I moved to Texas a few years ago and first lived Magnolia and now live downtown. Both are definitely fairly walkable, especially by Texas standards, and have very different vibes. Two things worth knowing if living in one of the walkable areas is what you're looking for: First, drivers still don't like to yield for crosswalks or follow speed limits and redlight/stop sign running is pretty rampant. 7th Street traffic is awful; downtown has lots of 4 lane one-ways that drivers treat like highways; and even on Magnolia drivers like to speed and blow through crosswalks. Second, the walkable areas aren't connected by safe bike routes or walking paths, so while you can live "car-lite" in one of them, you can't really get to the others without driving. For example, downtown and Magnolia are only about a mile apart, but you have to drive if you live in one and want to go to the other. Fort Worth has, at least on paper, really neat plans to develop the urban core with more housing, shops, and better transit, but undoing the damage of decades of poor urban planning is going to take time, and the growing pains with that are quite evidence living down here. I've always wondered what it looked like in the Tower and Montgomery Plaza, so that was an awesome inside scoop to see!
Thanks for sharing your insight! I would agree with your take on it for sure. I would love to see more of European style center where you can walk from shop to restaurants without cars zipping by.
I moved to Texas a few years ago and first lived Magnolia and now live downtown. Both are definitely fairly walkable, especially by Texas standards, and have very different vibes. Two things worth knowing if living in one of the walkable areas is what you're looking for: First, drivers still don't like to yield for crosswalks or follow speed limits and redlight/stop sign running is pretty rampant. 7th Street traffic is awful; downtown has lots of 4 lane one-ways that drivers treat like highways; and even on Magnolia drivers like to speed and blow through crosswalks. Second, the walkable areas aren't connected by safe bike routes or walking paths, so while you can live "car-lite" in one of them, you can't really get to the others without driving. For example, downtown and Magnolia are only about a mile apart, but you have to drive if you live in one and want to go to the other.
Fort Worth has, at least on paper, really neat plans to develop the urban core with more housing, shops, and better transit, but undoing the damage of decades of poor urban planning is going to take time, and the growing pains with that are quite evidence living down here. I've always wondered what it looked like in the Tower and Montgomery Plaza, so that was an awesome inside scoop to see!
Thanks for sharing your insight! I would agree with your take on it for sure. I would love to see more of European style center where you can walk from shop to restaurants without cars zipping by.