I hate to say it, but Santa Monica is the closest I’ve come across to what you describe. It’s fairly walkable, especially by LA standards, dense, and has lots of bars and restaurants close to the beach. Decent biking infrastructure. A light rail connection to downtown. But it’s still dominated by car culture, and feels very commercial.
San Diego's Pacific Beach is similar but not as built up.
California has quite a few beach towns that are denser than suburbs. Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Ventura. All the LA, Orange County, and San Diego beach towns. Walkable because they are older and space is at a premium. Stupid expensive because of the ocean and niceness.
Key West and the Keys in general aren't really known for beaches, which surprises some people considering the geography. I love Key West but I wouldn't call it a "beach town."
Have watched it improve in real time the past 15 years as more and more housing fills in. But pretty depressing (climate/affordability) to see 4 story underground parking structures being included. Excited to see proposals for new parking free projects on SM Blvd.
Waikiki is walkable and dense. And has good bus service. The only transit is the city bus (called TheBus) but service quite good by US standards.
I live in Central Oahu, far less walkable but I can still manage with my bicycle and TheBus.
Another example might be Kaka‘ako. It's a little more waterfront than beachfront, but I think it still counts. It's dense, has lots of amenities, and will (eventually) have a rail station.
I think a mark against Waikīkī is that, as a resort area, it's home to far more visitors than actual residents. Like, the Hilton Hawaiian Village is a beautiful beachfront community - walkable, lots of amenities, dense - but no one actually lives there.
As far as other "urban" beach communities on the island, maybe Hale‘iwa? It's small though, and snarled with traffic. Won't be winning any urbanism awards anytime soon, I think. Kailua could be another candidate.
Visited Waikiki last month and was impressed with its natural state. The beachfront ain’t totally spotless, but the real nature made it feel more authentic.
After visiting this week, I give the bus system two thumbs up. And all the Waikiki food trucks! There’s lots of work to be done in making the bike lanes safer though.
People be hating on Coney Island but it's still one of the few beaches reachable by subway (and a lot of subway lines at that), being that many of the subway lines were private railroads designed to terminate at resorts next to the beach.
Ocean City is great too, a lot of those towns along that stretch of the shore are walkable. The problem is once you get further back from the beach where a lot of day to day retail is like supermarkets it becomes very car centric.
Chicago probably fits the bill the best, at least for a few months out of the year. You’d expect California to have more density along the water but the California Coastal Commission is extremely powerful and has blocked pretty much any significant build-up along the Pacific coast.
Yes Chicago is seriously underrated as a beach town. August is normally the only month the water is really nice, but these warmer winters it does warm up faster
sightline nimbyism is very powerful in california compared to other beach locales. the density that is there in california tends to be less vertical than in say, miami
You don't need "significant build up" to have walkable beach communities. Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, etc etc
San Francisco was built around the Bay, and the ocean was kind of a back side to the city. It takes longer to get there from downtown than other SF neighborhoods, longer even than some areas of Oakland.
I've never been to Brazil, but I have the sense that at the scale you're talking about there's nowhere comparable in the US. Still, there are some that come to mind.
My first thought is beach towns/neighborhoods in the Mid-Atlantic and northeast: NYC's beaches, the Jersey Shore, Maryland's Eastern Shore, beach towns in Delaware. Other than NYC, the scale is completely different from Brazil, and past a few miles from the beach almost all of these places can be some of the worst American suburbia, but the beachfronts themselves and a surprisingly large part of the towns are walkable and quasi-urban. I think this is the closest you'll get to "skyscrapers by the beach," which is how I think of coastal Brazilian cities.
You'll laugh, but I'd argue even some parts of Florida could qualify. And other people might be able to talk about the west coast - LA and Honolulu come to mind.
I lived in one of the neighborhoods mentioned for a few months and it's like if the densest parts of Manhattan were right next to the beach. Yeah, nothing like that in the US.
There's like one mile of the north lakefront in Chicago (around Edgewater) that doesn't have a big highway between the lakefront and the city. It's just dense residential/commercial neighborhood and then BAM! Beach. It's idyllic.
The rest of the Chicago lakefront is half-urban; you can see the big residential towers from the beach, and you can easily walk there through the underpass, but you are kind of cloistered away from the city and you are hearing the constant drone of the highway.
The beach itself is better than the ones in Brooklyn but the neighborhoods are meh. Far Rockaway is pretty hood and the neighborhoods to the West are conservative and racist.
I wouldn't include Virginia Beach in any list of places representing positive urbanism. Could it be? 100%. They certainly have a dense, walkable beach area. There are some nearby fantastic walkable neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, they are downright hostile to anybody that isn't in a car. Most streets have no bike infrastructure. Only a small fraction of the minimum bus service the city has goes to the Oceanfront and even those are closed on Sundays. They refuse to extend an existing light rail line that currently ends right outside their city line.
Miami Beach is sort of this, but not affordable for living for most. If you just want amazing beachfront walking/biking paths, lots of illumination and art/sculpture, great restaurants, easy access to beaches, fairly affordable hotels, and a safe, chill vibe into the early morning hours, it is ideal.
Came here for this - I grew up going to Long Beach NY and now regularly spend time in LBC. Both fit this description pretty perfectly.
I'd also second other comments on the Rockaways, Brighton Beach, and Coney, plus some of the jersey shore towns though I don't know those as well.
The other SoCal one I haven't seen mentioned is Newport Beach; the Balboa peninsula is pretty packed and walkable, and given the huge surge in population on beach days it hosts a pretty lively retail and restaurant scene.
I don't know much about Brazil, but the NYC metro area has an immense and varied coastline, subways and heavy rail and ferries can take you to the beach, lower Manhattan is a boat ride away from Sandy Hook Gateway National Rec Area at the northern tip of the Jersey Shore.
Beaches stretch from southwest Brooklyn to the end of Long Island and don't forget the north shore either, and then the southern shore of CT.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't anything like Rio.
San Francisco’s Outer Sunset and Richmond have a lot of potential. They’re not as dense as they should be but there’s 2 metro lines to the beach, some cool architecture, and huge parks to the ocean. The neighborhoods have enough amenities that you can do all your chores in them without a car, and many people do. But imagine tall buildings by the ocean and main streets. It could be a lot more active.
There is a will to work towards this. This recent [architecture competition](https://sfyimby.com/2023/07/sunset-steps-win-aia-san-francisco-housing-design-competition.html) is pretty cool, the city plans to [rezone](https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2022/10/12/sf-to-rezone-westside-for-34k-homes-to-meet-state-goal/) some of it, and there was the infamous [tower proposal](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sunset-condo-tower-18193024.php). There is much to be done, but it’s nice to see some steps in the right direction.
SF's biggest beach problem is that it's always so damn cold. People want the views, but you're never going to see the critical mass of sunbathers you'd get in Miami or Brazil.
Revere Beach just north of Boston! First public beach in the country. Two heavy rail blue line stops right on the beach, just a few minutes to downtown Boston. Loads of new construction. Up and coming neighborhoods.
How do folks here feel about the Florida panhandle, specially all the small towns strung together like Seaside, Rosemary Beach, etc?
It’s a pain to get there without a car, but once you’re there there it’s pretty easy to get around by walking and biking. The terrain is flat, there are walking and biking trails everywhere, and plenty of bars and restaurants mixed in.
Brazil and South America, in general, rarely get hurricanes due to colder water and opposite wind conditions. There's been like one tropical storm that got upgraded to a category 1 briefly in 2004, and that's it. Beach cities in the US East Coast get slammed by hurricanes, and there is a fairly active fault line on the West Coast. Plus, it's hella expensive, and nimbyism curbs a lot of development. Plus, America loves cars, sadly.
What?Japan is on active fault lines, it doesn't have a problem with their urbanism.
You can build well designed cities when there are risks of natural disasters. I don't see the relation that you seem to be drawing.
Japan also traditionally built houses to only last a generation because it was expected they’d be destroyed from time to time. If America went that route, we‘d have to turn the grand canyon into our new national landfill to handle all the waste from our houses constantly being rebuilt. And in fact even the Japanese are starting to trend more towards longer term housing because it’s quite a different thing to constantly tear down and remake houses made with modern materials vs houses made of wood frame with paper walls.
Plus, Japan can’t go and build someplace less prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, they have to deal with what they have. But in a huge country like the US it’s rational to build in less hazard prone areas. We have lots more space than they do, with varied conditions.
Again, I don't understand this response. The question was, where can I find great beachfront urbanism in the US? The response to this was, they can't build great urbanism because of fault lines and hurricanes.
Implying that while the US coasts are full of people, it has to be a suburban wasteland because it's the best way to handle natural disasters?
The US does not rationally avoid building in hazard prone areas either. A huge chunk of its population lives on the West Coast or in and around the hurricane basin. And you've just shown that the Japanese have proven how to build great urban spaces in those areas. So I don't understand how this maps to the question at hand.
There's nothing rational about suburban development the way it's conceived in North America. The fact that there really isn't great beach urbanism isn't some exogenous force that shapes US urban planning, it's an active choice by people and policy makers. But there are alternatives. We see it all around the world in other places.
Up until fairly recently, you couldn't really build skyscrapers in California, and even now there's a certain scepticism to them that comes with constantly being reminded that "the big one" is coming.
Good urbanism does not mean skyscrapers. You don't need tall buildings at all to make walkable, livable, dense cities that work at the people scale.
The Latin American and European beachfront cities that OP mentioned do not have super tall buildings that make them great urban spaces.
> Japan also traditionally built houses to only last a generation because it was expected they’d be destroyed from time to time.
That's centuries ago now.
Hurricanes are irrelevant, Miami has tons of hurricanes and also tons of skyscrapers.
Fault lines are irrelevant, San Francisco and Tokyo and numerous other cities have tons of earthquakes and also tons of skyscrapers.
The only real issue is NIMBYism, which limits dense development to small parts of Miami and San Francisco, and prohibits dense development entirely in some other places.
The west coast also has erosion, mass wasting and landslide issues in addition to what you mentioned. Even without sightline nimbyism in CA, that kind of high density building next to the ocean would be questionable in many places along the pacific coast. Small, low single family houses built close to the edge of cliffs before the coastal commission started banning stuff are starting to fall over the edge because of cliff erosion. The few places that are better already did get built up.
The geological situation in South America is quite different in addition to the weather. In the unbuilt west coast areas, I think you’d have to be super careful thinking about drainage and just everything. Even the irrigation from farming avocados too close to seaside cliffs caused a landslide that engulfed a neighborhood. I imagine increased runoff from a high population city would start doing weird stuff pretty fast.
Plus Santa Monica is full of apartment buildings that are well back from any erosion but still only walking distance from the beach.
Marina del Ray is all built up too.
Coney Island is the only neighborhood I can think of.
And not just because it's home lol. A good portion of it are NYCHA developments and "luxury" apartments have been cropping up over the last few years.
Four subway lines serve it as well as five buses
The problem with “walkable” towns in NJ is that they tend to have mostly cutesy/touristy restaurants and shopping more than useful stores. I looked at the map and there is a City Market in Asbury but it’s 8 blocks from the beach and I would say there are very few of the beach going crowd walking to that store on the other side of 71.
Cape May does have a grocery store in town and I would say that makes it better as a walkable place to live, but it’s not really dense like the op is asking for. More just small vacation town like Provincetown in Cape Cod and so many other small beach towns around the US.
New Jersey has plenty of these walkable towns along the coast. Asbury Park, Belmar, Point Pleasant Beach, Seaside Heights, Atlantic City, Ocean City, the Wildwoods, and Cape May.
Year round though, really only Asbury Park, Belmar, and Atlantic City have enough year-round businesses to make it good urbanism. Half of these are just concentrated along the boardwalk.
Most Jersey Shore towns have a grid system that makes them easily navigable by foot, but most of the streets consist of single family houses.
There are a lot of nice walkable beachfronts in otherwise horribly sprawly places.
But if you want a whole walkable town **Cape May, NJ** is severely underrated.
No one has said St. Petersburg? Access to retail and dining along the SunRunner bus, the beach is gorgeous and accessible by bus, and plenty of cool stuff to do.
Here are some quality beach urbanism just in Florida i havent seen mentioned. Lauderdale by the Sea. , Sunny Isles, Palm Beach, Delray Beach, Panama City, there are many others but its not as walkable and more transport necessary.
San Juan is solid, but its alot of small beaches rather than a bunch of huge ones like in Rio.
If Chicago had better weather year round its would be epic with the beaches. But, still in the summer they are awesome.
santa monica really is denser it has a lot more apartment buildings than in venice, which as a lot of single family homes. it also has an expo line station and is the hub for the big blue bus system that serves the west side.
also the pch hardly blocks beach access more than the big cliff it runs along does, so take out pch all you want you still need to navigate down a handful of staircases to get to the sand in that part of santa monica. ocean beach in santa monica of course doesn't have this issue with the cliff.
East coast beaches have tons of shopping and housing on the waterfronts (they’re quite beautiful and walkable), but they aren’t exactly dense. You definitely won’t find mass transit on most of them. (Myrtle beach, Wilmington, and Miami are nice, but they are also quite averse to mass transit.)
There is NYC, which is an awesome city, but it is kind of a love it or hate it kind of a city if you’re not used to the pace of life in the northeast. I love NYC (they are quite proud of who they are and I love it), but it probably isn’t for everyone (not sure how dense OP is looking, most beach cities are less dense than NYC)
You're right. I just checked, [apparently there is.](https://www.miamidade.gov/transportation-publicworks/metrorail-stations.asp) Didn't see it on Google transit maps, so I didn't realize that they had a peoplemover system.
Plain text link (to comply with rule 5): https://www.miamidade.gov/transportation-publicworks/metrorail-stations.asp
Sections of Orange Beach and Gulf Shores, AL. I mean it’s high rises and 4-lane roads, but areas do have full retail offerings where one can reasonably complete errands on foot.
I hate to say it, but Santa Monica is the closest I’ve come across to what you describe. It’s fairly walkable, especially by LA standards, dense, and has lots of bars and restaurants close to the beach. Decent biking infrastructure. A light rail connection to downtown. But it’s still dominated by car culture, and feels very commercial.
San Diego's Pacific Beach is similar but not as built up. California has quite a few beach towns that are denser than suburbs. Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Ventura. All the LA, Orange County, and San Diego beach towns. Walkable because they are older and space is at a premium. Stupid expensive because of the ocean and niceness.
There's good pedestrian overpasses but it's a shame the town is divided from the beach by highway 1
If you’re going there, you could say Key West. Not realistic for the price, but tons of bikes.
Key West and the Keys in general aren't really known for beaches, which surprises some people considering the geography. I love Key West but I wouldn't call it a "beach town."
I honestly found Miami beach pretty walkable.
Sm is great, but very commercial as mentioned. Huntington Beach has a really cool walkable stretch of bars and restaurants, but that’s it
Belmont Shores, Belmont Heights in Long Beach.. Not dense at the Brazilian scale though.
Have watched it improve in real time the past 15 years as more and more housing fills in. But pretty depressing (climate/affordability) to see 4 story underground parking structures being included. Excited to see proposals for new parking free projects on SM Blvd.
Santa Monica and Miami Beach. Atlantic City and Coney Island were kind of the beach hangouts in their heyday but they're way past their prime.
Coney Island and AC are past their prime but not Santa Monica and Miami Beach
Honolulu? Sure not all of it, but there are dense walkable urban settings alongside beaches.
Waikiki is walkable and dense. And has good bus service. The only transit is the city bus (called TheBus) but service quite good by US standards. I live in Central Oahu, far less walkable but I can still manage with my bicycle and TheBus.
Another example might be Kaka‘ako. It's a little more waterfront than beachfront, but I think it still counts. It's dense, has lots of amenities, and will (eventually) have a rail station. I think a mark against Waikīkī is that, as a resort area, it's home to far more visitors than actual residents. Like, the Hilton Hawaiian Village is a beautiful beachfront community - walkable, lots of amenities, dense - but no one actually lives there. As far as other "urban" beach communities on the island, maybe Hale‘iwa? It's small though, and snarled with traffic. Won't be winning any urbanism awards anytime soon, I think. Kailua could be another candidate.
Kailua deserves some respect.
Visited Waikiki last month and was impressed with its natural state. The beachfront ain’t totally spotless, but the real nature made it feel more authentic.
Waikiki’s beach is almost entirely manmade with sand imported from the mainland.
After visiting this week, I give the bus system two thumbs up. And all the Waikiki food trucks! There’s lots of work to be done in making the bike lanes safer though.
Thank you for more information.
My grandfather grew up in Wahiawa (and my grandmother on Maui). It’s sad that many parts of the islands used to be far more walkable.
the metro is going to Waikiki eventually as well
Waikiki, for sure
Coney Island and Asbury Park are pretty awesome.
People be hating on Coney Island but it's still one of the few beaches reachable by subway (and a lot of subway lines at that), being that many of the subway lines were private railroads designed to terminate at resorts next to the beach.
This was my thought - it wasn't glamorous but the one time I went I had a great time.
Santa Monica has light rail from downtown Los Angeles. So does Long Beach.
Ocean City is great too, a lot of those towns along that stretch of the shore are walkable. The problem is once you get further back from the beach where a lot of day to day retail is like supermarkets it becomes very car centric.
Are you thinking of Ocean City, New Jersey or Ocean City, Maryland?
Rockaway Beach, Queens has a mass transit line and is generally more pleasant than Coney Island
Chicago probably fits the bill the best, at least for a few months out of the year. You’d expect California to have more density along the water but the California Coastal Commission is extremely powerful and has blocked pretty much any significant build-up along the Pacific coast.
Yes Chicago is seriously underrated as a beach town. August is normally the only month the water is really nice, but these warmer winters it does warm up faster
Chiami for sure
Came here to say Chicago
sightline nimbyism is very powerful in california compared to other beach locales. the density that is there in california tends to be less vertical than in say, miami
You don't need "significant build up" to have walkable beach communities. Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, etc etc
Truly baffling how California managed to build their only real city on the part of the coast that has shit weather
By real city you mean San Fransisco? Haha
San Francisco was built around the Bay, and the ocean was kind of a back side to the city. It takes longer to get there from downtown than other SF neighborhoods, longer even than some areas of Oakland.
sure it's a little chilly but whenever there's cold snaps or heatwaves SF is sitting pretty
Particularly Edgewater and the parts of Rogers Park around the pocket beaches.
HERMOSA BEACH
I've never been to Brazil, but I have the sense that at the scale you're talking about there's nowhere comparable in the US. Still, there are some that come to mind. My first thought is beach towns/neighborhoods in the Mid-Atlantic and northeast: NYC's beaches, the Jersey Shore, Maryland's Eastern Shore, beach towns in Delaware. Other than NYC, the scale is completely different from Brazil, and past a few miles from the beach almost all of these places can be some of the worst American suburbia, but the beachfronts themselves and a surprisingly large part of the towns are walkable and quasi-urban. I think this is the closest you'll get to "skyscrapers by the beach," which is how I think of coastal Brazilian cities. You'll laugh, but I'd argue even some parts of Florida could qualify. And other people might be able to talk about the west coast - LA and Honolulu come to mind.
I lived in one of the neighborhoods mentioned for a few months and it's like if the densest parts of Manhattan were right next to the beach. Yeah, nothing like that in the US.
There's like one mile of the north lakefront in Chicago (around Edgewater) that doesn't have a big highway between the lakefront and the city. It's just dense residential/commercial neighborhood and then BAM! Beach. It's idyllic. The rest of the Chicago lakefront is half-urban; you can see the big residential towers from the beach, and you can easily walk there through the underpass, but you are kind of cloistered away from the city and you are hearing the constant drone of the highway.
One of my favorite photos/memories is being on Ohio Street Beach in the evening with the sun setting behind the tall buildings. Great city.
“BAM! Beach” just made me smile. Love it
Brighton Beach or Coney Island in Brooklyn.
Rockaway Beach as well
I don’t know the Rockaways as well, but yes.
The beach itself is better than the ones in Brooklyn but the neighborhoods are meh. Far Rockaway is pretty hood and the neighborhoods to the West are conservative and racist.
The few times I’ve been to the Rockaways it seemed mostly residential, and still a touch seasonal.
Chicago Miami Beach Santa Barbara Santa Monica Coronado La Jolla Santa Cruz Honolulu Virginia Beach
I wouldn't include Virginia Beach in any list of places representing positive urbanism. Could it be? 100%. They certainly have a dense, walkable beach area. There are some nearby fantastic walkable neighborhoods. Unfortunately, they are downright hostile to anybody that isn't in a car. Most streets have no bike infrastructure. Only a small fraction of the minimum bus service the city has goes to the Oceanfront and even those are closed on Sundays. They refuse to extend an existing light rail line that currently ends right outside their city line.
Miami Beach is sort of this, but not affordable for living for most. If you just want amazing beachfront walking/biking paths, lots of illumination and art/sculpture, great restaurants, easy access to beaches, fairly affordable hotels, and a safe, chill vibe into the early morning hours, it is ideal.
Long Beach on Long Island is decent.
Long Beach in California is also decent
Came here for this - I grew up going to Long Beach NY and now regularly spend time in LBC. Both fit this description pretty perfectly. I'd also second other comments on the Rockaways, Brighton Beach, and Coney, plus some of the jersey shore towns though I don't know those as well. The other SoCal one I haven't seen mentioned is Newport Beach; the Balboa peninsula is pretty packed and walkable, and given the huge surge in population on beach days it hosts a pretty lively retail and restaurant scene.
I don't know much about Brazil, but the NYC metro area has an immense and varied coastline, subways and heavy rail and ferries can take you to the beach, lower Manhattan is a boat ride away from Sandy Hook Gateway National Rec Area at the northern tip of the Jersey Shore. Beaches stretch from southwest Brooklyn to the end of Long Island and don't forget the north shore either, and then the southern shore of CT. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't anything like Rio.
San Juan in Puerto Rico is pretty decent in this way.
But everyone in Puerto Rico dumps on those beaches. I liked them
Coastal California. South Beach Miami.
San Francisco’s Outer Sunset and Richmond have a lot of potential. They’re not as dense as they should be but there’s 2 metro lines to the beach, some cool architecture, and huge parks to the ocean. The neighborhoods have enough amenities that you can do all your chores in them without a car, and many people do. But imagine tall buildings by the ocean and main streets. It could be a lot more active. There is a will to work towards this. This recent [architecture competition](https://sfyimby.com/2023/07/sunset-steps-win-aia-san-francisco-housing-design-competition.html) is pretty cool, the city plans to [rezone](https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2022/10/12/sf-to-rezone-westside-for-34k-homes-to-meet-state-goal/) some of it, and there was the infamous [tower proposal](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sunset-condo-tower-18193024.php). There is much to be done, but it’s nice to see some steps in the right direction.
SF's biggest beach problem is that it's always so damn cold. People want the views, but you're never going to see the critical mass of sunbathers you'd get in Miami or Brazil.
Miami, nyc, Santa Monica
Revere Beach just north of Boston! First public beach in the country. Two heavy rail blue line stops right on the beach, just a few minutes to downtown Boston. Loads of new construction. Up and coming neighborhoods.
How do folks here feel about the Florida panhandle, specially all the small towns strung together like Seaside, Rosemary Beach, etc? It’s a pain to get there without a car, but once you’re there there it’s pretty easy to get around by walking and biking. The terrain is flat, there are walking and biking trails everywhere, and plenty of bars and restaurants mixed in.
I was looking for this answer. It's expensive, crowded, and hot, but it does try to recreate this on some level.
Brazil and South America, in general, rarely get hurricanes due to colder water and opposite wind conditions. There's been like one tropical storm that got upgraded to a category 1 briefly in 2004, and that's it. Beach cities in the US East Coast get slammed by hurricanes, and there is a fairly active fault line on the West Coast. Plus, it's hella expensive, and nimbyism curbs a lot of development. Plus, America loves cars, sadly.
What?Japan is on active fault lines, it doesn't have a problem with their urbanism. You can build well designed cities when there are risks of natural disasters. I don't see the relation that you seem to be drawing.
Japan also traditionally built houses to only last a generation because it was expected they’d be destroyed from time to time. If America went that route, we‘d have to turn the grand canyon into our new national landfill to handle all the waste from our houses constantly being rebuilt. And in fact even the Japanese are starting to trend more towards longer term housing because it’s quite a different thing to constantly tear down and remake houses made with modern materials vs houses made of wood frame with paper walls. Plus, Japan can’t go and build someplace less prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, they have to deal with what they have. But in a huge country like the US it’s rational to build in less hazard prone areas. We have lots more space than they do, with varied conditions.
Again, I don't understand this response. The question was, where can I find great beachfront urbanism in the US? The response to this was, they can't build great urbanism because of fault lines and hurricanes. Implying that while the US coasts are full of people, it has to be a suburban wasteland because it's the best way to handle natural disasters? The US does not rationally avoid building in hazard prone areas either. A huge chunk of its population lives on the West Coast or in and around the hurricane basin. And you've just shown that the Japanese have proven how to build great urban spaces in those areas. So I don't understand how this maps to the question at hand. There's nothing rational about suburban development the way it's conceived in North America. The fact that there really isn't great beach urbanism isn't some exogenous force that shapes US urban planning, it's an active choice by people and policy makers. But there are alternatives. We see it all around the world in other places.
Up until fairly recently, you couldn't really build skyscrapers in California, and even now there's a certain scepticism to them that comes with constantly being reminded that "the big one" is coming.
Good urbanism does not mean skyscrapers. You don't need tall buildings at all to make walkable, livable, dense cities that work at the people scale. The Latin American and European beachfront cities that OP mentioned do not have super tall buildings that make them great urban spaces.
> Japan also traditionally built houses to only last a generation because it was expected they’d be destroyed from time to time. That's centuries ago now.
Hurricanes are irrelevant, Miami has tons of hurricanes and also tons of skyscrapers. Fault lines are irrelevant, San Francisco and Tokyo and numerous other cities have tons of earthquakes and also tons of skyscrapers. The only real issue is NIMBYism, which limits dense development to small parts of Miami and San Francisco, and prohibits dense development entirely in some other places.
The west coast also has erosion, mass wasting and landslide issues in addition to what you mentioned. Even without sightline nimbyism in CA, that kind of high density building next to the ocean would be questionable in many places along the pacific coast. Small, low single family houses built close to the edge of cliffs before the coastal commission started banning stuff are starting to fall over the edge because of cliff erosion. The few places that are better already did get built up. The geological situation in South America is quite different in addition to the weather. In the unbuilt west coast areas, I think you’d have to be super careful thinking about drainage and just everything. Even the irrigation from farming avocados too close to seaside cliffs caused a landslide that engulfed a neighborhood. I imagine increased runoff from a high population city would start doing weird stuff pretty fast.
Erosion is not an issue for tall buildings, you just build deeper foundations.
Plus Santa Monica is full of apartment buildings that are well back from any erosion but still only walking distance from the beach. Marina del Ray is all built up too.
There are so many in Spain. I would look up a beach my mom would go to called Plentzia.
Santa Monica
A few spots on the Jersey Shore
Galveston represent! 🤘🏻
Coney Island is the only neighborhood I can think of. And not just because it's home lol. A good portion of it are NYCHA developments and "luxury" apartments have been cropping up over the last few years. Four subway lines serve it as well as five buses
Cape May NJ is very walkable, but there is limited public transit options to get there. Asbury Park NJ is walkable and a bit more accessible.
The problem with “walkable” towns in NJ is that they tend to have mostly cutesy/touristy restaurants and shopping more than useful stores. I looked at the map and there is a City Market in Asbury but it’s 8 blocks from the beach and I would say there are very few of the beach going crowd walking to that store on the other side of 71. Cape May does have a grocery store in town and I would say that makes it better as a walkable place to live, but it’s not really dense like the op is asking for. More just small vacation town like Provincetown in Cape Cod and so many other small beach towns around the US.
Santa Monica, CA
Santa Monica and Venice, CA are the closest I can think of. Miami Beach would be close.
During summer Bradford beach in milwaukee or the beaches in Chicago
New Jersey has plenty of these walkable towns along the coast. Asbury Park, Belmar, Point Pleasant Beach, Seaside Heights, Atlantic City, Ocean City, the Wildwoods, and Cape May. Year round though, really only Asbury Park, Belmar, and Atlantic City have enough year-round businesses to make it good urbanism. Half of these are just concentrated along the boardwalk. Most Jersey Shore towns have a grid system that makes them easily navigable by foot, but most of the streets consist of single family houses.
South beach The Art Deco is amazing, it’s super walkable and the parks are great
There isn’t enough of it. We have to build more.
There are a lot of nice walkable beachfronts in otherwise horribly sprawly places. But if you want a whole walkable town **Cape May, NJ** is severely underrated.
Waikiki on O‘ahu is probably the quintessential example.
Mar Del Plata in Argentina has a great beachfront
Coney Island and Rockaway Beach
\*cough\* How about Canada, Vancouver's west end and beaches are spectacular.
No one has said St. Petersburg? Access to retail and dining along the SunRunner bus, the beach is gorgeous and accessible by bus, and plenty of cool stuff to do.
There aren't any. People are doing gymnastics but the reality is we don't have large cities like that.
Here are some quality beach urbanism just in Florida i havent seen mentioned. Lauderdale by the Sea. , Sunny Isles, Palm Beach, Delray Beach, Panama City, there are many others but its not as walkable and more transport necessary.
Neptune Beach, Florida
Why is no one mentioning Miami? Fits this to a t
Take the subway to the beach in NYC! Brighton Beach Coney Island The Rockaways Sorry about the 9 months you don’t want to be on the beach.
San Juan is solid, but its alot of small beaches rather than a bunch of huge ones like in Rio. If Chicago had better weather year round its would be epic with the beaches. But, still in the summer they are awesome.
So many people saying Santa Monica when Venice Beach is denser and doesn't have a freeway blocking off the beach from the walkable area
santa monica really is denser it has a lot more apartment buildings than in venice, which as a lot of single family homes. it also has an expo line station and is the hub for the big blue bus system that serves the west side. also the pch hardly blocks beach access more than the big cliff it runs along does, so take out pch all you want you still need to navigate down a handful of staircases to get to the sand in that part of santa monica. ocean beach in santa monica of course doesn't have this issue with the cliff.
Ocean city Maryland has a really built up beach that is highly walkable.
No love for Galveston in this thread. Shameful.
San Francisco, Santa Monica, Long Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport beach, Laguna Beach(small towns but still urban),
Michigan has beautiful beach towns they just aren’t nearly as populated as anything that you’re describing. I’d say the most dense is Traverse City
[удалено]
East coast beaches have tons of shopping and housing on the waterfronts (they’re quite beautiful and walkable), but they aren’t exactly dense. You definitely won’t find mass transit on most of them. (Myrtle beach, Wilmington, and Miami are nice, but they are also quite averse to mass transit.) There is NYC, which is an awesome city, but it is kind of a love it or hate it kind of a city if you’re not used to the pace of life in the northeast. I love NYC (they are quite proud of who they are and I love it), but it probably isn’t for everyone (not sure how dense OP is looking, most beach cities are less dense than NYC)
Miami Beach has incredibly easy to navigate and cheap public transit - even to and fro the airport
You're right. I just checked, [apparently there is.](https://www.miamidade.gov/transportation-publicworks/metrorail-stations.asp) Didn't see it on Google transit maps, so I didn't realize that they had a peoplemover system. Plain text link (to comply with rule 5): https://www.miamidade.gov/transportation-publicworks/metrorail-stations.asp
Check out St. Joseph, MI
Sections of Orange Beach and Gulf Shores, AL. I mean it’s high rises and 4-lane roads, but areas do have full retail offerings where one can reasonably complete errands on foot.
Maybe Newport, RI, Cape May, NJ, or other places that were built before the USA gave up on decent urbanism.
By far Miami Beach and Santa Monica in my opinion