Eat it, Portland! San Francisco Most "Walkable" City
Ocean Beach. Now, with less oil. Footprints photo courtesy of Jen Maiser. See the entire mise-en-scene here
You urban professionals, you certainly like your city hiking. Comes this morning the Washington D.C.-based Brookings Institute, which scoured thirty big U.S. cities looking for "walkable urban places." Brookings didn't consider a few factors that groups like Walk SF would care about. Like pedestrian safety, for example. Regardless, San Francisco ranks #3 in the U.S. and #1 on the west coast for "walkability". Just ahead of Portland, Oregon
Everybody get Footloose and Fancy Free: A Field Survey of Walkable Urban Places in the Top 30 U.S. Metropolitan Areas here in .pdf.
But why are we talking about Portland? And what about the claim we are the most walkable city in the entire U.S.? See you after the jump.
Here's what you do. You take a look another recent walking study here (or maybe here is better), then combine the rankings with the new Brookings study. Simply divide by two and San Francisco comes out on top. Bingo bango.
And Portland? Talk to enough people in San Francisco city government and others in local NGOs and you'll hear about how we compare with Stumptown on this or that issue. America's Greenest City, that kind of thing. It's a friendly rivalry. Everybody loves Portland, Ore., of course.
And, just for fun, check out the typos from the East Coasties at Brookings when they listed Regional Walkable Urban Places:
"Downtown Adjacent: South of Market; Marina District; Hob Hill, Mission District"
"Suburban Town Center: Palo Alto; Menlo Park; San Mateo, Emoryville, Walnut Creek"
Oh well. See you out there at those "walkable urban places"!