[Durham INC] Link Between Walkability and Social Capital

[Reyn Bowman]

I believe they used the same methodology Barry - we have more than we think
once you include those around Northgate and The Streets at Southpoint, South
Square, up beteen Hope Valley/MLK, down around Fayetteville/MLK, Woodcroft
etc. We tend to think mostly of those surrounding Dowtown and Ninth
Street but the methology may go further.

I wasn 't meaning to indicate we'd reached any exaltation for walkability,
but we do sore very well on most areas of social capital...

The study and I cited though when complete will provide some good incentive
to help us think much differently about physical enviornment...

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 10:38 AM, <bragin at nc.rr.com> wrote:

> Reyn - I'd be really interested in how Prevention managed to place Durham
> in the top 37 walkable cities.
>
> This article in the Atlantic this week (
> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/12/americas-most-walkable-cities/67988/) does not show Durham in the top 40 walkable cities in the US, either by
> walkscore, or by percentage of above average walkable neighborhoods.
>
> Walkscore.com grades Durham as a 40, barely above the average NC
> municipality score of 38, and behind such localities as Henderson (44),
> Greeenville (46), and Elizabeth City (52). ( http://www.walkscore.com/NC )
>
> By contrast, California's average municipal score is 53 (
> http://www.walkscore.com/CA ), Idaho's is 48 ( http://www.walkscore.com/ID), New York's is 62 (
> http://www.walkscore.com/NY ), even Kentucky has a higher average score
> than NC, and the city most comparable in size to Durham, Lexington, scores a
> 49. (I should also note that walk scores in my neighborhood are skewed by
> Walkscore.com's insistence that a tavern, the Bugtussle Saloon, exists at
> the corner of Camden and Colonial. In fact, what's there is the Geer
> Cemetery.)
>
> There may be a couple of neighborhoods that are somewhat walkable in
> Durham, but outside of King's Red and White and, maybe, Los Primos, is there
> a grocery store in town that is not surrounded by a parking moat at least
> twice the footprint of the store itself? And the proposed widening of Alston
> Ave. will pretty much take away the last vestige of walkability for Los
> Primos. Even the new Durham Central Market proposed site plan features a
> parking lot bigger than the store itself, in part because the steering
> committee doesn't believe it can generate enough revenue without so much
> parking. Sadly, they're probably right. And let's not even get started on
> the number of intersections or street crossings within a mile of City Hall
> that lack the most basic pedestrian amenity, the crosswalk, or the near
> total lack of enforcement of crosswalk violations committed by drivers in
> Durham virtually every hour of every day.
>
> It's only 14 years since Durham voters approved a bond issue that was
> designed, in the city's words, "to construct a sidewalk along at least one
> side of every major thoroughfare" in town, and five years after the adoption
> of the Durham Walks! pedestrian plan, we're finally starting to see sidewalk
> construction in some of our core neighborhoods that were initially built
> without them. If only improving walkability was as high a priority for our
> government leaders as fixing potholes.
>
> Barry Ragin
>
> ---- Reyn Bowman <reynbowman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> =============
>
> http://reynblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/link-between-walkability-and-social.html
>
> --
> Reyn Bowman
> 2203 Shoreham St
> Durham, NC 27707
> 919-381-1497
> www.bullcitymutterings.com
>
>


-- 
Reyn Bowman
2203 Shoreham St
Durham, NC 27707
919-381-1497
www.bullcitymutterings.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://rtpnet.org/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20101217/4b93e258/attachment.html>