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Walkable Neighborhoods?

August 27, 2008

Working with a couple who are relocating to Tucson from a city with a dense core, we talked a lot about finding the ‘walkable’ neighborhoods here in Tucson. Walkable is sort of a subjective word, with a vastly different meaning, depending on the person. So for this couple, let’s say they want a wide variety of shopping and amenities no more than a half mile away, preferably closer.

Tucson is a big place, geographically. We generally don’t build up, we build out, especially the further you get from the Central/Downtown/University area. For people that want a more dense, urban environment, there are a couple areas where I think we can, well, approximate that.

First would be the region around 4th Avenue - neighborhoods like Iron Horse and West University. Close to all the stuff around the University, close to downtown, and close to 4th Avenue means there is shopping, coffee shops, dining, and a couple of markets for groceries nearby.

Second would be around Campbell between Grant and Fort Lowell - neighborhoods like Catalina Vista, North University (Samos and Hedrick Acres), and the Campbell-Grant neighborhood.

Of course, there’s the ever popular Sam Hughes as well, which is about a mile square, but borders the University, Speedway, and Broadway Boulevards, with plenty of amenities in those areas.

There’s a site called WalkScore that analyzes an address and assigns it a measure of how walkable an area is. There’s a heat map for Tucson in general, which is interesting, and confirms what we already know - more dense urban areas are usually Central. Something missing from WalkScore that is frequently missing in Tucson - sidewalks.

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