Quote:
Originally Posted by J.OT13
The most walkable areas in probably the vast majority of cities are the streetcar suburbs. The same in Ottawa; Beechwood Avenue, Wellington West, Richmond (Westboro), Bank (Centretown, Glebe and Old Ottawa East. Beyond that, it's mostly post-war suburban.
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In older cities the streetcar suburbs are about midrange. There are much more pedestrian-oriented neighbourhoods that were built before 1870 or even much earlier. Even by the 1860's wider roads were built to accommodate larger carriages ("omnibus" carriages driven by horses that may have run on roads or rails).
Aside from narrower streets there was also considerably more mixed use back in the days when most people had to walk to whatever they needed on a typical day. This would have been upleasant back then in a lot of ways but it's a lot nicer now that we've replaced coal and horses with electricity.
Canada has few neighbourhood residential areas like this because what little there was to begin with has been mostly redeveloped into modern business districts or destructively reconfigured for vehicles.
Some remaining examples are old parts of Quebec City like St-Jean-Baptiste or St-Roch or the central parts of North and South End Halifax. These areas would have been fairly built up by about 1850, but weren't completely redeveloped since the cities didn't grow enough for that to happen.