Seattle: More Walkable Than Portland?

• Referenced this post here http://www.djc.com/blogs/BuildingGreen/. I know how Walkscore makes its calculations, but based on my experience... sometimes it just doesn't make any sense at all.

• To be fair, it looks from the map like a good number of PDX's walkable neighborhoods are contiguous, though still less than Seattle, and with fewer of them overall than Seattle: http://www.walkscore.com/rankings/Portland http://www.walkscore.com/rankings/Seattle

• Great point, but I think the main reason Seattleites don't venture far outside the Pearl & Northwest is that they just don't know the town that well, as with most cities that one doesn't reside in.

• It's true that topography is a blind spot, but Seattleites like to wax Utopian about Portland while conveniently forgetting that, when they visit, they tend to hang out in just a couple of neighborhoods down there. Outside of the Pearl District and a few other areas (most of which aren't contiguous), Portland is fairly sprawling, making it difficult to walk to amenities like grocery stores, etc. Consider that its population density is less than 5,000 per square mile, whereas Seattle's is over 7,000.

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