Metro Jacksonville

Jacksonville by Neighborhood => Downtown => Topic started by: NoFxfan on July 18, 2008, 01:24:25 AM

Title: Jacksonville is ranked the 40th most walkable city in the nation
Post by: NoFxfan on July 18, 2008, 01:24:25 AM
http://walkscore.com/rankings/most-walkable-cities.php

hey, atleast we made the list, right?   ;D
Title: Re: Jacksonville is ranked the 40th most walkable city in the nation
Post by: NoFxfan on July 18, 2008, 01:28:18 AM
Also found this on that website...

http://www.completestreets.org/

from the site:

QuoteThe streets of our cities and towns ought to be for everyone, whether young or old, motorist or bicyclist, walker or wheelchair user, bus rider or shopkeeper. But too many of our streets are designed only for speeding cars, or worse, creeping traffic jams. They’re unsafe for people on foot or bike â€" and unpleasant for everybody.

Now, in communities across the country, a movement is growing to complete the streets. States, cities and towns are asking their planners, engineers and designers to build road networks that welcome all citizens.
Title: Re: Jacksonville is ranked the 40th most walkable city in the nation
Post by: willydenn on July 18, 2008, 07:08:44 AM
The only city in Florida to make the list.
Title: Re: Jacksonville is ranked the 40th most walkable city in the nation
Post by: David on July 18, 2008, 11:29:53 AM
How is Brooklyn walkable? I walk down Park street from Downtown to Riverside often and, well...yeah I mean I'm able to walk through it, but there's not much else going on there.
Title: Re: Jacksonville is ranked the 40th most walkable city in the nation
Post by: RiversideGator on July 18, 2008, 12:23:02 PM
What about Riverside/Avondale?  This is the most walkable neighborhood in the entire City.  Brooklyn really isnt a neighborhood right now (although it hopefully will be again).
Title: Re: Jacksonville is ranked the 40th most walkable city in the nation
Post by: David on July 18, 2008, 12:24:14 PM
I thought the same about Riverside. Maybe they meant to put that instead.

Title: Re: Jacksonville is ranked the 40th most walkable city in the nation
Post by: thelakelander on July 19, 2008, 06:16:50 AM
Quote from: willydenn on July 18, 2008, 07:08:44 AM
The only city in Florida to make the list.

Only by default.  Walkable cities like Providence, RI aren't on this list, which would suggest there's a population cut off.  There's no other Florida city on this list because the rest did not merge with their core county and their actual city limit populations are below the cut off point.
Title: Re: Jacksonville is ranked the 40th most walkable city in the nation
Post by: Joe on July 19, 2008, 08:04:32 AM
It's 40 out of 40. It's the 40 most populous cities in the country (city limits).

Jacksonville came DEAD LAST. You might want to edit the title or first post.
Title: Re: Jacksonville is ranked the 40th most walkable city in the nation
Post by: Joe on July 19, 2008, 09:11:00 AM
I've been looking around Walkscore.com (very cool site, you should play around with it if you know addresses in actual urban cities) so I felt like making another post.

It's obviously a huge flaw that they are only using city limits. That's why cities like Jacksonville, Indianapolis, and Oklahoma City are near the bottom. Consolidated cities will clearly do worse than cities that have their un-walkable exurbs excluded from the list. Jax's pre-consolidation neighborhoods are fairly walkable by Southeastern standards.

Not to say that Jax would ever beat truly walkable cities like Boston, DC, etc ... but in a fair metro-to-metro comparison, we're probably better than Dallas, Phoenix, etc.

Also, their metric can lead to really funny results. It looks like they just compare the average distance of all residential addresses to all nearby categories of retail. This means that Regency has a slightly higher "walkscore" than Springfield. This is because Regency has TONS of retail, while Springfield has minimal retail. Never mind that one has a totally walkable layout, and the other doesn't at all.

Another funny one is around the intersection of San Jose Blvd and I-295. It actually has a reasonably high "walkscore" just because of the sheer volume of retail within close proximity. Of course, anyone who has actually been there knows that it's un-walkable. Even the people who live directly behind the strip malls have to drive to get there.

Still ... a very interesting site.