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Comment by yarnton99 | Hacker News Reader

Just trying to find some positive examples of American small towns. As a European, if I were to relocate to the US, where would I find strong town communities?

I know for example Ithaca, NY, might qualify. Other examples in the South, Midwest, etc?

Also stroads are not just an American problem. I have found horrible stroads in places where you would never expect them such as Oxford or Copenhagen.

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As you say, there are plenty in the Northeastern United States. I think the primary historical factors that separates cohesive, walkable towns in the US from more stereotypical American development are the city having been established and built out prior to the 20th century (so there was some initial plan or development that predates cars), and the community either being wealthy enough or remote enough to avoid the pull of cookie-cutter post-war redevelopment. Of the places I’m familiar with, I’d call out Delaware and Montgomery County, PA, much of the Hudson Valley in New York (Hudson, Beacon, Newburgh, …). Outside of the northeast, there are remote locations (i.e. outside of commuting distance from a major city) in the southwest that have clearly defined and stroad-less cores. I’m thinking specifically of Taos County, NM and much of southwestern CO.

Ithaca is pushing into city territory (I think it has over 80k residents now), and if we’re going to count it, I’d also nominate small southeastern cities such as Savannah, Richmond, and St Augustine.

As someone who grew up in the Northeast, I feel like there aren't very many walkable towns unless you're essentially in the Boston or NYC suburbs. So many towns in upstate NY, MA, and PA had their main streets turned into major thoroughfares for cars... which made them completely unwalkable and miserable to live near, eventually killing the town. Most of my relatives who live near "cute" downtown strips can't even walk to them because their towns haven't bothered to build sidewalks even in the moderately dense parts of town.

> Of the places I’m familiar with, I’d call out Delaware and Montgomery County, PA

Maybe certain select towns within those areas, but most of the area within those counties is not "Strong". Particularly where I grew up in Montgomery County, there are potable water issues that the municipalities refuse to address because the costs are too high.

As a European, Ithaca does not look very walkable to me, even though it's a pretty small city. Fewer stroads is good, of course. But unless you live in Ithaca's very small city core — which is not dense — then you find yourself in typical American suburban sprawl, and Ithaca's only form of public transit is the city bus.

Zoning remains one of the biggest problems in American city planning. The lack of mixed zoning means you end up with a rigid segregation of urban areas, residential areas, and semi-industrial "big-box store stroad hell" areas. What's often missed in discussions about urban density is that in Europe, living in a residential area often means you still have access to amenities by walking, which is almost never true in the US.

This stroad seems completely alien to Dutch traffic, though. For a couple of decades now, Dutch traffic design has revolved around designating every street or road as one of three categories, two of which are two different types of Strong Town-style roads, and the third is a classic street, with slow traffic and all.

Not all Dutch streets fit this pattern perfectly, but even a century before Netherland came up with this explicit definition, we already had a good solution for a main thoroughfare with shops or homes: ventwegen. The main road still has as few access points as possible, but on both sides of it is a slow street for bikes and car-access to houses and shops. At main intersections you can switch from the main road to the ventweg, and this solution might actually be a good fit if you quickly want to fix these stroads without waiting for them to die a natural death.

Note sure I agree. I can think of a quite a few places that are essentially a stroad. Most feel like they were build between the 60s and the 90s.

Could be. Do you have a good example?

I do know a few places that aren't entirely clear about whether they're a road or a street. None of them anywhere near as extreme as those American stroads, but Amsterdam definitely has a couple of important connecting roads (especially around the centrum ring; Stadhouderskade etc) that's explicitly intended as a main thoroughfare for cars to reach different parts of the city, but in some places still has bikes on the road, houses and shops, etc.

It's not pretending to be a highway or anything like that, and certainly in the more complex parts, it's just a single lane in each direction, but it's definitely intended to be one of the primary connector roads in the city center, and a valid route if you want to go from the west side of the city to the east side.

Most of the larger, older cities will have neighborhoods that are walkable, though the city as a whole might fail to meet expectations. New York, Boston, Washington DC and Baltimore come to mind. But, they tend to be very expensive places to live (at least in the nicer areas).

Small and medium sized college towns (<100,000 residents, maybe) usually fit the bill as well. But, have the downside of many seasonal tenants and the other things you'd expect with a heavily young-adult-oriented area. But, even in these, you sometimes find you need to drive to a strip mall for big grocery runs - America doesn't really do small neighborhood markets and the price of real estate often drives grocery stores to the outskirts of town.

Look for cities with universities and ~ 250k population.

You probably want to look for towns pushing their "historic" qualities, at least in the Northeast, and live in/near the historic area. I live in Carlisle, PA, which has the downtown (about 3x3 blocks) designated as a historic district. The high street is one lane each way, with a center turn lane and parallel parking. Lots of crosswalks. No strip malls/box stores until you get about a mile away from the square.

There's a fair amount of car traffic, because that high street (and the main cross street) are both designated highways, but there's always a lot of foot traffic. Wide sidewalks and no parking lots generally. The surrounding neighborhoods in most directions keep the walkable nature; mostly rowhomes (some converted to student apartments), a university, very few street-facing garages or sidewalk-crossing driveways.

Mountain towns necessarily avoid the stroad/megalopolis layouts.

There is this interesting website called walkscore.com which uses afaiu google maps data to find distances along roads and such from a selected point to basic amenities, then it calculates a score for driving, walking, and biking. It's a little difficult to find on that website but on some page there is a heatmap of precalculated walkability scores overlaying google maps. If you just scan around on that thing you may get an idea about the walkability of various US cities. That should be correlated with the stroadedness / strongtownedness of those cities

I really liked Bishop, CA. I only stayed like 2 days there, but it was an interesting town.

I've heard that some Colorado towns have the same style and are lovely to live in. I was supposed to have a 6 weeks stay around Louisiana/Texas last year and Colorado + Midwest was supposed to be this year, but plans changed, so i cannot confirm if this is true.

Assuming you're looking for quaint walkable towns (and not stressing over the fact that they're surrounded by miles of car-dependent suburbs and rural areas), you can find them anywhere and everywhere. Most small/medium sized towns on the east coast have a historic/old town that is like this, for example in Virginia state:

Culpeper, VA [0] (passenger railroad station right in downtown that connects to all the big cities on the east coast)

Warrenton, VA [1] (Ridiculously good downtown restaurant scene, whenever I go there there always seems to be some festival or market happening)

Staunton, VA [2] (Beautiful area surrounded by some of the largest tracts of public land in the eastern US)

Fredericksburg, VA [3] (tons of interesting history here)

Charlottesville, VA [4] (look at that pedestrian-only shopping street a block away!)

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4731207,-77.9962447,3a,75y,1...

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@38.7131072,-77.7940715,3a,60y,2...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@38.1496218,-79.0715993,3a,75y,1...

[3] https://www.google.com/maps/@38.3031279,-77.460567,3a,75y,16...

[4] https://www.google.com/maps/@38.031349,-78.4795003,3a,60y,20...

Ojai in California was nice, though quite small at 8k population. As a child comment suggested, mountains as a constraint might help there. The Wikipedia page notes: "Chain stores are prohibited by city ordinance to encourage local small business development and keep the town unique."

Using Ithaca, NY as a qualifier perhaps Ann Arbor or Madison are good examples.

All of which are college towns to some degree. (Or at least have large universities.)

There are a fair number of smaller cities in the Northeast US with walkable cores. I worked in downtown Nashua for about eight years at one point though I didn't go in all the time. A number of those cores are even rather gentrified with nice restaurants, a park or two, newer housing, and so forth.

Here's the thing though. It's a fairly consistent pattern. The gentrified area is usually pretty small. Things are distinctly less nice when you get out of that area. And you probably need to get in a car to do anything beyond the most basic shopping.

Beyond the Northeast, somewhere like Raleigh NC is the same pattern.

Where have you seen stroads in Oxford?

There's tons of places similar to Ithaca all around the country

Check out Savannah Georgia

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