Best biking and walking cities

[mrsmartman]

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[mrsmartman]

^^ The best walking cities are those with extensive grade-separated elevated and/or subterranean walkway system linking commercial developments with local-level plazas and subway stations as focal points.

New York City clearly led the world in this regard before Jane Jacobs ruined it once and for all. Passageways like the Gimbels should be reopened to restore the pedestrian travel experience in an effort to rebuild New York City as the greatest city in the world.

[Flyers2001]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Late to the party, but as with others, I'm just not seeing it.

The main difference between Toronto's rowhouse neighborhoods and Pittsburgh's (besides building style) is setbacks. Pittsburgh's 19th century rowhouse areas typically have zero setback. The houses are typically built right to the sidewalk, unless they have a front porch, in which case the front porch is on the sidewalk. This shifted a bit in the early 20th century, but by that period Pittsburgh had stopped building neighborhoods entirely out of rowhouses, with attached housing more mixed into mostly detached neighborhoods until it petered out entirely in the 1920s.

Overall, Pittsburgh's Victorian neighborhoods are most reminiscent of Philly, with the notable exception that due to higher snowfall rowhouses mostly retained pitched roofs here, rather than going over to flat roofs as Philly did. It also looks a lot like Cinci in terms of overall housing styles, but Cinci was never rowhouse-happy like we were - Cinci tended to build either tenement housing or detached brick houses with zero setback which looked like rowhouses. Honestly I find that Saint Johns, Newfoundland bears a strange resemblance to Pittsburgh in places as well - probably because it's one of the few other places in North America with a lot of wood-frame attached houses, and it also has fairly rugged topography.



I really think cultural inertia played a role as well. I mean prior to the streetcar era rowhouses were in some ways the most sensible layout for an urban city, as it allowed for home ownership and minimized street frontage, creating a good walking environment. But even then, they were not common in New England or the Upper Midwest. And by the early 20th century there was no reason why Philly couldn't start building detached housing, but a lot of housing for the wealthy remained semi-attached, and Philly built stuff like this in formerly rural areas well into the 50s.

Funny, you posted the link to Coleman which is around the corner from me.