But the rest of the city is not as walkable. It's definitely urban (much more than, say, most of Seattle) but not even close to being as walkable as much of NYC.

Also, someone made a good point about the rest of the Bay Area. Remember the entire Bay Area has around 7.5 million and outside of SF and parts of Oakland and Berkeley, it's not very dense at all (there are walkable town centers in Palo Alto, Walnut Creek, etc. but they are surrounded by suburbs).

Meanwhile, just NYC has 8 million people! So, yeah, NYC is far more walkable. That said, I would put San Francisco at #2, Chicago at #3, and Boston at #4.

> Ummm... Brooklyn was also its own city.

And Queens was a collection of independent villages - and during it's absorption into New York City the villages fought to keep their independent names. That's why the addresses in Queens use Astoria, Flushing, Woodside, etc., instead of Queens, NY.

Ummm... Brooklyn was also its own city.

And, um, um, you completely missed the point anyway.

Oh really?

"The main problem I had in SF is that the city is much more spread out... you can't really walk across the city the way you can in Manhattan."

"there are monster hills to climb all over SF"

"their transit system just can't match NYC's."

Wow, you made an awesome case.... its too far to walk, its hard to walk, and the non-car options suck.

If you were a lawyer, you'd lose every case.

I am a New Yorker, by the way.

I have to disagree with you about the northern end of Alley Pond Park, though. When was the last time you tried to walk to the Alley Pond Environmental Center? It's dangerous, discouraging, and generally an embarassment to Queens - an unwalkable environmental education center.

Walking for recreation is important to livability, but one of the main bases for the Walk Score is how easy it is to walk to shopping and work. Here in Woodside I have ten full-size supermarkets within a mile, and plenty of specialty stores. I can also walk to the subway, which gets me to just about anywhere in Manhattan within an hour.

In Northeast Queens there are some areas that are walking distance from shopping and the LIRR or express buses, but a lot of them are not so walkable. Over the past several years, the people of Northeast Queens have had the chance to put forth a vision that includes moderate, pedestrian-oriented density near train stations and express bus stops, enough to support stores that cater to pedestrians. Instead the future for the neighborhoods has been fought over by developers who want to shoehorn as many apartments and parking spaces into the area as possible, and residents who want to preserve the unsustainable sprawl as it was in 1990.

Both San Francisco and Manhattan need wider sidewalks on every street. Mayors take the lead! US transit rich cities need to take back at least one lane now given up to private vehicle parking. The opportunity is now. Let's expand sidewalks, plant more trees and let our cities breath a little.

First of all Pioneer Square is the highest rated Seattle neighborhood but there is literally NO good restaurants in the area and you can forget about schools. In fact, unless you have a subsidized apartment, no one lives here.

This is because everyone lives in Capitol Hill, which, interestingly DIDN'T make the list. I find this absolutely unbelievable when it is certainly Seattle's most accessible and easily walkable community.

Also, how could Wallingford, an almost entirely SFH neighborhood, beat out Lower Queen Anne.

These personal observations put this prettylow on my reliability scale.

I don't think the site takes weather into account but that is certainly a big factor when walking.

Its true that transit is better in Manhattan than SF but they are comparing SF to all 5 boroughs so I think that might be what pushes SF over.

* granted that 70-year olds biking is a beautiful thang

It is true that NYC is 10 times the land area and about 11 times the population as SF. Therefore these things should be put in perspective. If 90% of SF residents and 86% of NYC residents have a walkscore above 70, that means that there are 10 times as many people in NYC with "Very Walkable" walkscores (even if the ratio is slightly lower).

I checked on Wikipedia and this is what I found for Land Area
New York County - 22.96 sq mi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan)
New York City - 304.8 sq mi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_york_city)
San Francisco City & County - 46.7 sq mi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_francisco)
so i guess you could say SF is roughly 2ce the size of Manhattan.

when you juxtapose the two on a map though you see there isn't an enormous difference between the two cities when it comes to size. (see my above post, http://www.radicalcartography.net/?manhattan check out Manhattan compared to SF and to LA) When you compare either to LA at 4000 sq miles, its obvious that being on islands or a peninsula makes for a better check on suburban sprawl than one might assume. Most of the suburban sprawl in NYC began after the building of automobile centered bridges, or conversion of existing bridges to primarily automotive use, and the building of limited access roads and highways. My guess is suburban sprawl really took off in SF metro area after similar infrastructural changes.

I stand corrected.

when you juxtapose the two on a map though you see there isn't an enormous difference between the two cities when it comes to size. (see my above post, http://www.radicalcartography.net/?manhattan check out manhattan compared to SF and to LA). When you compare either to LA at 4000 sq miles, its obvious that being on islands or a peninsula makes for a better check on suburban sprawl than one might assume. Most of the suburban sprawl in NYC began after the building of automobile centered bridges, or conversion of existing bridges to primarily automotive use, and the building of limited access roads and highways. My guess is suburban sprawl really took off in SF metro area after similar infrastructural changes.

Even discounting the rest of the bay area, there is no possible way SF a sa city is more walkable than NYC.