Most walkable and unwalkable cities
 

Based on your experience, could you name which medium/small cities you've visited were most walkable and unwalkable?
I assume most walkable cities are in western Europe, would be interesting to know about other parts of the world.

EDIT: I have mis-read the OP and it should be medium/small cities. And, I replied with big ones...

As I've said in another thread, I tried walking in Jeddah. And, even though someone with more experience of the city than me has walked it, I found it utterly terrible.

Tehran I found difficult because of the difficulty of crossing the road. However, I got used to crossing the road and it became easier.

Auckland is so spread out that it takes time to reach different places. No particular technical difficulty, but just a long way to walk.

I find London quite walkable, as so many of the interesting things are in a quite small area. This may be influenced by me knowing the city well. But, Buckingham palace through St James park to Trafalgar Square, and then there are museums and art galleries nearby. A good walk, I think.

EDIT: I live in Leicester, UK, and I find it quite walkable due to the river and the walkable towpath and other paths. It's easy to walk to the river, walk to the part you want to go to, and then walk away.

I liked walking around Delft in The Netherlands. I'm not sure how big the city is but it gave me a 'small city' feel. I liked the old feel and the canals.

I had to spend a number of hours walking around Karlovy Vary (spelling?) in Poland. Very nice, and very walkable.

Slemani/Sulaymania in Iraqi Kurdistan - I enjoyed walking around the city. There's not as much to see as in some cities, but I felt it interesting to walk around and see the market and the mosques and go swimming in the pool etc.

Edinburgh comes to mind as a walkable city. Unwalkable for me at least was Bucharest. Sidewalks are often in disrepair and they don't cordon off any deep holes. Watch your step.

Generally speaking, Western European cities are pretty walkable but one that surprised me in its difficulty was Copenhagen. They've given so much priority to cycling that the pedestrian walkways are often narrow so that you have to walk single file at the pace of the slowest walker.

Stockholm felt more walkable, with wider spaces for pedestrians and also room for cyclists. (Only catch being that to visit some parts of Stockholm, you'll need to take a water taxi...but you can walk on land.)

Surprisingly walkable American city: Boston. Lots of stuff to see in a fairly compact space.

I loved walking in central Montpellier - car free and lots of lovely cafés.

Only Japanese city I haven’t enjoyed walking around in was Osaka because of cyclists infesting the pavements.
I particularly enjoyed walking around Kanazawa at 5am last August and it was lovely to see lots of elderly folks feeling safe and comfortable enjoying their public spaces during the coolest part of the day.

Nowadays, walking in London and Alicante is blighted by delivery bikes and e-scooters

Helsinki seemed very compact and easy to walk around in the central area. The few times I had to take public transit were easy to negotiate.

Definitely very walkable...and the trams were so frequent that if you needed a ride anywhere, it was never more than a couple minutes away.

Having lived in Riyadh for 6 months, I can absolutely it is the least walkable city I've been to by a long way.

8 line highways pretty much everywhere, uncrossable with no bridges or tunnels.

If you want to cross the road, you'd be safer getting a taxi that will drive 2 miles up the road to the the next U turn, and then back to where you came from on the other side of the road.

I understand why, it's incredibly hot in summer and people don't really want to walk but if they want to become a tourist heavy place in the future, they need to improve pedestrian zones rapidly.

AMSTERDAM jeez by a long shot. Yeah, London, but too big. NYC obvs, but it's huge too. DC, debatable. I walked about 12 miles this past weekend there. But between Metro and feets, do-able. Same with NYC.

Shanghai, huge population but the area of the former French concession, Jing’an and Huangpu up to the bund are all easily doable on foot.

Beijing is the opposite, very much not walkable.

San Francisco is compact and walkable as well.

In the US, examples of walkable cities include Savannah and New Orleans for medium sized and St Augustine for a smaller city.

Walked miles and miles in Shanghai last month, even in the cold - I definitely agree. Between that and the 4 CNY Metro trips, it's an easy city to get around.

AFAIK, the metro (https://www.siasat.com/saudi-riyadh-...-2023-2540582/) should be opening later this year. Then again, perhaps that's been the case for years....

I've been to Riyadh on a few occasions, having most recently stayed at the Mövenpick Hotel and Residences Riyadh near KAFD. Unusually, Google Maps mentions something called the "Ghadeer Walking Trail" right nearby. No idea what the heck that means.

Also, to reach the KAFD by foot apparently would've taken 1.5 hours, even though it's physically RIGHT there (https://maps.app.goo.gl/2VCyaNzbC3UW4YgG9).

Suffice it to say, save for the Shams restaurant neighborhood, and maybe the diplomatic quarter, it is a very unwalkable city.

most walkable:

Venezia
roma
firenze
perugia
bologna
pompeii
capri

San Francisco / Oakland
nevada city
grass valley
tahoe city
portland
chicago
boston / Cambridge
Washington dc
manhattan / Brooklyn / queens (not sure of Bronx / staten)

dublin
paris
london
manchester
glasgow
edinburgh
ox4
bruxelles
leuven
amsterdam

nuernberg
muenchen
hamburg
dortmund
aachen
koeln
dusseldorf

hong kong
taipei
chiayi