Best walkable areas in Grand Rapids?

[michaelskis]

Many of us live in the City, and enjoy the easy access to places; however some places are more pedestrian friendly than others. What residential to commercial corridors do you find to be the most pleasant? What reasons are there to avoid others? What surprises have you found on these pedestrian walks? What commercial areas surprised you with their pedestrian friendly atmosphere? (Photos are nice too)

What can the City or Neighborhood associations do to make the less pedestrian friendly areas more usable to walkers? What features (trees, street plantings, flowers, new concrete or bricks, and such) would you like to see more off?\\

[zenstyle]

I'm pretty convinced that Eastown is our best walkable neighborhood. A person can live car-free (or car-less, depending on your perspective) and not be grilled curiously by residents here. Here's a line you will NOT hear in Eastown (but are quite likely to in other neighborhoods):

"What you don't own a car?"

The subtext is usually one of the following:

Can't you drive?

Are you anti-car?

Are you poor, or sumthin'?

Are you some kind of radical kook?

I've never heard of anything so wacky.

"What can the City or Neighborhood associations do to make the less pedestrian friendly areas more usable to walkers?"

I don't know that this would impact walkers per se, but I wish to hell people would stop equating paving with civilization. Our latest heat wave was made worse by the preponderance of (needlessly) paved parking lots and driveways. (I'm not talking about roads here, so sit back down, allbusiness.)

[suydam]

East GR in general is incredibly walkable. The entire city. When the weather's nice, I don't drive my car the entire weekend sometimes.

Eastown is my favorite (by far) of GR's neighborhoods. We walk there almost as often as we walk in EGR.

[GRGridGirl]

In Grand Rapids, the Uptown District is by far the best walkable area. Uptown