What are some examples of walkable urbanism in deserts? The American Southwest and the Gulf states are both famous for their total unwalkability; are there walkable desert cities?
For example... how walkable are Egyptian cities? Alexandria is busy building a giant highway on the waterfront; most people don't drive but that's poverty, not walkability.
The French quarter in New Oreleans is walkable today, though mostly it is tourists there. It was built before cars or trains so they didn't have a choice. The streets are a grid, but they don't run north/south east/west, instead at an angle so there is always shade. Many building entrances are in a courtyard that is well shaded.
Not a desert, but still some useful lessons to learn.
@bluGill Tourist ghettos are almost always atypically walkable for their regions. When you're on vacation, you don't mind that the farmers' market charges three times as much as the hypermarket at the highway exit.
@Alon but in this, as many cases there are good bones in that the area was where people lived and walked for everything (because they had no choice 200 years ago). So you can find lots of useful things that work and still will work.
@Alon I'm guessing your concern about deserts here is more about the temperature characteristics than the rainfall ones. So it might not be that interesting if (and I don't know) Lima, Peru is walkable? It's certainly a desert (average annual rainfall 6.4mm), but it has maritime temperature characteristics.
@Alon are there examples of walkable urbanism in cities the size of Alexandria in countries that are on a comparable economic level as Egypt, regardless of climate zone?
El paso isn't walkable except the university. If you are there and want to walk park downtown and walk across the border (this doesn't count as walkable as there is nothing in normal walking distance, if you live there you have insurance and will drive across the border instead) on the Mexico side people walk, they even put their roads underground so the streets are car free.
@Alon I think of things like the San Antonio river walk or Disneyland, but those aren't really urbanism, they're just hot and dry places where people walk. But it's proof-of-concept that the weather isn't necessarily a direct factor. As a result I would have thought Israel would have some places that were walkable urbanism and desert but you know it way better than I do.
@Alon Oooh, yeah, looking at the wikipedia page for Beer Sheva it does not look walkable at all ☹️. But both look like they were built out in the second half of the 20th century which almost always means auto-dominated, similar with the US southwest. That's why I suspect it's downstream from there not having been as many major desert cities in the 1850-1950 window that I associate with better walkability, rather than the climate directly.
@Alon I lived in Egypt for 4 years in the 2010s. Cairo and Alexandria aren’t desert cities by any means, but they were pretty walkable at the time, and there were plenty of pedestrians. Cairo has a rather good metro system. The main problem was chaotic car traffic and a lack of traffic lights, which made it dangerous to cross the street. My sense is that the usual problems of car-centric urban planning have got gradually worse in Cairo since then.
@Alon Santa Fe, in parts. Tucson, between downtown, the area north of downtown, and the university, is evolving in that direction, but I haven't been there in years.
@Alon Cairo is hell. One of the worst cities for walking I have ever seen. Alexandria is actually fractionally better in the old town. But temperature wise how different are either from Tel Aviv, which is actually OK in parts. Casablanca is likewise not a complete disaster, but again probably not hot enough for what you're looking for.
@jon Tel Aviv has very hot summers but I don't think of it as a desert city - it's Mediterranean. It actually matters, since some streets, like Ibn Gabirol, have a recessed ground floor so that people can walk in the shade and also avoid the torrential winter rain (Taipei has the same, I imagine purely because of rain). I think Casablanca has the same climate.
@Alon@jon And Marrakesh is still too mild? Not that I know much about the urban layout there, but if they try to imitate the second-tier French cities it should be ok. I see they have a trolleybus system.
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