Exactly my thoughts. It’s a good tool to use as a starting point though. Also that huge blob in Knightdale may be walkable but it’s just an elongated strip mall.
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Yup, while much of Oakwood/Mordecai/Glenwood-Brooklyn isn’t - there isn’t much retail peppered into the neighborhoods, but they’re a MUCH more pleasant place to walk.
Fun metric and mental framework to play with, for sure!
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Even though I live in HellaSuburban North Raleigh, I am in one, and frequently walk to the next one over as well 
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Overlaying this screenshot over the walkscore map of Raleigh:
Sorry they don’t match up perfectly, just wanted a quick comparison. Seems like this just shows a stricter version of the same map, which makes sense.
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portions of brier creek and wakefield comply
The problem with these sort of objective measurements is that they don’t address the quality of the walking environment, only distances to restaurants and retail. This assures that anyone who’s adjacent to a strip shopping center is going to be noted as living in a walkable area.
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Yeah - this shows much of the capital corridor as ‘walkable’. That is a very pedestrian unfriendly road. But I guess lot’s of stores and restaurants, so it’s considered walkable. makes no sense.
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I didn’t know where to put this but…
Which would you rather see? The car-oriented, mediocre apartment complex or the walkable, beautiful, sustainable community?
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Is this a trick question? 
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Is there a way to incentivize the former?
This is a perfect illustration of top-down economies of scale vs. bottom-up economies of diversity. The top-down model is more efficient but less resilient and more prone to decline over time. It is quicker profits and solutions at the expense of long term viability. The former is a result of “many hands” coming together to build our places, and thus building more lovable places that form community and sustain life through hardships.
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I mean, everyone wants the second one, duh
Couple quick notes: Gosh I wish there was a way to incentivize the smaller rowhouse-style buildings with retail in the bottom the first image shows, like the Berkeley Cafe building. That form fosters much better retail/dining options than megablocks, and is more interesting to look at.
In a city like Raleigh, where are the residents going to put their cars in the first image? I know we’d all love to have the option to be car free, but we’ve got a couple generations before that’s something anyone beyond retirees and a very small subset of the general population can do.
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So to respond to your last point, I believe that car-less developments need to be in areas where multiple alternative transportation options are available. If traveling by car is the dominant form of transportation, this kind of development wouldn’t work.
Places like the first picture should be in a downtown or densely populated area; Oberlin Village or Glenwood S. for example, where there are multiple (safe) ways to get to where you want to go without needing a car to drive for 3 minutes.
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With the New Bern BRT project on the way, the areas surrounding this project could be made more dense and centered around BRT, pedestrian and bike traffic. In theory it would help more people who may not be able to afford a car to live by their job or near a reasonable grocery store.
maybe im unlovable but my entire 40 years from birth to relocation elsewhere wasn’t in anything like this. in 67 a sfh on wexford drive. the city placed govt housing at the end of the dead end street and violent crime increased. then to longview with its acre sized lots inside the beltline…and a bus 200 feet away and a half mile walk on a neighborhood st to a grocer , drug store and restaurants and bank. then to Brentwood…large middle class hood with sfh homes with a bus that went past our front door… that we regularly rode. it was fantastic. then to hickory hollow…new ssh homes tucked in to the quail hollow area. .2 mile walk to a food lion, bojangles, darryls, etc and .3 mile walk to a bus stop. we did it all the time. and this state govt had moved an office out from downtown to falls of neuse so even my dad didn’t have to bus downtown to get to work…he could walk. then to north ridge villas…not the condos but the sfh area. north ridge shopping center out our back door…beer runs were actually fun with out any multi story conglomeration. i never encountered raleigh as that bad or missing some type of building like housing through the years. i don’t know what the percentage of workers working downtown is now. maybe a more web like bus system could help a few more folks for commuting.
just wondering here. paradigm-ish stuff. but nc had mill towns decades back where large textile mills would build housing for some of its employees. if core urban design was moved into the practical but not necessarily the luxurious, could the modern dense core employers start placing or contributing to housing suited for the industries now-suited for core downtown areas? mixed use of course…with many tech or whatever jobs that can do with a vertical footprint without the need for far flung commutes…or at least as many of them. has or is that happening in places to an effective or noticeable level? gucci by mail might be wrong of course.
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When I was a teen living in North Ridge, I used to walk 8/10 of a mile to my job at McDonald’s in Falls Village. Nothing like strolling through that neighborhood in blue polyester that perpetually smelled like the fry vat.
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imagine a shoneys uniform
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This beauty of an outfit but in blue.
The black leather shoes really completed the look with my bad case of acne activated from said fry vat.
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Not sure if this belongs here, but I haven’t seen this building type before – “the big house” apartments, basically a 2-story 10-plex where each apartment has direct access to its own 1-2 car garage. There are no common hallways, which is a big efficiency gain over conventional apartment designs where hallways are 15-20% of square footage. The apartments average almost 1,000 sq ft; about half are 1-BRs but the corners easily fit 2/3 BRs. There’s a garage-less variation with 14 units.
Per Pro Builder, it was designed by a Dallas architect, and projects in Texas achieve gross density of around 12 units per acre. Each 10-plex is around 135’ x 75’, so about 1/4 acre for the structure itself plus setbacks and driveways on at least three sides.
The proposal is in Cary, south of Crossroads Plaza; Cary’s online permit filings have floorplans and elevations.
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