City with the best waterfront FROM the water - Page 2

destroycreate · #21 Posted **May 4, 2018, 5:12 PM**

I'm surprised Sydney hasn't made the list. I truly think from what I've seen in photos they have the best waterfront in the world.

Stockholm and Vancouver come in second based on my experience.

MonkeyRonin · #22 Posted **May 4, 2018, 5:14 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

Which cities have the best access to dock a boat and walk around a neighborhood?

Definitely Venice. I mean, it's probably the only city where more people own boats than cars (in the Lagoon area at least - not including the mainland).

MonkeyRonin · #23 Posted **May 4, 2018, 5:25 PM**

Homer vote here, but Toronto is pretty good for boating. There are several docks & marinas to park at, the islands to drive through, beaches to visit, and a nice skyline to backdrop it.

Island Views by Michael Muraz, on Flickr

Summer Nights by Nick Kernick, on Flickr

The Scarborough Bluffs .... Toronto (Scarborough) Ontario, Canada by Greg's Southern Ontario (catching Up Slowly), on Flickr

Centropolis · #24 Posted **May 4, 2018, 5:35 PM**

here was a view i found in shanghai of the waterfront...hell of a spot for a cocktail

the auckland waterfront is quite extensive/walkable...hopefully i will get photos up soon...

geneva waterfront is a fucking world champ, with cafes, beaches, beer stands, places to just jump into the water and drink beer...

also, i do enjoy milwaukee on the river with all of the small watercraft gurgling up to bars in a decent sized downtown (hard to beat that), i have some photos from last summer somewhere...

MayDay · #25 Posted **May 4, 2018, 7:07 PM**

"but seriously probably cleveland's best look is over lake erie."

True, but the riverfront has come a long way in recent years:

LA21st · #26 Posted **May 4, 2018, 9:16 PM**

Chicago for me. Milwaukee is good too.

Jonesy55 · #27 Posted **May 4, 2018, 9:26 PM**

Globally Sydney is pretty hard to beat I think with all the huge number of coves giving it variety as well as size.

Istanbul has some pretty impressive views from the Bosphorus too...

For the UK I'd probably agree with Liverpool.

mello · #28 Posted **May 4, 2018, 10:26 PM**

Just looked at a few different angles of Baltimore's skyline and its actually a lot chunkier and built up than I thought. Not saying it is necessarily an amazing skyline but its almost like a stumpy SF skyline 15 years ago without the hills and Trans America tower. Unfortunately its two tallest are beasts but the core built area is fairly significant. Has it gotten some spill over from the boom in DC the last ten years?

SlidellWx · #29 Posted **May 4, 2018, 11:56 PM**

New Orleans has a great waterfront for boating, but it's on the Lake Pontchartrain side of the city. Several harbors and boat launches along with a linear park stretching for a few miles.

Here's a good drone video of the west end of the lakefront.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFQaLqqgwME

Nice description of everything along the Lakefront.

https://youtu.be/z0S0lfuVgl0

ilcapo · #30 Posted **May 5, 2018, 11:32 PM**

Stockholm has an archipelago which is popular for tourists as well as locals.

CaliNative · #31 Posted **May 6, 2018, 10:14 AM**

If downtown L.A. were in San Pedro or Santa Monica instead of 15 miles from the ocean it could be a contender. Long Beach is towering up, so that city is gaining. San Diego is nice.

CaliNative · #32 Posted **May 6, 2018, 10:18 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by ilcapo

Stockholm has an archipelago which is popular for tourists as well as locals.

Helsinki too. Millions of little islets. Bergen, Norway hasn't been mentioned yet. The setting is spectacular. Oslo is nice too.

CaliNative · #33 Posted **May 6, 2018, 10:48 AM**

Oakland may never catch up to SF in beauty, but the downtown is improving with lots of new construction. A shame they couldn't hold on to the GS Warriers. Will the A's follow the Warriers & Raiders out of town? Oakland has something SF doesn't have--a redwood forest in the Oakland Hills. Until they were logged in the gold rush era, the "navigation trees" at the top of the hills may have been 400 feet tall (tallest in world). Ship captains used them to navigate into the bay. Google it.

cannedairspray · #34 Posted **May 6, 2018, 2:14 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by mello

Just looked at a few different angles of Baltimore's skyline and its actually a lot chunkier and built up than I thought. Not saying it is necessarily an amazing skyline but its almost like a stumpy SF skyline 15 years ago without the hills and Trans America tower. Unfortunately its two tallest are beasts but the core built area is fairly significant. Has it gotten some spill over from the boom in DC the last ten years?

Not so much spillover from DC (which apparently people have been expecting to a large extent for the last 40 years) so much as the effect from Fort Meade. As cyber security becomes more and more of a thing, Central Maryland continues to benefit from being the home of NSA and the military's Cyber Command. South Baltimore is twenty minutes away from Fort Meade.

Baltimore's skyline surprised me when I first came here. You're right the tallest buildings are ugly (414 Light St recently topped out and it's another 500ish building and it's...decent; pic from last month below: it's the one with the crane), but downtown is pretty dense for a North American city. And there's multiple nodes: downtown stretching to Harbor East, which stretches to Harbor Point. Johns Hopkins Medical to the north of that, and then various towers ringing the harbor. It's pretty interesting. Or at least more interesting than I had thought before I first arrived.

Pic from the Baltimore Sun

In this pic, the the Harbor East skyline is on the far left- there's a couple more towers at Harbor Point, out of this shot to the left, and several more planned. There's a gap and then two towers (including the new one) on the far side of the harbor, not really downtown. Then downtown. On the far right is the very beginning of the Johns Hopkins Medical cluster, which has another dozen or so towers.

Nantais · #35 Posted **May 6, 2018, 3:43 PM**

New York, Hong Kong, Venice.

Pedestrian · #36 Posted **May 6, 2018, 3:43 PM**

The problem with San Francisco's waterfront is that state law forbids other than water-related uses. Thus there can be no newer hotels, restaurants and other uses directly on the water (or the water side of the Embarcadero roadway) without extensive "discretionary review", giving every NIMBY in town the chance to delay any project virtually forever and, in many recent cases, even forcing them to a public vote by a public that really doesn't understand the issues. The result is that the waterfront continues to be lined with rotting old piers with a history of failed renovation proposals that were rejected somewhere in the approval process.

phillyskyline · #37 Posted **May 6, 2018, 5:06 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by cannedairspray

Not going to argue that it's the best, but my semi homer (not from here, but I've lived here five years now) submission is Baltimore.

B-more gets my vote!

The North One · #38 Posted **May 6, 2018, 5:32 PM**

It's all a matter of opinion, so...

pdxtex · #39 Posted **May 6, 2018, 6:31 PM**

seattle is the boatiest big city in america. cruise ship port of call, check. working harbor, check. water taxi and ferry system (largest in US, second in world by vehicles carried), boatloads of marinas, check. floating homes and houseboats, checkity check, gateway to a massive inland water way and system of islands, checkeroo...kayaks!!!! and the skyline looks pretty from the water. chicago is still the most photogenic watery skyline though.

Illithid Dude · #40 Posted **May 6, 2018, 7:12 PM**

I've always been partial to San Diego.