Ah yes, I definitely overlooked that distinction. It does seem like an odd metric. For one, I would not consider New Hope a walkable urban center. It has such a tiny local population that it's hard to imagine its residents doing anything to sustain its center. In other words, the vast majority of the individual taking advantage of its walkable center do not in fact walk there. I don't know if you can say the same thing for University City or Society Hill. So it seems like an odd way to measure a location's walkability, if it's not sustained (at least in some significant part) by people who walk there from their residences.

By this measure, I'd say places like Northern Liberties and Fishtown are more walkable then New Hope, because a much higher proportion of the clientele for the businesses in their "center" actually walk there.

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"What's up Pops!" - Lebron James to Bush 41.

FWIW, the two Green Lines are also comparable -- both have multiple branches (4 in Boston, 5 in Philly) concentrated in a specific area of the city (3 of Boston's 4 serve communities west of downtown, and all 3 pass close to one another near Cleveland Circle; 4 of Philly's 5 serve the same general area in Southwest Philadelphia). Boston has one branch that extends well into the suburbs; Philly has two that just barely cross into the 'burbs and a third that comes within shouting distance of Lower Merion. I don't have total distance figures handy, but I suspect that these are also comparable, with the Riverside (D) branch of Boston's Green Line giving that city the edge in total route miles, but only barely, thanks to the presence of an additional branch in Philadelphia.

I think the reason people perceive Boston's system to be more extensive is because:

• Boston's "core city" -- which for purposes of this argument includes Cambridge, Brookline, Somerville and Chelsea -- is still smaller than Philadelphia's both geographically and population-wise
• The rapid transit system in Boston serves more points within this core city of interest to visitors, especially if (as most users do) the trolley subway is counted as part of the rapid transit system

Keep in mind that one of Philadelphia's three rapid transit lines is essentially a commuter route serving communities most visitors have no interest in getting to. All four of Boston's rapid transit/trolley subway routes serve points of interest to visitors.

If you go to walkscore.com, I think you can get a good handle on what makes a "walkable urban center" if you look at the list of nearby amenities that is returned with the overall score.

I would agree with you on your characterization of New Hope as NOT a "walkable urban center", because many of the basic everyday services a resident needs (supermarket, drugstore, dry cleaners...) are located in a shopping center at the edge of the borough, located on a state highway that is not pedestrian-friendly (yes, it's only two lanes, but it has no sidewalks or shoulders), and none of them can be found in or near the center of the borough, which is very pedestrian-friendly.

I don't know how West Chester fares on this score; the heart of the borough has all the attributes of the classic American Small Town, including some shops offering basic necessities, and is extremely walkable -- but where's the grocer?

Yes, we should care, and it's clear from your observations and mine that his metric for determining what makes a "walkable urban center" is flawed in one important respect, for one of the things that make a car-free life possible is easy access to those necessities by means other than driving. However, I would consider the presence of car sharing in a place like West Chester or New Hope as adding to "walkability" because it allows residents to reach those necessities without having to purchase a car for their own use; the residents could then live car-free in all other respects (assuming they found work that they could walk to or reach via public transportation or other group transit).

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
“Basically I figure guns are like gays: They seem a lot more sinister and threatening until you get to know a few; and once you have one in the house, you can get downright defensive about them.” --Theresa Neilson Hayden

Exactly, no one who lives in Philadelphia uses PATCO to get around. Just by looking at the Boston map you can see how much more extensive their coverage is.
My point about New Hope has more to do with the fact that its "walkable core" is not aimed at its residents, but mostly at people who drive in from out of town, local tourists if you will. I'm sure some residents do take advantage by walking to the amenities, but that number is small to the point of being insignificant. West Chester may be a different story, I'm not as familiar with it.

What makes urban neighborhoods and street-car suburbs walkable is the availability of amenities (at least partially aimed at local residents) and public transportation. Car share is nice, but if you have to use it every other day, compared to once a week, that should also matter in determining walkability.

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"What's up Pops!" - Lebron James to Bush 41.

I think Leinberger's point about New Hope is not that a lot of people live there, or that the people that you see walking around there necessarily live there, but that New Hope is the kind of place that a lot of people wished that they lived. In other words, a significant percentage of people would love to be able to access New Hope's charms on foot, from their homes, but metropolitan development patterns in the last 50 years haven't made that possible for any but a wealthy few.

I'm confused by this sentence of yours, MarketStEl: "it's clear from your observations and mine that his metric for determining what makes a 'walkable urban center' is flawed in one important respect, for one of the things that make a car-free life possible is easy access to those necessities by means other than driving." I think you're agreeing with him. I think that that's precisely his definition of a "walkable urban center."

And I don't think that Leinberger or anybody else is saying that people want to live totally car-free. Carless people are and will remain a tiny minority for the foreseeable future. Instead, I think he's saying that a lot of people want to use their car less, especially for daily trips. So the theoretical new Manayunk or New Hope resident will probably still have a car, but will walk to get groceries, or coffee, or go see a movie, and hopefully even to go to work. It strikes me that the people he's describing are pretty different from established city residents like us.

That last paragraph is why I (and, it appears, Romano) argue that Leinberger's criteria are flawed IF he uses New Hope as an example, because the New Hope resident really can't walk from his or her house to get groceries -- reread my post about where the borough's one supermarket is located. I've walked along the length of Bridge Street (PA 179) in New Hope, from the Raven (which lies astride the borough line) to the Delaware River bridge from which the street takes its name, and once you're past the Mechanic Street junction, Bridge Street becomes pedestrian-hostile territory. I don't think that even New Hope-Solebury High School students living in the borough would walk to the high school, which is also on the stretch of Bridge Street in question, from their homes for this reason.

And if he counted New Hope as such a center and omitted Haddonfield, for instance, then I'd know for certain his analysis is flawed, for Haddonfield is the very model of a walkable suburban town center: It has rapid transit connections to the city center located at one end of its central business district, and said business district includes a CVS, an Acme supermarket, several banks, five of six restaurants from plain to fancy (though getting fancier), some basic services (dry cleaner, barber shop, beauty salon...), and at least two coffee houses -- a Starbucks (natch) and an indie at the district's southern edge. The Haddonfield Public Library is also located one block off the main drag. All of the above are within 10 minutes' walk of Haddonfield PATCO and many of the residences adjacent to this district. By comparision, central New Hope has only the Starbucks, the bank branch and a passel of restaurants, most of them not the everyday/convenience variety; everything else is on the edge of town, where walking is not so pleasant or easy.

The difference is that Haddonfield doesn't attract lots of visitors to it from outside the immediate area; New Hope definitely does, and West Chester has begun to.

Now, I realize here that I am also citing design attributes of an area as factors, for indeed, those places on the edge of New Hope are within a mile of the town center and thus walkable by most standard criteria. But a walk on a city or suburban street with sidewalks or some sort of space where the pedestrian need not worry about getting mowed down by an errant driver is qualitatively different from a walk along the nonexistent shoulder of a busy two-lane state highway; I wouldn't want to haul my granny cart from Main and Bridge Streets out to the Super Fresh in New Hope, while a similar 5/8-mile walk in Haddonfield is very doable.

(Just for comparison -- and undercutting my argument somewhat -- I plugged in a hypothetical address in New Hope near the town's central intersection and an actual address in Haddonfield down the block from the Acme into walkscore.com. The two addresses were virtually tied: 78 for the Haddonfield address and 80 for the one in New Hope. Edited to add additional postscript: Further examination of the places in New Hope returned by walkscore.com reveals that a major contributor to the walkability of New Hope is Lambertville, NJ, on the opposite bank of the Delaware; both the closest drug store and the closest grocer to Main and Bridge streets are in Lambertville. The Delaware River bridge at New Hope is pedestrian-friendly, a plus; still, crossing a major river is not something I think most residents would ordinarily think of doing on foot to perform routine errands. It's clear from both Romano's comments and my own that we considered the Delaware a barrier.)

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
“Basically I figure guns are like gays: They seem a lot more sinister and threatening until you get to know a few; and once you have one in the house, you can get downright defensive about them.” --Theresa Neilson Hayden