Last week Prevention magazine put out its list of the Best Walking Cities of 2007. We were a little bit surprised by the results:
- 1. Madison, Wisconsin
- 2. Austin, Texas
- 3. San Francisco, California
- 4. Charlotte, North Carolina
- 5. Seattle, Washington
- 6. Henderson, Nevada
- 7. San Diego, California
- 8. San Jose, California
- 9. Chandler, Arizona
- 10. Virginia Beach, Virginia
OK, so the top five cities are all plausible, even if we have a hard time believing it’s ever really warm enough in Madison, Wisconsin to make walking at all pleasurable. But some of the cities on the bottom half of the top 10 seem ever so slightly insane. For example, the last time we checked, San Diego was situated entirely in Southern California, perhaps the only part of the world where it feels as though owning a car is actually mandated by law. And sure, maybe some people do walk in San Jose, but does anyone really believe the percentage of the population of that city that walks to work is higher than New York or Washington, D.C.? And don’t even get me started on including Chandler, AZ. For those less familiar with the Phoenix suburbs, Chandler is situated just south of Mesa, and while it does contain the popular Paseo Trail, the notion of a car-free lifestyle in that desert community is even more absurd than in temperate San Diego.
Washington came in at number 33 — ahead of New York City (39) but behind Boston (31), which also feels backwards. Granted, being able to live car-free wasn’t actually the main criterion used by Prevention to compile this list. From the introduction to the list:
Here are some of the specific criteria we used to create the list. Each criteria was weighted as heavy, medium or light in terms of importance.
• % of pop that walks for exercise
• Use of mass transit
• Parks per square mile
• Points of interest per squre mile
• Avg winter/summer temperatures
• % of athletic shoe buyers
So, not so much a list of cities that one is able to live in and walk as a main mode of transportation, and more so a list of cities where people choose to walk for fun and exercise. Fine, though we’d be a lot more interested to see a list of places where living car-free is easy. We think D.C. would have to be pretty high up on that list. Just don’t tell Mayor Fenty that we didn’t stack up in a poll that compares athletic shoe sales. His father would be mighty sad to hear it.
