Connectivity Comes First
Over at the Huffington Post F. Kaid Benfield laid out what makes a neighborhood walkable. He identified three main criteria, which I’m just going to block quote right now:
- Well-connected streets. The smaller the block size, and the more intersections, the better… the degree of connectivity in a neighborhood is statistically the most significant indicator of how much walking takes place there.
- Things to walk to. Simply put, people walk more when they have places they want to go within walking distance.
- Good infrastructure for safe walking. Sidewalks are important, as well as safe street crossings and nearby motor vehicle traffic moving at nonthreatening speeds.
I’m gonna pull out a quote from that quote because it’s an especially important quote.
“the degree of connectivity in a neighborhood is statistically the most significant indicator of how much walking takes place there.”
Connectivity is not a term that lends itself to intuitive understanding if you don’t spend far too much time reading about urban planning. Benfield’s definition is a good one, but the picture he used is an even better example of precisely what connectivity means.
Connectivity, which, to reiterate, is the “most statistically significant indicator of how much walking takes place” is the literal building block of a walkable neighborhood. With this in mind let’s compare and contrast two “neighborhoods” in Coralville, Iowa.
Iowa River Landing
Iowa River Landing is not well connected to anything outside of Iowa River Landing. While, from certain angles, the place looks urban, it’s really just a glorified shopping mall with very expensive condos and apartments perched above.
Iowa River Landing looks like an urban place, but fails at the most basic level of urban design. No sane person would ever walk there from anywhere else. For a place where the main draw is a bar and a brewery that’s disconcerting.
5th Street
Look at how well 5th Street connects with the neighborhood to the north. This part of Coralville has seen a surge of new construction in the past few years, and is being transformed into a place with real urban character.
Even though 5th Street runs parallel to a neighborhood of traditional suburban homes it’s vastly more walkable than Iowa River Landing.
What does this mean in practice? I picked a house roughly between the center of the most urban part of 5th Street and Iowa River Landing.
From the address 701 6th Ave in Coralville you’re only a ten minute walk to the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts. You can also walk multiple routes, along pleasantly leafy residential streets, or the fast developing 5th Street.
That ten minute walk puts you within spitting distance of uber hip Hurtz Donut Co., the library, restaurants, gyms and coffee shops.
The walk to 30hop in Iowa River Landing is twice as far because of the lack of connectivity. Much of that walk will be along the terrifying stroad that is 1st Ave.
This is an imperfect comparison. 701 6th Ave isn’t halfway between Iowa River Landing and the heart of 5th Street, it’s slightly closer to 5th. Specifically, 2,100 feet from the performance arts center, and 3,000 feet from 30hop as the crow flies. A straight line drawn from 701 6th Ave to the entrance of Iowa River Landing is 2,500 feet, only 400 feet more than to the performance arts center. And the walk would still take 17 minutes, seven minutes longer than the walk to the performance arts center. It would take you nine minutes longer to walk to 30hop, the first commercial spot inside the entrance to Iowa River Landing, than to the performance arts center, even thought it’s only 900 feet farther away from that 701 6th Ave as the crow flies.
That was a lot of numbers. Sorry. Here’s the important takeaway, it would take you roughly twice as long to walk to anything in Iowa River Landing as it would to get to 5th Street, and that walk would be far more dangerous. Even though the only difference is a few hundred feet as the crow flies.
Both of these neighborhoods are undergoing waves of construction, and both are hoping to attract new commercial and residential investment aimed at people and businesses who want to walkable neighborhoods. But a walkable neighborhood isn’t made by brick-paved streets and fancy street lamps, it’s made by connectivity. Beware imposters.
