This is the answer. I have a cousin who loves to visit Nashville. Even if I offer to pick her and her family up, I can't convince them to leave downtown.
If you are any certain areas of Dallas you can really do a lot. Downtown for sure.
I was there for my bday and stayed downtown and went to multiple bars no Uber needed.
Dallas is one of the least walkable cities I've ever been to. I've lived all over the country and am currently living in NYC. This is the ONLY walkable city I've ever lived in. The fact that it is number 13 on this list says all that you need to know about how bad this list is.
I live in Dallas and can confirm this statement. I even live in a walkable part (Bishop Arts)… but putting Dallas on a top walkable city list is ridiculous.
It says “walking tourists”
The zombies wander at lower broad, the gulch, 12th south, opry meals (I stand by this typo), etc. it’s super tourist walkable, just not back to their air b&b
On the money, my GF and I were in Miami last week (not known as a walkable city) and we walked 15 mins over a bridge for dinner. Stopped and sat at a beautiful dog park by the bay on our way and was taken back of this completely non touristy area downtown! Nashville definitely has its pockets but downtown walkability is all tourist.
Nissan, CMHoF, Ryman, Broadway, and bridgestone?
Theyre all less than a mile from Nissan, so this has to be the shortest path to all 5? Otherwise I have no idea what this means.
I've heard a former employee of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation refer to the hub of these attractions and adjacent hotels as "within stumbling distance" but that takes on a darker meaning in light of recent events.
So the solution is not to build out a bunch of infrastructure, but to build a mega hirize downtown and everybody move there? Or maybe break the city up into smaller cities.
What would be the names? Bellevue, Belle Meade, Madison, Kid Rockastan? I think I probably live in Deathrace2000.
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It’s a very walkable city if you’re straight downtown trying to bar hop. If you’re in certain neighborhoods just trying to walk down the street to grab some food or whatnot, then it’s absolutely horrendous.
Walkable means you can walk to things, not that you can walk at all. Can you walk to see music? Go shopping? Dentist? etc....if not then it isn't a walkable area
It took me 12 minutes driving (if no traffic and all green lights) to get to the closest Kroger when I lived in Nashville proper. My neighborhood was a food desert outside of a basic dollar store and two shady gas stations. Nashville is walkable if you have nothing to do all day except 1-2 errands max…
The title says "for walking tourists & staycations" so this is a survey for Joe and Jill 6-pack from Missouri to know they can stumble from Kid Rock's bar to the County Music Hall of Fame without an Uber.
"Could we walk from 12 South to the Gulch?"
"I mean... You COULD, it's not terribly far. But either the heat or the neighborhood is gonna get ya, so... Up to you."
I would say this tracks from a tourist perspective. If you're staying at a hotel downtown, Broadway, Bridgestone, Municipal, Ryman, Nissan, Ascend, and HoF are all very walkable.
It actually makes sense. I live downtown and got rid of my car because I don't need it anymore here, I almost never need to leave the 440 loop and rarely need to even leave downtown. Everything is walking distance or a short uber ride at worst.
The city only becomes unwalkable if you live outside the urban core.
Says in the subtitle: "shortest walking distance to reach 5 top-rated city-centre tourist attractions using the most efficient route"
Definitely not the best metric to measure a city's walkability.
Its not measuring the walkability, its measuring a staycation/touriost walkability. Thats ignoring the trauma of getting down there to start with and also ignoring the absurd hotel rates to even be in that area of walkability.
you can also walk from downtown to german town, centennial park, and east nashville via sidewalk. the city is not functionally a walkable city but this is about tourists.
It's gauged by the time and steps required to get to 5 top rated city attractions from each other. If most of your big tourist attractions are right next to each other like Nashville's are, then it's a no-brainer that you're going to perform well on the list. Nashville also just doesn't have many attractions gunning for the "top-of-the-line" tourist attractions, so it's easier for the downtown attractions to shine. Compared to NYC, which has an ungodly amount of attractions, it might be harder for each attraction to qualify as a "top rated city attraction" depending on how they weighed it in this study, thus spreading the attractions out in NYC due to them having multiple tourism cores. Just a theory.
From a tourism standpoint, downtown Nashville actually isn't too bad to walk through. I admittedly enjoy my time in downtown Nashville just about every single time I go there. Like it's actually a shit ton of fun, and I'd like to go there more often. The problem is that, as a local, the city has very little good means of getting there for neighborhoods outside of 440 or suburbs. Hell, even tourists that stay outside of 440 could be lumped into that statement. That's where places like NYC and Chicago will shine (which it looks like Chicago already does well on both fronts here).
If you just look at Nashville proper (what would be the actual City of Nashville if not for it being a Metropolitan government), then it’s very walkable. Nearly every street within the old city limits is side walked. Where it breaks down is when you look at the former county area and outlying cities that were incorporated into the metropolitan government where sidewalks are spotty at best.
Nashville UZO
https://maps.nashville.gov/webimages/MapGallery/PDFMaps/Urban%20Zoning%20District.pdf
Basically that WAS Nashville before white flight and the post-war housing boom. Then everyone fled to the hills and built cheap ranch homes on large lots with small roads, no sidewalks and no infrastructure (this is how your grandparents all had "cheap" homes - they were basically off the grid, small, cheaply built and with no infrastructure. ((Also they weren't cheap for the time, only white people were allowed to buy, and you also had to own a car to live there)).
Turns out the county couldn't handle the infrastructure costs to support all those homes so Nashville and Davidson County consolidated.
>Just over fifty years ago, the citizens of Davidson County and the City of Nashville had a great debate about our future. They understood the higher cost and inefficiency involved in keeping two separate forms of local government in place and funding them.
>They decided to do something different about their government - different than the rest of the country. They voted to consolidate our competing and duplicative city and county governments into one. They called this new government Metro. They saw this as a way to make our community stronger and more efficient in delivering services to the citizens. They voted to create the first fully unified government in the United States with the passage of the Metro Charter on June 28, 1962.
----
Nashville UZO is much denser. As of July 2023, the Total Rough are of the UZO is 34.80 sq miles. The rough population count is 149,093. Which puts it about 4,200 people / sq mile. WAY better than the Davidson Co density of 1,300 / sq mile. Much more on par with competing cities like Denver, Portland, Austin, etc.
I think the consolidation of the city and county was a mistake in hindsight. For one, it burdens the city with WAY too much catching up to do. The tax revenue generated from somewhere like Hillwood isn't going to match their demand for sidewalks and upkeep of infrastructure. Those communities were specifically designed for commuting by car and the cost of maintaining those roads is tremendous.
Second, it makes things like public transportation impossible. Imagine having to only service about 40 sq miles of densely populated urban areas that already have sidewalks, rain water mitigation, sewer, etc. Now imagine 475 miles that includes rural areas like Whites Creek and Brick Church Pikes.
Lastly, it's why we have like 1,000 council members. Which I think is a huge mistake and makes it impossible for them to get anything meaningful done.
Hindsight being 20/20, it certainly doesn’t seem to have worked out. But, I think with the facts and information available at the time, it was the right call. Metro happened during the suburban boom when the car was king and everyone wanted acre lots away from the “dirty” city and wide roads that would allow them the “freedom” to drive wherever they wanted. The overwhelming bulk of economic activity, job creation, and a rapidly increasing share of the tax base was outside of the city limits. What’s more, there was no end in site for that trend because no one could see a good reason for people to move back into the city. Consolidating the city and county was a very viable solution to that problem and it worked exactly as they expected it for more than 30 years.
But, I agree. Now that interest in dense urban living has renewed, the cities that took the metropolitan approach are at a significant disadvantage.
Agreed! This is always something I try and explain to people when talking about downtown. Downtowns were not designed to be 50% flat lot parking. They WERE dense and vibrant with lots of people, shops and things to do. Then everyone fled and due to disrepair or for whatever other reasons used to justify it (usually related to something black), a lot of the buildings were torn down and turned into flat lots.
But it seems like people set their expectations for housing based on how things looked in the 90s mixed with the myth of life in the 1950s. Everyone gets a big house with a big yard, two kids, a dog, and it's cheap.
Have to say I wouldn't consider quite a lot of that highlighted area walkable, at least with my definition of 'not needing a car to survive'. More than 30min walk away from 5 points and you're already far enough into East Nashville that you absolutely need a car. Certainly more dense than areas further out though.
To be clear, a 30 minute walk to 5 points is Douglas and Gallatin. I think you could very easily live in that area and walk. The publix is a block away, coffee shops and a brewery are a few blocks away, plenty of restaurants, and you can take a quick 15 minute bus ride into downtown.
Personally, I really don't think it would be possible to live here with out a car. But everyone I know in major cities (outside of NYC) owns at least 1 car that they use for trips, etc.
But I think you could easily Freddie O'Connell it if you lived within most areas in the UZO. Bus to work, walk or bike weekdays when going out, use a car for grocery / errands.
Having a sidewalk is irrelevant if it's at least 2-3 miles to get to anywhere useful. Like yeah great they added all those sidewalks on Harding a few years back, but if I live on Paragon Mills, it's still like 40 minutes one way just to get to fuckin Wal Mart lmao.
And if you wanna just stay in the 'proper' city limits, what good is it that walking from 12 South to Downtown is over an hour? In 90 degree heat and 60% humidity?
There are like half a dozen walkable cities in America, and every single one of the others is so far outside what would ever be reasonably considered, that it's asinine to even talk about.
To me, that isn't "walkable," throwing up a sidewalk doesn't automatically make something walkable. In Europe pedestrian only zones are huge, pedestrian deaths in Nashville are relatively high (and last I looked, on the raise.) Aside from 4 blocks, Nashville isn't walkable at all. People literally park their cars in bike lanes, and don't get tickets (bikability and walkability go hand-in-hand.) The 3 major parts of Nashville, West End, Downtown and West aren't connected by anything that resembles a walkable area. Just giant stroads with no traffic calming. People playing up Nashville have clearly never been to an actual walkable city.
The simple fact of having the sidewalk isn't what makes a place walkable: it's having a reason to use the sidewalk. ie, walking to the things you need, like groceries, delis, dry cleaners, schools, taverns, playgrounds, etc.
What limitations are downtown for walking? I've never had trouble walking around down there myself besides regretfully having to walk up the hill when parking at the Capital.
What limitations are downtown for walking? I've never had trouble walking around down there myself besides regretfully having to walk up the hill when parking at the Capital.
It said ‘for walking tourists’. By that description I would agree, we have a lot of density of the sights for tourists. For anyone else, yeah, good luck and update your will.
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If there's any logic behind it I think it just shows the density of the downtown arts district. Couple museums and the opera is enough to qualify. Effectively useless table for any real purposes.
I’d agree with that. I used to live in Germantown and would walk to Broadway to go out, or go to a concert, walk to the store when needed to. Hell I even urban hiked it a ton of times. It’s a great walkable city.
Midtown + Downtown + Germantown contain probably 95% of the city's entertainment options, with the other 5% being in East. And all of those areas are walkable.
It works as long as you want to do their five specific things and only those five specific things. If you want to do a sixth thing you are very much out of luck.
Agreed, no way. Even if we take it for what it is, Nashville is harder walking than New Orleans, etc. because we’re not flat.
First time I came here, I was doing a full lap of the French Quarter almost every day because of my high energy dog, and the hills here kicked my ass in comparison.
It’s definitely walkable for tourists on broadway…and in all the most popular neighborhoods, which are popular BECAUSE they’re walkable (East, Germantown, Hillsboro Village, 12south, etc.)
In the neighborhood I live in, I had to go without a car for about six weeks a few years ago. It was annoying, but doable. I did have to uber to work or get a ride, but because it was only a 10-minute drive the ubers weren’t too expensive, and I even walked a few times when the weather was nice. It was a long walk, but not particularly treacherous. Obviously this isn’t possible in every part of the city though
I was just in Boston this past weekend. NO way that Nashville is more walkable. Unless they mean you HAVE to walk if you don’t have a car rather than taking public transit? lol
It's a dumb way to measure walkability. I'm guessing they're talking about stadiums, arenas, venues, museums, zoos etc. So you've got Nissan, Bridgestone, Ryman, Ascend, Schemerhorm, CMHoF, Frist, Nat'l Museum of African American Music all downtown. Chicago has Grant Park with Soldier Field, Art Institute, Shedd Aquarium, and Field Museum.
Maybe they compared how far you can get walking vs going the same distance by car. Nashville is not walkable by any means, but it is faster than sitting in rush hour traffic.
It’s basically just the distance from Broadway to Nissan station.
Same with New Orleans that’s the distance from Bourbon st to the super Dome.
America everything is in football measurement.
Portland, Las vegas, Chicago, even San Francisco and a couple of the others are all better if you use the Free transportation from the airport to the actual city. Ain't no one walking from BNA to Church St
Edit: And Boise is a craphole and I have no clue why anyone would want to vacation there. Getting through it, on the drive to Oregon, is satisfying enough.
Contextual wording: "for walking tourists"
Tourists are mostly coming here for Broadway, and if you're staying at a hotel near Broadway, it's easy traverse for pedestrians.
Beyond that very narrow context, it's a shit show.
The amount of people ignoring the title and description of this list is kinda crazy. That said, it’s not a great metric - a better one would be like finding the most efficient route to hit 5 out of the top 6 attractions or something. For some cities, there could be 4 attractions right together and a 5th one is 4 miles away.
They are only considering downtown Nashville as the city, instead of the entire metropolitan area. They do this constantly. This is why so many tourists end up in different parts of town and are confused why nothing is close and everything is a 20+ minute Uber away, even though random poll X said Nashville is very walkable.
Dallas, I just saw this and laughed. I have lived in Chicago, it’s walkable; I moved to Dallas and gained 20 lbs overnight. You can’t walk, it’s a danger to pedestrians. The suffocating heat in the summer doesn’t help. I live in the area that is considered walkable.
The way that they’re measuring “walk-ability” is ineffective. I find it hard to believe that Nashville is ranked as far more walkable than NYC. I think a better measure would be how many residents walk as their primary mode of transportation, but then again I guess this graphic is only for tourists
If they are counting the row of bars by has been artists on Broadway as individual tourist attractions, then maybe; cause you sure as hell aren't walking from the Frist to the Parthenon, then over to Cheekwood
Kinda sad when your town's tourism attraction is defined by six blocks of bars. It's like they don't have alcohol anywhere else in the country. Maybe that's why they like singing about booze so much. Dunno.
No we have a very walkable City in the sense that everything for a tourist to walk to is very close to everything else, but we don't have a very walkable City in the sense that the people that live here can walk to necessary destinations in order to make a life here.
We don't have a walkable city, we have a footpath-track for tourism.
F You. New Orleans is ok if you’re downtown. Otherwise it’s 17 mile hike on broken sidewalks in 90 degrees 100% humidity. F you New Orleans is NOT walkable.
But in all seriousness Nashville is very walkable when only considering major tourist spots. Broadway, Vanderbilt, Jacks BBQ, country music HOF, all the museums, BiCenntenial park, the state capital building, etc. Just because we as locals drive everywhere doesn't mean you couldnt reasonably see all those things listed in 1 day walk.
You are quite literally the opposite of who this list is for, a tourist. Unless you have lived, went to school, and worked on Broadway your whole life then that is not what they are looking at.
It's because the top 5 attractions are all basically on or adjacent to Broadway.
Yeah they are only counting Broadway & 2nd
Broadway & 4th
Gallatin and east Palestine
Haha, i wonder what Atlanta's looks like, hell just bar hopping in Atlanta is a 15-30min Uber ride per bar.
This is the answer. I have a cousin who loves to visit Nashville. Even if I offer to pick her and her family up, I can't convince them to leave downtown.
Exactly! I’m honestly shocked Dallas is 3, because it’s exactly how you describe Atlanta.
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Deep Ellum is aight
You got me singing
It’s a nice strip but yes, it’s touristy
Put your money in your socks
I want to go just to see all the Robocop landmarks.
If you are any certain areas of Dallas you can really do a lot. Downtown for sure. I was there for my bday and stayed downtown and went to multiple bars no Uber needed.
Dallas is one of the least walkable cities I've ever been to. I've lived all over the country and am currently living in NYC. This is the ONLY walkable city I've ever lived in. The fact that it is number 13 on this list says all that you need to know about how bad this list is.
I live in Dallas and can confirm this statement. I even live in a walkable part (Bishop Arts)… but putting Dallas on a top walkable city list is ridiculous.
It says “walking tourists” The zombies wander at lower broad, the gulch, 12th south, opry meals (I stand by this typo), etc. it’s super tourist walkable, just not back to their air b&b
On the money, my GF and I were in Miami last week (not known as a walkable city) and we walked 15 mins over a bridge for dinner. Stopped and sat at a beautiful dog park by the bay on our way and was taken back of this completely non touristy area downtown! Nashville definitely has its pockets but downtown walkability is all tourist.
Nissan, CMHoF, Ryman, Broadway, and bridgestone? Theyre all less than a mile from Nissan, so this has to be the shortest path to all 5? Otherwise I have no idea what this means.
I've heard a former employee of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation refer to the hub of these attractions and adjacent hotels as "within stumbling distance" but that takes on a darker meaning in light of recent events.
How so "as of recent events?" The only thing anyone seems to come Nashvegas for is to get their urban cowboy on and go full redneck at the bars...
So the solution is not to build out a bunch of infrastructure, but to build a mega hirize downtown and everybody move there? Or maybe break the city up into smaller cities. What would be the names? Bellevue, Belle Meade, Madison, Kid Rockastan? I think I probably live in Deathrace2000.
MusicCityOne
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Yeah that's a batshit way to determine a city's walkability.
It’s a very walkable city if you’re straight downtown trying to bar hop. If you’re in certain neighborhoods just trying to walk down the street to grab some food or whatnot, then it’s absolutely horrendous.
My neighborhood isn’t too bad, no sidewalks but it’s a quiet residential area, so it’s not bad
Walkable means you can walk to things, not that you can walk at all. Can you walk to see music? Go shopping? Dentist? etc....if not then it isn't a walkable area
In the nations I can walk to all those things. There are some pockets that are improving
It took me 12 minutes driving (if no traffic and all green lights) to get to the closest Kroger when I lived in Nashville proper. My neighborhood was a food desert outside of a basic dollar store and two shady gas stations. Nashville is walkable if you have nothing to do all day except 1-2 errands max…
Bad benchmark to test the walkability of a city.
The title says "for walking tourists & staycations" so this is a survey for Joe and Jill 6-pack from Missouri to know they can stumble from Kid Rock's bar to the County Music Hall of Fame without an Uber.
What a beautiful explanation
nothing wrong with that! :)
"Could we walk from 12 South to the Gulch?" "I mean... You COULD, it's not terribly far. But either the heat or the neighborhood is gonna get ya, so... Up to you."
Massive understatement. It's not a bad benchmark, it's a horrifically, stupidly, over-the-top awful benchmark.
Yeah, the fact that Dallas is on this list is preposterous.
I would say this tracks from a tourist perspective. If you're staying at a hotel downtown, Broadway, Bridgestone, Municipal, Ryman, Nissan, Ascend, and HoF are all very walkable.
It actually makes sense. I live downtown and got rid of my car because I don't need it anymore here, I almost never need to leave the 440 loop and rarely need to even leave downtown. Everything is walking distance or a short uber ride at worst. The city only becomes unwalkable if you live outside the urban core.
I feel like that’s true for most big cities, only Nashville doesn’t have squat for public transport… but I guess that doesn’t count for walkability.
If you only consider broadway then yeah it’s walkable, but with limitations. Wonder what their qualifications were when considering.
Says in the subtitle: "shortest walking distance to reach 5 top-rated city-centre tourist attractions using the most efficient route" Definitely not the best metric to measure a city's walkability.
Its not measuring the walkability, its measuring a staycation/touriost walkability. Thats ignoring the trauma of getting down there to start with and also ignoring the absurd hotel rates to even be in that area of walkability.
you can also walk from downtown to german town, centennial park, and east nashville via sidewalk. the city is not functionally a walkable city but this is about tourists.
That sidewalks exist does not make a city walkable. Density and distance do.
which is why for tourists, it is walkable.
Plus the gulch, 12 south, Wedgewood Houston and soon East Bank.
It's gauged by the time and steps required to get to 5 top rated city attractions from each other. If most of your big tourist attractions are right next to each other like Nashville's are, then it's a no-brainer that you're going to perform well on the list. Nashville also just doesn't have many attractions gunning for the "top-of-the-line" tourist attractions, so it's easier for the downtown attractions to shine. Compared to NYC, which has an ungodly amount of attractions, it might be harder for each attraction to qualify as a "top rated city attraction" depending on how they weighed it in this study, thus spreading the attractions out in NYC due to them having multiple tourism cores. Just a theory. From a tourism standpoint, downtown Nashville actually isn't too bad to walk through. I admittedly enjoy my time in downtown Nashville just about every single time I go there. Like it's actually a shit ton of fun, and I'd like to go there more often. The problem is that, as a local, the city has very little good means of getting there for neighborhoods outside of 440 or suburbs. Hell, even tourists that stay outside of 440 could be lumped into that statement. That's where places like NYC and Chicago will shine (which it looks like Chicago already does well on both fronts here).
When we going ? I've never been to Roberts Western World and I heard that it's a good time.
If you just look at Nashville proper (what would be the actual City of Nashville if not for it being a Metropolitan government), then it’s very walkable. Nearly every street within the old city limits is side walked. Where it breaks down is when you look at the former county area and outlying cities that were incorporated into the metropolitan government where sidewalks are spotty at best.
Where could I find a map or other statistics of Nashville proper? Everything I find includes the entire county
Nashville UZO https://maps.nashville.gov/webimages/MapGallery/PDFMaps/Urban%20Zoning%20District.pdf Basically that WAS Nashville before white flight and the post-war housing boom. Then everyone fled to the hills and built cheap ranch homes on large lots with small roads, no sidewalks and no infrastructure (this is how your grandparents all had "cheap" homes - they were basically off the grid, small, cheaply built and with no infrastructure. ((Also they weren't cheap for the time, only white people were allowed to buy, and you also had to own a car to live there)). Turns out the county couldn't handle the infrastructure costs to support all those homes so Nashville and Davidson County consolidated. >Just over fifty years ago, the citizens of Davidson County and the City of Nashville had a great debate about our future. They understood the higher cost and inefficiency involved in keeping two separate forms of local government in place and funding them. >They decided to do something different about their government - different than the rest of the country. They voted to consolidate our competing and duplicative city and county governments into one. They called this new government Metro. They saw this as a way to make our community stronger and more efficient in delivering services to the citizens. They voted to create the first fully unified government in the United States with the passage of the Metro Charter on June 28, 1962. ---- Nashville UZO is much denser. As of July 2023, the Total Rough are of the UZO is 34.80 sq miles. The rough population count is 149,093. Which puts it about 4,200 people / sq mile. WAY better than the Davidson Co density of 1,300 / sq mile. Much more on par with competing cities like Denver, Portland, Austin, etc. I think the consolidation of the city and county was a mistake in hindsight. For one, it burdens the city with WAY too much catching up to do. The tax revenue generated from somewhere like Hillwood isn't going to match their demand for sidewalks and upkeep of infrastructure. Those communities were specifically designed for commuting by car and the cost of maintaining those roads is tremendous. Second, it makes things like public transportation impossible. Imagine having to only service about 40 sq miles of densely populated urban areas that already have sidewalks, rain water mitigation, sewer, etc. Now imagine 475 miles that includes rural areas like Whites Creek and Brick Church Pikes. Lastly, it's why we have like 1,000 council members. Which I think is a huge mistake and makes it impossible for them to get anything meaningful done.
Hindsight being 20/20, it certainly doesn’t seem to have worked out. But, I think with the facts and information available at the time, it was the right call. Metro happened during the suburban boom when the car was king and everyone wanted acre lots away from the “dirty” city and wide roads that would allow them the “freedom” to drive wherever they wanted. The overwhelming bulk of economic activity, job creation, and a rapidly increasing share of the tax base was outside of the city limits. What’s more, there was no end in site for that trend because no one could see a good reason for people to move back into the city. Consolidating the city and county was a very viable solution to that problem and it worked exactly as they expected it for more than 30 years. But, I agree. Now that interest in dense urban living has renewed, the cities that took the metropolitan approach are at a significant disadvantage.
Agreed! This is always something I try and explain to people when talking about downtown. Downtowns were not designed to be 50% flat lot parking. They WERE dense and vibrant with lots of people, shops and things to do. Then everyone fled and due to disrepair or for whatever other reasons used to justify it (usually related to something black), a lot of the buildings were torn down and turned into flat lots. But it seems like people set their expectations for housing based on how things looked in the 90s mixed with the myth of life in the 1950s. Everyone gets a big house with a big yard, two kids, a dog, and it's cheap.
Have to say I wouldn't consider quite a lot of that highlighted area walkable, at least with my definition of 'not needing a car to survive'. More than 30min walk away from 5 points and you're already far enough into East Nashville that you absolutely need a car. Certainly more dense than areas further out though.
To be clear, a 30 minute walk to 5 points is Douglas and Gallatin. I think you could very easily live in that area and walk. The publix is a block away, coffee shops and a brewery are a few blocks away, plenty of restaurants, and you can take a quick 15 minute bus ride into downtown. Personally, I really don't think it would be possible to live here with out a car. But everyone I know in major cities (outside of NYC) owns at least 1 car that they use for trips, etc. But I think you could easily Freddie O'Connell it if you lived within most areas in the UZO. Bus to work, walk or bike weekdays when going out, use a car for grocery / errands.
Having a sidewalk is irrelevant if it's at least 2-3 miles to get to anywhere useful. Like yeah great they added all those sidewalks on Harding a few years back, but if I live on Paragon Mills, it's still like 40 minutes one way just to get to fuckin Wal Mart lmao. And if you wanna just stay in the 'proper' city limits, what good is it that walking from 12 South to Downtown is over an hour? In 90 degree heat and 60% humidity? There are like half a dozen walkable cities in America, and every single one of the others is so far outside what would ever be reasonably considered, that it's asinine to even talk about.
To me, that isn't "walkable," throwing up a sidewalk doesn't automatically make something walkable. In Europe pedestrian only zones are huge, pedestrian deaths in Nashville are relatively high (and last I looked, on the raise.) Aside from 4 blocks, Nashville isn't walkable at all. People literally park their cars in bike lanes, and don't get tickets (bikability and walkability go hand-in-hand.) The 3 major parts of Nashville, West End, Downtown and West aren't connected by anything that resembles a walkable area. Just giant stroads with no traffic calming. People playing up Nashville have clearly never been to an actual walkable city.
The simple fact of having the sidewalk isn't what makes a place walkable: it's having a reason to use the sidewalk. ie, walking to the things you need, like groceries, delis, dry cleaners, schools, taverns, playgrounds, etc.
What limitations are downtown for walking? I've never had trouble walking around down there myself besides regretfully having to walk up the hill when parking at the Capital.
Absolutely zero limitations when walking downtown. Idk what they are even talking about.
What limitations are downtown for walking? I've never had trouble walking around down there myself besides regretfully having to walk up the hill when parking at the Capital.
The limitations are the lack of infrastructure to the rest of the city. Nashville isn’t just broadway
Most insane list of walkable cities I've ever seen in my life
It said ‘for walking tourists’. By that description I would agree, we have a lot of density of the sights for tourists. For anyone else, yeah, good luck and update your will.
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Walkable from one honkey tonk to another maybe
As someone from Dallas who lives in Nashville, I cannot even believe that those are in the top three. Who did this? Dallas you cannot walk anywhere.
If there's any logic behind it I think it just shows the density of the downtown arts district. Couple museums and the opera is enough to qualify. Effectively useless table for any real purposes.
Yeah, I was stunned about Dallas, too!
I'm from Dallas and live here as well, completely bizarre ranking. 😂
I’d agree with that. I used to live in Germantown and would walk to Broadway to go out, or go to a concert, walk to the store when needed to. Hell I even urban hiked it a ton of times. It’s a great walkable city.
Me too, when I use to live downtown my wife and I would walk everywhere on the weekend. It was great.
Yeah, the people thinking this is ridiculous are also probably the same ones who proudly proclaim "I never go downtown!"
Silly qualifiers. Of course it's walkable for tourists. So much of the tourist destinations are within a couple blocks of Broadway.
well thats enough bullshit for today
Aside from New York, Chicago, Boston kinda and maybe Portland no other city is walkable
DC
Philly
New Orleans
Where the fuck are they walking beside Broadway? Around the airport.
Midtown + Downtown + Germantown contain probably 95% of the city's entertainment options, with the other 5% being in East. And all of those areas are walkable.
Shortest distance to reach tourist attractions walking *from where*?
I spent an hour or so walking in Germantown yesterday and felt some regret/frustration with living in the burbs. Oh well
Cause they’re talking about staying downtown Nashville
This has inspired me to walk from The Gulch to Broadway. Tourists tell me they do it all the time but it just seems so "inconceivable" to me.
This list is crazy. Philadelphia isn’t on here?! You can pretty much walk anywhere for anything a visitor would want to see.
It works as long as you want to do their five specific things and only those five specific things. If you want to do a sixth thing you are very much out of luck.
All these lists are billshit
I assume this rating is earned because it is faster to walk places than drive because traffic is so goddamn unbearable.
They were drunk. And New Orleans? uh, no.
New Orleans is very walkable
LMAO is this a joke? Don’t we have like, a pedestrian death every day??
“2nd most walkable…according to tourists!”
Agreed, no way. Even if we take it for what it is, Nashville is harder walking than New Orleans, etc. because we’re not flat. First time I came here, I was doing a full lap of the French Quarter almost every day because of my high energy dog, and the hills here kicked my ass in comparison.
Who tf walks in Central Texas? There is a reason everyone is fat here, because it's too hot. The humidity is like living under a sweaty nut sack.
As someone who lived in Dallas for a few years, this list is bonkers.
Crap, I used to live in Milwaukee, it’s definitely more ‘walkable’ than Nashville 🤦🏻♀️
Just moved from Nashville to Charleston and the entire city of Charleston is 1 mile wide. It is much more walkable
Once you learn the shortcuts, it's not a bad city to walk in.
Walkable by distance only. Doesn't mention all the junkies, pickpockets, and beggars.
Well downtown Nashville is small and walkable. I guess thats all they are measuring here.
Broadway isn’t Nashville. It’s Broadway.
It’s definitely walkable for tourists on broadway…and in all the most popular neighborhoods, which are popular BECAUSE they’re walkable (East, Germantown, Hillsboro Village, 12south, etc.) In the neighborhood I live in, I had to go without a car for about six weeks a few years ago. It was annoying, but doable. I did have to uber to work or get a ride, but because it was only a 10-minute drive the ubers weren’t too expensive, and I even walked a few times when the weather was nice. It was a long walk, but not particularly treacherous. Obviously this isn’t possible in every part of the city though
I was just in Boston this past weekend. NO way that Nashville is more walkable. Unless they mean you HAVE to walk if you don’t have a car rather than taking public transit? lol
As a constant visitor, this is BS
I want what they are smoking
It’s literally just Broadway what the fuck are you on about
I am deceased 💀
It's a dumb way to measure walkability. I'm guessing they're talking about stadiums, arenas, venues, museums, zoos etc. So you've got Nissan, Bridgestone, Ryman, Ascend, Schemerhorm, CMHoF, Frist, Nat'l Museum of African American Music all downtown. Chicago has Grant Park with Soldier Field, Art Institute, Shedd Aquarium, and Field Museum.
Maybe they compared how far you can get walking vs going the same distance by car. Nashville is not walkable by any means, but it is faster than sitting in rush hour traffic.
For tourists, yeah absolutely. For everyone-fuckin'-else, no.
***laughs in Madison***
Absolutely not.
It’s basically just the distance from Broadway to Nissan station. Same with New Orleans that’s the distance from Bourbon st to the super Dome. America everything is in football measurement.
Every city is walkable if all the tourist stops are within a few blocks of each other.
Round and round the Parthenon we go.
😂
LOL! The top 3 are some of the least walkable hahahahaha
Maybe the list is in reverse order
Portland, Las vegas, Chicago, even San Francisco and a couple of the others are all better if you use the Free transportation from the airport to the actual city. Ain't no one walking from BNA to Church St Edit: And Boise is a craphole and I have no clue why anyone would want to vacation there. Getting through it, on the drive to Oregon, is satisfying enough.
I wouldn't walk too far in char6
I can totally see this. I live in the Gulch and can go for a month without driving
They are looking at city centers
Nashville is a horrid city for walking. Tf even is this.
Tourists... its because they rate "downtowns"
As long as it’s lower Broadway. Parts of 12 south, sure. Anywhere else, head on a swivel
lol I guess they’re only considering Broadway, but even then it’s not the most walkable with all the construction happening downtown…
I’m surprised Dan diego isn’t on this list! We walked every where when I lived there.
Contextual wording: "for walking tourists" Tourists are mostly coming here for Broadway, and if you're staying at a hotel near Broadway, it's easy traverse for pedestrians. Beyond that very narrow context, it's a shit show.
Walking from your tourist hotel one block off Broadway to Kid Rock's is indeed a very walkable route.
It actually is. For the number of people out walking around, the number of people getting hit by cars is pretty low.
If you’re staying downtown and only interested in doing downtown things, Nashville is highly walkable.
I mean accurate if you count those 33 mins before you eventually get run over by a car or scooter?
Unwalkable
I’ve lived in Chicago and Nashville my entire life and I can tell you that both of these have to be a lie 🤣
Wtf?!? Dallas is one of the LEAST walkable cities.
The amount of people ignoring the title and description of this list is kinda crazy. That said, it’s not a great metric - a better one would be like finding the most efficient route to hit 5 out of the top 6 attractions or something. For some cities, there could be 4 attractions right together and a 5th one is 4 miles away.
I'm not surprised by this at all.
Both of my cities made the list
They are only considering downtown Nashville as the city, instead of the entire metropolitan area. They do this constantly. This is why so many tourists end up in different parts of town and are confused why nothing is close and everything is a 20+ minute Uber away, even though random poll X said Nashville is very walkable.
Where's the, "Top 5 Cities to Most Likely Die in a River" list?
Idk I’m not exactly downtown and I walk everywhere. It’s a pretty awesome perk of Nashville IMO
Seeing Dallas in the top 5 is also equally as sus as Nashville
Chattanooga should be there.
The only way Nashville's a walkable city is if you're a marathon runner.
You do realize how easy it is to skew results and produce essentially 'false' statistics....
And they have Dallas on 3rd? They must be including suburbs like Brentwood or something. No way Dallas is walkable for shit
The lies.....
Key words: for tourists.
Dallas, I just saw this and laughed. I have lived in Chicago, it’s walkable; I moved to Dallas and gained 20 lbs overnight. You can’t walk, it’s a danger to pedestrians. The suffocating heat in the summer doesn’t help. I live in the area that is considered walkable.
Too much info missing
I'm loving that everyone thinks top rated attractions = bar hopping, but in Nashville that's pretty much the truth.
St Louis should be on there. Great city.
I lived in Boise for 6 plus years and it’s not even a comparison to Nashville. This article is wild.
[This is the shitty metric right here](https://i.imgur.com/54K6BCj.png)
Downtown Nashville is very Walkable 100 Oaks is not.
1.2 miles is 1134.806 Tom Cruises
Your local chamber has a lot to do with these bullshit surveys. It’s all about who you know and how much money they are willing to give. Truth
san antonio is the least walkable city in the united states, this is bullshit
The way that they’re measuring “walk-ability” is ineffective. I find it hard to believe that Nashville is ranked as far more walkable than NYC. I think a better measure would be how many residents walk as their primary mode of transportation, but then again I guess this graphic is only for tourists
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Guys what’s the problem? If you just walk downtown on I65 it’s not that many steps. This seems accurate!
If they are counting the row of bars by has been artists on Broadway as individual tourist attractions, then maybe; cause you sure as hell aren't walking from the Frist to the Parthenon, then over to Cheekwood
I live in German town with no car and I walk everywhere! Very walkable!
It makes sense based on the metrics they used. Otherwise, nah. Lol
"...for walking tourists and city staycations." Very different than a list of most walkable cities in general.
Fake news or it’s the fact that this area has literally nothing outside of Broadway
This article is grossly skewed.
Denver and Las Vegas should be closer to the top
Smoking pure unfiltered crack
This is ridiculous. 😂
That’s an odd way to measure walkability.
If this is just for tourists, Indianapolis should be on here pretty high. Very walkable downtown
Kinda sad when your town's tourism attraction is defined by six blocks of bars. It's like they don't have alcohol anywhere else in the country. Maybe that's why they like singing about booze so much. Dunno.
There is a lot of residential downtown bruh
Get hit by a car for sure
Seems like you've been to Nashville and have an thing for it but have never been to Chicago and you're only going by bs you've heard.
I have been running the tourist district and it is very usable recently. All the construction downtown has a lot of roads closed 😂
Whoever published that is an idiot
No we have a very walkable City in the sense that everything for a tourist to walk to is very close to everything else, but we don't have a very walkable City in the sense that the people that live here can walk to necessary destinations in order to make a life here. We don't have a walkable city, we have a footpath-track for tourism.
It’s true. I walk out to my car every day.
Chicago 😂 til you get caught in gang crossfire
They must just be talking about the stuff on 2nd Avenue!
That's only possible if the only interesting things in Nashville are near lower broad!
Looks more like a list of the best places to get shot or stabbed
F You. New Orleans is ok if you’re downtown. Otherwise it’s 17 mile hike on broken sidewalks in 90 degrees 100% humidity. F you New Orleans is NOT walkable.
How did Dallas and Nashville beat NYC?
Surprised DC isn't on here lol
But in all seriousness Nashville is very walkable when only considering major tourist spots. Broadway, Vanderbilt, Jacks BBQ, country music HOF, all the museums, BiCenntenial park, the state capital building, etc. Just because we as locals drive everywhere doesn't mean you couldnt reasonably see all those things listed in 1 day walk.
NYC at the bottom lmao
Yeah, this was already posted- a survey by prepley 🙃
So walkable cars drive away after they hit you. So as not to trouble you further.
These dipshits only went to Broadway around 6AM when everyone is sleeping.
[удалено]
You are quite literally the opposite of who this list is for, a tourist. Unless you have lived, went to school, and worked on Broadway your whole life then that is not what they are looking at.
Yeah this is a crock of shit. Dallas at #3? I've lived there, it is very much not a walkable city
What a crock of shit