Walkability

Day 3: Eagle Park – Mountain View, CA

July 4, 2007

Happy 4th of July! I hope your holiday is enjoyable and safe. You may recognize today’s photo. You can see a modified version of it in our “logo.” I took this photo standing in Eagle Park looking into the beautiful Park Place Apartments complex in Downtown Mountain View. I just loved the trees in this [...]

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Day 1: Addison Circle – Addison, TX

July 2, 2007

I couldn’t have a tour around the United States without a stop in Texas! Texas is not known for its walkability – with the exception of Austin, the San Antonio Riverwalk, Central Houston, and a few other places. But there really are a few gems in the sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth area. One of these is [...]

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July Photo Series: Exploring the Walkability of America in 30 Days

July 1, 2007

Each day this month, I plan on posting a new photo that I shot in a town or city across the United States. I have looked through thousands of photos from the last five years and selected my favorite walkability-related photo from that town. I then ranked the best photo from each town against all of the other towns and selected the top 30. Tomorrow, I will unveil photo number 30 and will count down backwards until July 31 when the top photo is unveiled.

This was a very difficult and time-consuming process, so I hope you enjoy this series. There were many surprise cuts and the cities near the top are also surprising.

I shot the photo above on a rainy day at a farm field near Yellow Springs, Ohio (they are very serious about preventing sprawl in Yellow Springs). This photo is bit different from what you will see over the next month, but I thought it sets a great tone for the series. All of the photos in this series are the antithesis of sprawl.

I admit that there are probably too many West Coast towns in this series, but I also hope that you’ll find a good mix of places from across the country. Several major cities I have not visited in the last five years, did not make the cut, or I have yet to visit.

Speaking of cities that did not make the cut, you can view the last five photos not to be selected for the series after the jump. >>Continue Reading This Article>>

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A Disappointing New Neighborhood for Downtown Columbus

June 20, 2007

I was excited to read the headline at Columbus RetroMetro stating New Downtown Neighborhood Launch Scheduled for Monday – until I clicked over to the development’s website, The Downtown Neighborhood Launch. Don’t get me wrong, I love to see infill housing in downtowns – especially where surface parking lots currently exist (and Downtown Columbus has [...]

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A Small Victory for Us to Celebrate

April 30, 2007

As I was searching for a photo to include with this article, I went right for my San Francisco photos, since this article is written in response to a San Francisco Chronicle article. Without realizing what photo in particular I was looking for, I decided to check out my Noe Valley photos and came across [...]

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Creating–and Using–A Rating System for Neighbourhood Walkability: Towards an Agenda for “Local Heroes”

March 28, 2007

Presented to the 14th International Pedestrian Conference, Boulder, CO – October 1, 1993

ABSTRACT:

“Walkability” is a quality of place, one that is being eroded by the day throughout the world. Although the term has been appearing in literature for some time, the author, a pedestrian rights activist and public consultation practitioner, knows of no attempt to measure it. This paper attempts to do that, as well as give three practical purposes for using the “walkability index”. One such use is to provide a motivation to induce more people to become “local heroes”, by re-establishing their links with their streets and neighbourhoods and committing personal resources to rebuild their local physical and social infrastructure, so necessary to human life and the ecology of “the commons”.

I. WHY MEASURE WALKABILITY?

I believe that I live in one of North America’s most walkable neighbourhoods. Unfortunately, its housing is also among the highest priced in the city. Last year, its homeowners and business owners faced steep increases in property taxes which are based on market values. Many of my neighbours challenged the market-value-based property taxes with the argument that market value of one’s property does not necessarily reflect one’s ability to pay taxes. Others argued differently: that the average person in our neighbourhood is more likely to walk and therefore has less need for the municipal-level infrastructure paid for by property taxes.

This got me thinking. I had always liked the idea of being able to measure this quality called walkability. But now there might be a very important use for it. What if a collection of such measurements – in the form of a rating system or index – could be used in calculating property taxes and, for new buildings, the initial development fee? This may seem unfair, since it comes close to being an example of user-pay, but would be applied not to the individual or the household, but to the basic unit of walkability, the street block and the neighbourhood.

The index could also be useful to homebuyers who could use the index to settle matters such as: Are the streets safe? Is transit service good? Will we need one car, two cars, or even no car? >>Continue Reading This Article>>

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