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Comment by dzogchen | Hacker News Reader

This list is a complete joke, evidenced by the fact that they use a definition of livibility that puts cities that are barely walkable in the top 10.

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These listicles always suck because by design they make huge assumptions about priorities. Including some simple weight sliders would make these way more useful, even if the methodology was a little shaky (it always is).

I laughed when I saw the high score awarded to Los Angeles.

While walkability should be a factor, less walkable cities could be better than more walkable cities due to other factors that impact the standard of living - opportunities, public transit, housing, etc.

If city has good public transport system then it also has pretty good walkability as people have to have a way to get to public transport stops/stations.

Agreed. A list that has Calgary tied as third best city? Sorry Calgary but.. no. Miserably cold, in the middle of nowhere, nothing to do but freeze. Something wrong with the criteria for this list.

Whether or not a city is "walkable," is not necessarily an improvement upon livability.

In areas of Chicago and Baltimore, for example, the streets are "walkable," however the frequent violent & property crimes that take place in these areas make a casual stroll down the block an unsafe proposition.

I grew up in Harlem during the time it was emerging out of the 1980s crack epidemic. As a child, the streets were easy to walk on and crime did not impact this for me in any real way. Just a few years prior, though, this was definitely not the case. And even today, as "walkability" improvements have been made in Harlem, the streets are quite obviously less walker-friendly, since walking down the street exposes you to a non-insignificant risk of being a random psychopath's next unwitting victim.

My suspicion here is that you have some sort of binary thought process surrounding cars in cities. The fact is that cities are not as livable in general. Any solution involving more or better walking capacity is a temporary fix at best. In actuality, what you need is a very solid city planner who is able to anticipate and respond to cultural trends adequately. Cities need to be able to balance the needs of various transit options, such that they don't compound peoples' other problems that come from living in cities: crime, cleanliness, affordability, etc.

"Walkability" on things like this doesn't mean that there are sidewalks you can take a stroll down, it means that essential and desireable services (like grocery stores and restaurants) are within walking distance of most residences, and there's transit service that makes up for what lacks.

If it was just about "can you go for a walk" twisty-turny suburbs would get the highest imaginable walkability score, because you can get lost in those for hours and never see a car. Or any other useful destination, for that matter.

Most “walkability” scores either directly or indirectly account for crime. For instance, residents rate walkability and are specifically asked to consider crime and safety. Or, conversely, walkability is measured based on the number of actual walkers and the number of walk-accessible amenities in a given area.

High crime areas would naturally have fewer walkers and fewer amenities.

I can’t speak to Baltimore, but in Chicago, crime and scarcity of amenities go hand-in-hand. I can’t think of a single pedestrian-focused area that has both amenities and a significant crime problem (one must understand that Chicago crime is not nearly as prevalent or evenly dispersed as the media and non-Chicagoans enjoy imagining).

The problem in your example is crime, not walkability.

Yes, let's just pretend these things are not intrinsically linked by the hip. I suppose it's helpful to know how easy it is to run away from your assailant isn't it? In a less walkable neighborhood that attacker might be able to get more than just a few punches on you.

Walkability and crime go hand in hand. If crime is high on a street, people will not want to walk on that street. Because of this, shops will close, and any reasonable walkability score will drastically go down. You cannot have high walkability and high crime. They are intrinsically linked.

If your goal is reducing crime, increasing walkability is an excellent way of achieving that. The more walkable areas are, the more regular people will be walking in that area. The more regular people that are walking in an area, the safer it is. Walkable areas are also much easier to police and keep safe since they are naturally much more dense and less spread out, so there is vastly less surface area to cover.

Go look up the walkability score for any crime-heavy Brooklyn neighborhood [0] and you will see quite plainly that you are wrong. You are a lot more likely to be sucker-punched by a homeless psychopath on that block than you are to have any issues with walking.

Clearly, there is no linkage between walkability scores and crime.

[0] https://www.walkscore.com/score/1405-pacific-st-brooklyn-ny-...

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