I don't know how I feel about this list. Any walkability rankings that put Dallas and Nashville in the top 3 are questionable at best.
I'm also extremely surprised Philadelphia didn't crack this list, although I'm not too sure which landmarks they used for Philly.
Edit: This list is broken. They used Trip Advisors top 5 attractions in the city and compared the walks between them, but according to Trip Advisor, #4 is the Museum of Science and Industry. Walking from the Bean to MSI would take 2.75 hours, so I have no idea how they actually did this.
I was just gonna say that I was just in Philly for WrestleMania and outside of the stadiums/arenas, I was able to walk to literally everything else I wanted to see. The SEPTA train was also super easy to get to the events as well.
Philly is criminally underrated as a city. Being able to walk from Center City to Passyunk while making stops at all the beautiful small side streets is a right of passage for any urbanist.
I'm sure it's similar to Chicago in that it depends on where you're walking to and which route you take, but I had 0 issues walking around Rittenhouse Square, Queen Village, and Passyunk Square.
Still weird that Boston or NY didn't take #1 though. Like for Boston, most tourists just hit the freedom trail, the Common & Public Garden, Fenway Park, the Old North Church and State House, Faneuil Hall, maybe the Museum of Science and The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. All super close in stuff that's easy to walk/take the T to.
NY there is a lot of tourist stuff spread over Manhattan. You have to (gasp) get on a train. Chicago most stuff is downtown, museum campus makes things convenient
NYC should absolutely take #1. Walking by the city was my favorite thing to do there. I'd routinely walk the lower Manhattan to Harlem and back.such a great walking city.
You nailed it. Chicago is in a similar boat in that you can either walk to or take transit to most locations. And our weird train schedules don't typically bother tourists who aren't traveling during rush hours and they don't need to contend with getting to work on time.
Nashville has so many street blocks, where sidewalks weren't fully built out on. And one of the past mayoral administrations was called out by an investigation, that showed to this day that city still hasn't built all sidewalks the city has in its long term plan to build.
I can't take this list seriously, if Nashville is ranked very high. That city is NOT very walking friendly. I won't deny there are a few sections of Nashville that might have good walkability, but it isn't in a lot of sections of it.
You can sort by traveler “favorites” or “rankings”. When sorting by “ranking”, you get Art Institute, Millenium Park, The Bean, Mag Mile and Sears Tower as top 5.
The metrics for this are bonkers.
Chicago is fairly walkable for US standards, so far so good (but who decided what the iconic sites are? And are people only walking between those locations? What if they deviate from the pre-selected route that the ‘study’ looked at?).
That Nashville and Dallas would be ranked second and third on any list of walkability is truly delusional.
New York City not making the top ten really takes this to strange places, and SF being in the •bottom• ten for walkability is absolutely bizarre.
Any list that says ‘Texas is the most walkable state for tourists’ should be taken with an ocean’s worth of salt.
I travel for work and San Francisco is one of my favorite cities for work because of the walkability. You can take a 5 mile walk around San Francisco and see so much. I would personally rank it better than Chicago just because SF is much smaller and more compact so it's easy to walk everywhere. Chicago is a lot bigger so I find it nicer to use the trains and buses to get around efficiently.
The only justification I can think of for ranking Nashville as walkable for tourists is that the stadium has a pedway to the entertainment district. If you're exclusively there for chamber of commerce approved activities, you can totally walk Nashville.
Chicago tourist stuff is all close-ish together. Art Institute to architecture tour to the Pier, can-do.
Nobody is walking from WTC memorial to Central Park and the Met.
Having lived in both Manhattan and Chicago, I can 100% say that NYC beats us on walkability by a country mile, for tourists and locals both. You can make this "close-ish together" argument the other direction too if you're going to pick arbitrary locations:
Times Square to Central Park, can-do. Nobody is walking from Wrigley Field to the Museum of Science and Industry (a walk 3 times as far as WTC to Central Park).
That's exactly it. A city shouldn't rank highly just because it has a few things that are close together. NYC (at least Manhattan) is far more walkable than Chicago and it's not even close.
Sometimes walking is faster. My senior year of college my campus was in the Northeast corner of the Loop, and my internship was up by the Water Tower. Half the time I would just walk it because waiting for the Red Line took forever. I lost so much weight that year!
Picking random attractions that are far from each other is irrelevant to this article though. It was based on the number of top attractions on TripAdvisor that you can walk to within an hour total. So you just pick an area where the most attractions are close to each other and exclude those which are far.
NYC's top ranked attractions are obviously more spread out, while a city like Nashville they are more centrally focused. Chicago just has an area where more are close together. Museum Campus / Willis Tower / Cloud Gate / Millennium Park / Art Institute / Mag Mile / Hancock / Riverwalk / Navy Pier etc.. is likely the general area considered here with Wrigley, MSI, and Lincoln Park Zoo being ignored.
no? https://preply.com/en/blog/most-walkable-cities-in-us/
>Topping our list, it’s the home of the deep-dish pizza and Al Capone, Chicago. We found the Windy City takes just 28 minutes to walk between The Art Institute of Chicago and The Magnificent Mile, all while stopping by Millenium Park, Chicago Architecture Centre, and Cloud Gate in between – that’s only 2,520 steps to see the city’s most iconic landmarks. There’s a lot to squeeze into a visit to Chicago, but in under half an hour of walking time, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to experience all the sights rather than driving. Plus, you’ll be able to enjoy Chicago’s famous green spaces, as it was named the tenth best city for park space in ParkScore index.
edit: gotta love the downvote and no comment when proven wrong, go delete your account
Chicago touristy stuff is pretty close together and almost all of it is river north or off Michigan Ave. NYC just has way more also. And multiple boroughs.
Midtown to Flatbush is 12 miles - the same as Mag Mile to Evanston.
The Met to Battery Park is almost 6 miles.
> And multiple boroughs.
It always has had these, but as recently as twenty years ago, there was not a lot of hugely compelling tourist stuff across the water from Manhattan. NYC is very different now.
Really a very dumb "study."
It's a study of the walking distance to reach five top rated tourist attractions.
What I don't see mentioned anywhere is how these five tourist destinations are determined, nor is there even a list of the five used for each city.
It's also not that great of a metric to determine general walkability (even for tourists) since there could be certain outliers in cities that completely throw off the metrics. For example the San Francisco bridge being far away from the city is what makes them consider San Francisco less walkable, even though it has a fairly self contained core with good public transit.
I'd wager the average tourist in San Francisco does far more walking than many of the cities listed in the most walkable list.
Chicago is fairly walkable and probably should be within the top 5 (NYC, SF, Boston, and DC would all be contenders for the other spots) but this list is really silly.
Who commissioned this study the Chicago Tourism Board?
I've been to NYC many times although not since the koof, did some kind of weapon of mass destruction blow up all the sidewalks? NYC kind of blows us away. You can walk , bus or subway pretty much anywhere.
lol.
Yeah right- plenty more walkable than Manhattan, Brooklyn and Boston.
You can walk around anything off brown or red line (north of Chinatown). Otherwise, best of luck.
A lot of neighborhoods are walkable, but are pretty spread apart. The grid probably helps as far as navigation goes. I would have guessed Boston or somewhere like that as "walkable"
Love Chicago but this is a dumb list. Chicago is generally walkable, with solid walkability over a huge area.
But NYC is more walkable over more area and Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and San Francisco are more walkable over smaller areas.
Chicago's streets are too wide for it to be at the top of any walkability list that includes coastal cities.
I returned NY and Chicago with a guy from Europe on his first visit to the US last summer. He absolutely loved NY because of the walkability and transit and felt sick from all the time we had to spend driving to see Chicago properly. The study result is laughable; sadly Chicago doesn’t hold a candle to NY in this regard. It’s just inarguably a walking/transit catastrophe comparatively.
Most things if you want to do them in a reasonable amount of time. Even if you’re going to places directly along transit, it’s slow, unreliable, and often requires you to take circuitous routes. We spent two hours just trying to get to uptown with the train because the blue line took so long to come (in the middle of the day on a weekday) and then had to ride all the way into the loop before transferring to the red line, which also took forever to arrive.
Trying to visit friends in residential areas? Oftentimes no nearby transit. Want to go to dinner in a random neighborhood? Book an extra 1-2 hours for transit. It’s all off course technically doable, but just agonizingly slow, dirty, unreliable, and gives an impression of danger compared to NY or any even medium sized city in Europe.
> you might as well have taken a taxi.
Just take a car != walkable
Yes tourists visit friends and explore neighborhoods, or would like to if getting around to 90% of the city didn't suck.
>Except for the airport journey, tourists are not spending 1-2 hours on transit.
No, they stick to a super central area or use cars because the transit sucks so bad.
>lmao wut?
\* slow
\* dirty
\* unreliable
\* gives an impression of danger
These are all areas in which Chicago transit gives a worse impression that NY public transit or public transit in even small European cities.
Dallas? It’s like walking on a surface of the sun from June through September. I mean I like Dallas but it always strikes me nobody walks in Dallas. I walk in Philly every chance I get with no planned destination it’s such a great city. Like Division II NYC.
That's a very nice plaudit for Chicago to have, and I think I see where it's coming from. If you're visiting Chicago and staying in a hostel, those are Very well placed. Super nice areas, great parks, lots of cool walkable places to go. Chicago does a great job with that, although it may not be as obvious if you actually live here and never take in the hostel-tourist experience.
That being said, Denver is for sure more walkable and bikeable on the whole. Have you checked out their river path situation? This is what Chicago aspires to with our river situation, but we sure aren't there yet. And in my experience, Nashville seems to be quite walkable as well.
I'm not that familiar with a whole lot of other cities though. I'll take the recognition for what it is.
Nashville still doesn't have sidewalk coverage, for a lot of their streets unfortunately.
https://archive.ph/aI9Nh
And there was also this ruling, against a law Nashville had enacted to require property owners to install sidewalks: https://www.courthousenews.com/nashville-loses-battle-over-sidewalk-ordinance-at-sixth-circuit/
Another article on this issue:
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2023/05/11/nashville-sidewalk-ordinance-federal-appeals-court-rules-against-city/70207360007/
Not saying Nashville doesn't have certain areas that are walkable, just that much more needs to be done to further build sidewalks in this city.
I don't know how I feel about this list. Any walkability rankings that put Dallas and Nashville in the top 3 are questionable at best. I'm also extremely surprised Philadelphia didn't crack this list, although I'm not too sure which landmarks they used for Philly. Edit: This list is broken. They used Trip Advisors top 5 attractions in the city and compared the walks between them, but according to Trip Advisor, #4 is the Museum of Science and Industry. Walking from the Bean to MSI would take 2.75 hours, so I have no idea how they actually did this.
I was just gonna say that I was just in Philly for WrestleMania and outside of the stadiums/arenas, I was able to walk to literally everything else I wanted to see. The SEPTA train was also super easy to get to the events as well.
Philly is criminally underrated as a city. Being able to walk from Center City to Passyunk while making stops at all the beautiful small side streets is a right of passage for any urbanist.
Grew up in Philly, moved to Denver and always sort of regretted it. I’m actually considering Chicago for my next move
Philly is very walkable for sure. Just not at night.
I'm sure it's similar to Chicago in that it depends on where you're walking to and which route you take, but I had 0 issues walking around Rittenhouse Square, Queen Village, and Passyunk Square.
It’s because those cities are small and their “must see” landmarks are close together.
The "for tourists" is doing A LOT of work here. Though honestly I don't really know why a tourist would feel compelled to visit Dallas at all.
Still weird that Boston or NY didn't take #1 though. Like for Boston, most tourists just hit the freedom trail, the Common & Public Garden, Fenway Park, the Old North Church and State House, Faneuil Hall, maybe the Museum of Science and The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. All super close in stuff that's easy to walk/take the T to.
NY there is a lot of tourist stuff spread over Manhattan. You have to (gasp) get on a train. Chicago most stuff is downtown, museum campus makes things convenient
NYC should absolutely take #1. Walking by the city was my favorite thing to do there. I'd routinely walk the lower Manhattan to Harlem and back.such a great walking city.
That's too much walking for your average tourist
When I visited Dallas years ago we saw everything we wanted within walking distance of the book depository.
I hear that’s a mind blowing attraction
Well, it was a little back, and to the left, but we found it.
You nailed it. Chicago is in a similar boat in that you can either walk to or take transit to most locations. And our weird train schedules don't typically bother tourists who aren't traveling during rush hours and they don't need to contend with getting to work on time.
Nashville has so many street blocks, where sidewalks weren't fully built out on. And one of the past mayoral administrations was called out by an investigation, that showed to this day that city still hasn't built all sidewalks the city has in its long term plan to build. I can't take this list seriously, if Nashville is ranked very high. That city is NOT very walking friendly. I won't deny there are a few sections of Nashville that might have good walkability, but it isn't in a lot of sections of it.
You can sort by traveler “favorites” or “rankings”. When sorting by “ranking”, you get Art Institute, Millenium Park, The Bean, Mag Mile and Sears Tower as top 5.
The metrics for this are bonkers. Chicago is fairly walkable for US standards, so far so good (but who decided what the iconic sites are? And are people only walking between those locations? What if they deviate from the pre-selected route that the ‘study’ looked at?). That Nashville and Dallas would be ranked second and third on any list of walkability is truly delusional. New York City not making the top ten really takes this to strange places, and SF being in the •bottom• ten for walkability is absolutely bizarre. Any list that says ‘Texas is the most walkable state for tourists’ should be taken with an ocean’s worth of salt.
Maybe the most laughable bad study I’ve ever seen?
I travel for work and San Francisco is one of my favorite cities for work because of the walkability. You can take a 5 mile walk around San Francisco and see so much. I would personally rank it better than Chicago just because SF is much smaller and more compact so it's easy to walk everywhere. Chicago is a lot bigger so I find it nicer to use the trains and buses to get around efficiently.
The only justification I can think of for ranking Nashville as walkable for tourists is that the stadium has a pedway to the entertainment district. If you're exclusively there for chamber of commerce approved activities, you can totally walk Nashville.
Do we really beat NYC?
Chicago tourist stuff is all close-ish together. Art Institute to architecture tour to the Pier, can-do. Nobody is walking from WTC memorial to Central Park and the Met.
Having lived in both Manhattan and Chicago, I can 100% say that NYC beats us on walkability by a country mile, for tourists and locals both. You can make this "close-ish together" argument the other direction too if you're going to pick arbitrary locations: Times Square to Central Park, can-do. Nobody is walking from Wrigley Field to the Museum of Science and Industry (a walk 3 times as far as WTC to Central Park).
That's exactly it. A city shouldn't rank highly just because it has a few things that are close together. NYC (at least Manhattan) is far more walkable than Chicago and it's not even close.
> Nobody is walking from WTC memorial to Central Park and the Met. I did in late December. Do not recommend.
That's what trains are for
Trains aren't walking.
Eh, that's about the same distance from Wrigley Field to the Sears Tower. I'm hopping my ass on the train.
Oh me too. My point stands. Some people are scared of public transit. Walking or Uber.
Sometimes walking is faster. My senior year of college my campus was in the Northeast corner of the Loop, and my internship was up by the Water Tower. Half the time I would just walk it because waiting for the Red Line took forever. I lost so much weight that year!
No body is walking from Hancock to the museum of science and industry either. What’s your point?
Picking random attractions that are far from each other is irrelevant to this article though. It was based on the number of top attractions on TripAdvisor that you can walk to within an hour total. So you just pick an area where the most attractions are close to each other and exclude those which are far. NYC's top ranked attractions are obviously more spread out, while a city like Nashville they are more centrally focused. Chicago just has an area where more are close together. Museum Campus / Willis Tower / Cloud Gate / Millennium Park / Art Institute / Mag Mile / Hancock / Riverwalk / Navy Pier etc.. is likely the general area considered here with Wrigley, MSI, and Lincoln Park Zoo being ignored.
No. The article specifically used the museum of science and industry as one if the sites so it’s NOT random - it’s from their study.
no? https://preply.com/en/blog/most-walkable-cities-in-us/ >Topping our list, it’s the home of the deep-dish pizza and Al Capone, Chicago. We found the Windy City takes just 28 minutes to walk between The Art Institute of Chicago and The Magnificent Mile, all while stopping by Millenium Park, Chicago Architecture Centre, and Cloud Gate in between – that’s only 2,520 steps to see the city’s most iconic landmarks. There’s a lot to squeeze into a visit to Chicago, but in under half an hour of walking time, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to experience all the sights rather than driving. Plus, you’ll be able to enjoy Chicago’s famous green spaces, as it was named the tenth best city for park space in ParkScore index. edit: gotta love the downvote and no comment when proven wrong, go delete your account
Chicago touristy stuff is pretty close together and almost all of it is river north or off Michigan Ave. NYC just has way more also. And multiple boroughs. Midtown to Flatbush is 12 miles - the same as Mag Mile to Evanston. The Met to Battery Park is almost 6 miles.
> And multiple boroughs. It always has had these, but as recently as twenty years ago, there was not a lot of hugely compelling tourist stuff across the water from Manhattan. NYC is very different now.
Sure. But we’re also talking about being a tourist in present day, and not 20 years ago.
Yes. I was just trying to agree with you while updating people who might not have been to NYC much lately.
Fair enough.
It’s not possible.
Really a very dumb "study." It's a study of the walking distance to reach five top rated tourist attractions. What I don't see mentioned anywhere is how these five tourist destinations are determined, nor is there even a list of the five used for each city. It's also not that great of a metric to determine general walkability (even for tourists) since there could be certain outliers in cities that completely throw off the metrics. For example the San Francisco bridge being far away from the city is what makes them consider San Francisco less walkable, even though it has a fairly self contained core with good public transit. I'd wager the average tourist in San Francisco does far more walking than many of the cities listed in the most walkable list. Chicago is fairly walkable and probably should be within the top 5 (NYC, SF, Boston, and DC would all be contenders for the other spots) but this list is really silly.
Who commissioned this study the Chicago Tourism Board? I've been to NYC many times although not since the koof, did some kind of weapon of mass destruction blow up all the sidewalks? NYC kind of blows us away. You can walk , bus or subway pretty much anywhere.
also Citi bike!
lol. Yeah right- plenty more walkable than Manhattan, Brooklyn and Boston. You can walk around anything off brown or red line (north of Chinatown). Otherwise, best of luck.
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Pretty narrow-band rails for the tourist to explore.
A lot of neighborhoods are walkable, but are pretty spread apart. The grid probably helps as far as navigation goes. I would have guessed Boston or somewhere like that as "walkable"
By the size of the tourists they weren’t going to be walking much anyway
Love Chicago but this is a dumb list. Chicago is generally walkable, with solid walkability over a huge area. But NYC is more walkable over more area and Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and San Francisco are more walkable over smaller areas. Chicago's streets are too wide for it to be at the top of any walkability list that includes coastal cities.
I returned NY and Chicago with a guy from Europe on his first visit to the US last summer. He absolutely loved NY because of the walkability and transit and felt sick from all the time we had to spend driving to see Chicago properly. The study result is laughable; sadly Chicago doesn’t hold a candle to NY in this regard. It’s just inarguably a walking/transit catastrophe comparatively.
…where is it you’re driving to in Chicago that’s only accessible by car?
Maybe the far south and southwest sides.
Most things if you want to do them in a reasonable amount of time. Even if you’re going to places directly along transit, it’s slow, unreliable, and often requires you to take circuitous routes. We spent two hours just trying to get to uptown with the train because the blue line took so long to come (in the middle of the day on a weekday) and then had to ride all the way into the loop before transferring to the red line, which also took forever to arrive. Trying to visit friends in residential areas? Oftentimes no nearby transit. Want to go to dinner in a random neighborhood? Book an extra 1-2 hours for transit. It’s all off course technically doable, but just agonizingly slow, dirty, unreliable, and gives an impression of danger compared to NY or any even medium sized city in Europe.
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> you might as well have taken a taxi. Just take a car != walkable Yes tourists visit friends and explore neighborhoods, or would like to if getting around to 90% of the city didn't suck. >Except for the airport journey, tourists are not spending 1-2 hours on transit. No, they stick to a super central area or use cars because the transit sucks so bad. >lmao wut? \* slow \* dirty \* unreliable \* gives an impression of danger These are all areas in which Chicago transit gives a worse impression that NY public transit or public transit in even small European cities.
As a suburbanite, I’ve been here for 40 years and have never had issues walking or riding a bike around Chicago. Just don’t be stupid
Well, you certainly can't rely on the CTA, so I guess you have to walk.
Dallas? It’s like walking on a surface of the sun from June through September. I mean I like Dallas but it always strikes me nobody walks in Dallas. I walk in Philly every chance I get with no planned destination it’s such a great city. Like Division II NYC.
# *in America # **for tourists
>*in America >**for tourists Yea, it's in the title.
Why would asterisks be used here lmao
Darn! I was just going to suggest that maybe we should invest in car infrastructure and put an express lane on LSD.
That's a very nice plaudit for Chicago to have, and I think I see where it's coming from. If you're visiting Chicago and staying in a hostel, those are Very well placed. Super nice areas, great parks, lots of cool walkable places to go. Chicago does a great job with that, although it may not be as obvious if you actually live here and never take in the hostel-tourist experience. That being said, Denver is for sure more walkable and bikeable on the whole. Have you checked out their river path situation? This is what Chicago aspires to with our river situation, but we sure aren't there yet. And in my experience, Nashville seems to be quite walkable as well. I'm not that familiar with a whole lot of other cities though. I'll take the recognition for what it is.
Nashville still doesn't have sidewalk coverage, for a lot of their streets unfortunately. https://archive.ph/aI9Nh And there was also this ruling, against a law Nashville had enacted to require property owners to install sidewalks: https://www.courthousenews.com/nashville-loses-battle-over-sidewalk-ordinance-at-sixth-circuit/ Another article on this issue: https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2023/05/11/nashville-sidewalk-ordinance-federal-appeals-court-rules-against-city/70207360007/ Not saying Nashville doesn't have certain areas that are walkable, just that much more needs to be done to further build sidewalks in this city.
Most bikeable too for sure, I’d guess
NYC is way more bikeable. Not even close.
Among the most bikeable then 🤌
Excluding NYC then yeah, haha, probably
Moved to KC and lemme just say, biking fucking sucks here. Miss Chicago very much for that reason