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According to walkscores.com, my home in Bryan, TX, where I lived in Tempe, AZ, and the place where I grew up in Seattle, WA have pretty similar walk scores. I would walk around to some degree in Tempe - for example, down to the corner store. I rarely walk in Texas. In contrast, I've been walking around a lot over the past week in Portland and here in Seattle. Part of that is due to being a tourist, but other factors are at work as well.
Sidewalk quality makes a big difference to me, along with climate. The sidewalks in Portland and Seattle tend to be buffered from the roads by planting strips, rows of vegetation and sometimes trees. It isn't so desperately hot here, either. Heat makes bicycling more appealing.
I don't know what metrics this website uses to judge walkability, but in a quick hour yesterday morning I took care of multiple errands, things that would require going in opposite directions in Bryan (3 miles to one place, 3 miles to another - you may recall that I've mentioned how everything is 3 miles away). One was a bank trip, and the bank is closed on Saturdays in College Station, so I wouldn't have been able to make it there at all, anyway. The other location was the farmer's market in the University District. It's always lovely to see the beautiful fruits and cheeses and vegetables piled high, plus all of the different types of fresh-baked bread. It made me feel a bit wistful, for I'm not in a position to run around on a shopping spree to collect up tasty things for the week's meals. I'd budgeted a couple of hours for taking care of those errands and then heading over to the bike shop, but finished up errands so early that I wound up having to dawdle around for quite a while, first in the University Bookstore and then in a coffeeshop. I can't always articulate why it's so difficult to live in Texas, but *this* is why.
People in Portland seem to really enjoy living there. My walk back to the house where I was staying went through a number of different neighborhoods (I took different routes each time), and in the evenings neighborhood restaurants and bars were all bustling. We stayed in a basement apartment, a cozy space in the bottom of an oversized house. While the neighborhood had a couple of large apartment/condo buildings, the vast majority of the housing was single-family homes. Subdividing single-family homes seems like a nice way to create space for more people, while still leaving room for gardens and fruit trees. I don't know how these parts of Portland have managed to avoid the hideous condominium takeovers that have been happening throughout Seattle, but I hope Portland manages to continue avoiding them.
Speaking of gardens - in Portland, as I walked home each night, I took different routes, and passed by numerous community gardens full of all sorts of wonderful enterprises. There was something so nice about it all.
Sidewalk quality makes a big difference to me, along with climate. The sidewalks in Portland and Seattle tend to be buffered from the roads by planting strips, rows of vegetation and sometimes trees. It isn't so desperately hot here, either. Heat makes bicycling more appealing.
I don't know what metrics this website uses to judge walkability, but in a quick hour yesterday morning I took care of multiple errands, things that would require going in opposite directions in Bryan (3 miles to one place, 3 miles to another - you may recall that I've mentioned how everything is 3 miles away). One was a bank trip, and the bank is closed on Saturdays in College Station, so I wouldn't have been able to make it there at all, anyway. The other location was the farmer's market in the University District. It's always lovely to see the beautiful fruits and cheeses and vegetables piled high, plus all of the different types of fresh-baked bread. It made me feel a bit wistful, for I'm not in a position to run around on a shopping spree to collect up tasty things for the week's meals. I'd budgeted a couple of hours for taking care of those errands and then heading over to the bike shop, but finished up errands so early that I wound up having to dawdle around for quite a while, first in the University Bookstore and then in a coffeeshop. I can't always articulate why it's so difficult to live in Texas, but *this* is why.
People in Portland seem to really enjoy living there. My walk back to the house where I was staying went through a number of different neighborhoods (I took different routes each time), and in the evenings neighborhood restaurants and bars were all bustling. We stayed in a basement apartment, a cozy space in the bottom of an oversized house. While the neighborhood had a couple of large apartment/condo buildings, the vast majority of the housing was single-family homes. Subdividing single-family homes seems like a nice way to create space for more people, while still leaving room for gardens and fruit trees. I don't know how these parts of Portland have managed to avoid the hideous condominium takeovers that have been happening throughout Seattle, but I hope Portland manages to continue avoiding them.
Speaking of gardens - in Portland, as I walked home each night, I took different routes, and passed by numerous community gardens full of all sorts of wonderful enterprises. There was something so nice about it all.
