For me, it is Waikiki. Many see it simply as a tourist destination – however, there are a lot of residences (condos), an awesome park, a concert venue, tons of restaurants (not just expensive), and while Waikiki doesn’t have a large traditional grocery store, there is a Mitsuwa Marketplace and tons of convenience stores. You can also easily walk to a great Foodland Farms in Ala Moana and the bus transportation is excellent!
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When I lived in the short north/victorian village area of columbus ohio I was only ever a 15-30 minute walk away from everything. Not sure if that meets the definition of walkable but it worked for me.
Buena Park in Uptown, Chicago.
I love where I live in Denver. I’m walking distance from a strip of restaurants, bars, and shops, several great parks, several grocery stores, and easy biking distance to tons of trails.
As much as America gets a bad rap for not being walkable, pretty much every city has multiple walkable neighborhoods and the downtown of pretty much every city is walkable.
Lewiston, NY, a little bit north of Niagara Falls and just across the river from Canada.
For a town of its size, the main street has several good restaurants. It also has a fenced dog park, a waterfront promenade, several parks, a biking trail that connects it with nearby towns, and even an ampitheater that hosts large concerts in the summer.
Albany Park, Chicago
Cultures tend to be compartmentalized in Chicago, but this is an area where LATAM, the Middle East, southeast Asia, and a legacy Korean presence spill on each other. There’s a nice river trail, a forest preserve, a lot of good and relatively cheap food, and you can ride the length of the Brown Line train to get there.
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
Old pasadena is beautiful
Mid Wilshire in Los Angeles
North Oakland (as in Oakland, CA). So many great walkable areas there. Down around Lake Merritt, too.
Don’t know if its under rated but Charleston, SC is awesome.
I live in Miami and we have many. Coconut grove, coral gables, south Miami, the Camus at The U, south beach, south of fifth, sunset harbor, Lincoln road, bal harbor, surfside…. Many many beautiful walkable areas.
Within the USA, downtown Santa Barbara.
The tourist parts of New Orleans
Portland, Maine (not Oregon!) is a cute small city of less than 80,000. The Portland peninsula, our sort of downtown area, is maybe three miles wide. Everything is walkable, so much to do in a small city. Beautiful parks, there’s music, surprisingly diverse, good food. There are ferries running to nearby islands too.
Uptown Dallas! It’s walkable, a freeway was lowered and a park built on top of it, and there’s public transit!
The French Quarter in New Orleans. Lived there for years and mostly never set foot on Bourbon St unless it was for work. You’ve got amazing music venues, museums, and restaurants, and regular farmers markets, parks, and groceries all within easily walkable distance. You can take the streetcar to other walkable neighborhoods. You can go fishing in midcity or go to the zoo or aquarium. There’s so much to do, and rent isn’t horrible for the downtown of such a beautiful and historically relevant city.
I agree with you about Waikiki. We’ve had a great time there on two trips, and didn’t use the beach at all. The Honolulu Zoo is at one end, and while not a large or amazing zoo, it was worth the visit for us.
Locally, it’s difficult to say, because so much where we go isn’t underrated. Maybe the area of Lowell where the Lowell National Historical Park is located, since there are a number of restaurants there plus the historical park (which is really more like a museum, distributed over several buildings, with one of the former mill buildings at that site converted into apartments or condos. It’s a very underrated national historical park.