Quote:
Originally Posted by CentralGrad258
Dude, re-read my post. I go out of my way to point out that Center City is very walkable. But Center City is a relatively small geographic sliver of the entire city and we're talking about the whole city right? I agree though that cultural vibrancy is far from lacking, whether we're talking high-brow old money classical culture, or low-down, dirty hipster culture.
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Sure, there are blocks of unsavory/dead zone areas even within Center City (hello, east Chestnut!). All the same, you said a walk from Center City to University City isn't all that. Well, South St is one, but honestly Walnut St isn't so bad-- I've done that walk and the thing is, it's getting better an better...and really fairly quickly (all things considered).
I mean, you can walk for miles just on Walnut Street and go west... start from Penn's Landing and you will see:
-the Independence Seaport Museum;
-a really nice and very walkable pedestrian bridge over the interstate;
-on weekend evenings, there's Old City life buzzing over on Walnut on blocks from Front St to at least Fourth St; sure, they could do a whole lot more with that stretch considering some of the historic buildings there (Merchants Exchange being a huge one), but it's not like things aren't changing...a new apt mid-rise is coming up, bringing new life to that part of the street;
-next you see the Independence Park and then Washington Square; you see Curtis building and its sheer beauty and how that's held up for all this time;
-next you see Jefferson's campus buildings and a lot of hubbub for several blocks... heck, even Penn Medicine is going to have a Walnut St address here on 8th St.
-then of course you get the Walnut St Theater, nation's oldest, and still going very strong!
-then you get to "Midtown" and gayborhood, and all the restaurants and some interesting shopping there. some blocks are tree-lined and really feels like a charming "main street" of a smaller town around where Top Tomato, Ten Thousand Villages, Maoz, Moriarty's, etc are.
-of course you also have the Forrest Theater... could be much more livelier with more shows, but it's not marketed as well to the touring companies...but it's on a nice block and isn't posing any hindrance to walkabilility;
- then you cross Broad St and really get into glitzy shopping, dining, living, and office district along "Rittenhouse Row" for at least from 15th St to 22nd St. There is one surface lot on this stretch, that is all, and I can't imagine it'll last very much longer. Meanwhile, retail rents are going up up up, which is making so much of this stretch have turnover, with older tenants moving off to Chestnut St and elsewhere, thus spreading the zone and keeping Rittenhouse Row revitalized. We even have a Barney's Co-op. For a lot of small-format space, Rittenhosue Row punches above its weight and is throwing off its success to blocks surrounding it. And on almost any day, those are some of the busiest sidewalks with lots of great city life walking past...very few cities match that on a daily basis. Downtown Dallas, for example, has the Neiman Marcus flagship store, yet they can't even dream of having the pedestrian density that Walnut St attracts even on the coldest, snowiest day of the year! Houston's downtown, while it has improved, also still lives and walks about in a subterranean level.
- the last couple of blocks before you hit the river are on the quiet side, but that's because there is high priced residences there who want their peace and quiet. Sure, there is that Sunoco gas station, but across from it is a perfectly fine retail-lined residential building with wide sidewalk. A city will need things like a gas station. Walnut St also has Jefferson's campus chiller, but so what? That's what makes the city go...it needs this sort of infrastructure and not everything is going to fit into an alleyway like Sansom.
-then you get the Schuylkill Banks and the bridge over the river; there is so much programming at the bottom of the Walnut St bridge and a lot of trail runners use that bridge to get to/from that trail down below. There are Penn and Drexel students walking across the street as well, and it's not so bad...I mean, I don't know what you'd want from a bridge that necessarily carries a lot of traffic.
-on the other side of the river, there is a veritable renaissance brewing. There is the XPN/World Cafe Live, and there is the huge, new Penn Park right there.
-then there is the Left Bank which has even attracted a Tria, among other tenants.
-finally there are several blocks of Penn/Drexel campus life and related retails as far as 40th St and further west.
That's 2+ miles of walking and save for very few less-than-perfect blocks, it is very urban, very walkable, very dense, and is almost a string of pearls as far as what all you can see and do.
Philly's 2 subway lines are indeed inadequate. They were supposed to be the backbone for a much bigger system that never was built due to paucity of funds. But subways are just one leg of the mass transit picture. The trolleys are really quite good and are helping to revitalize the areas around Penn... if there were trolley lines connecting Powelton Village and Mantua to Center City those areas too would be booming a lot more than they already are (well, not Mantua, yet).
But more to the point are the buses and their frequency. Perhaps it's just a matter of where I live and where I tend to take buses, but I've mostly had a pleasant experience riding SEPTA buses to lots of places around town. Buses are perfectly fine and not every place needs a subway stop to make it walkable.
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