re-park nearer the second destination. The parking lot doesn't prohibit, it inhibits.
And that's the core of the discussion when it comes to what makes a space walkable. It's not just about what people can do. It's about the things people actually do. We have to consider people as they are, not as we'd like them to be.
I don't know what is so difficult, either. Sure, three miles is pretty far to walk. There is a Kohl's department store 3.1 miles away from my house. Yeah, that's too far for me to consider walking down there (and uphill back home). BUT, there are many people that live within 1/2 to 1 mile of the place, so why would you say Kohl's isn't walkable? It has sidewalk access from anywhere in town.
Maybe that area with the Kohl's is walkable. The point, as I understand it, that if you live 3 miles (or however many) away from amenities, your own neighborhood may not (may is very important here, given the limited information) be walkable. That is certainly not the same thing as to say that the neighborhoods of those amenities are not themselves walkable. Different neighborhoods, different walkabilities.
Since you passive aggressively called me out, I'll chime in.
You confuse what discourages walking with things which prohibit it entirely. Of course people can walk across parking lots. Or curb cuts. Or through or past a variety of things. They're not impassible, but they do inhibit walking. When we have certain features or combinations thereof, walking is discouraged.
In a walkable place, it's not strange to walk half a mile between shops. Quite the opposite, the stroll can be a kind of pleasure or entertainment--window shopping. What we see, however. in shopping centers where stores are separated by large areas of parking is that many people will re-park nearer the second destination. The parking lot doesn't prohibit, it inhibits.
And that's the core of the discussion when it comes to what makes a space walkable. It's not just about what people can do. It's about the things people actually do. We have to consider people as they are, not as we'd like them to be.
Called you out? Whatever.
The only shopping centers where people do what you're saying that I know of are the ones with grocery stores. There are several reasons for that. The cart returns are only in the part of the parking lot designated for the grocery store. The grocery stores usually don't like people leaving their carts at the farthest reaches of the parking lot from the store. Most people go to a mall and leave their car in one place, and malls are generally far bigger than most open-air shopping centers.
I have never known of people to get so freaked about curb cuts before this forum started on them a few months ago. There's a small strip mall near my home that yes, has some curb cuts for cars to enter, but it also has sidewalk throughout, and from most directions you can enter the mall on foot w/o accessing the car routes. Take a look: https://www.google.com/maps/search/w.../data=!3m1!1e3
Now before you point out (LOL) that the parking lot is way too big for what's going on there, the store to the east of Walgreen's used to be a Safeway. That picture was taken before the Safeway was torn down; there's now a natural grocery store there (but in a slightly different location) but it just opened in June and there are no pictures of the shopping center since then.
I will point out that a half mile area in a downtown shopping area probably requires crossing some streets.
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