California Leads the Nation in Walkability and Urban Farming

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Urban farming options and easy walkability are just two of the many reasons to live in San Francisco.

There’s so much to love already about beautiful California; now we can add walkable and urban-farming-friendly cities to the list. If either or both of these are important to you, the Golden State is the place to be, according to two recent Redfin studies.

Three California cities made Redfin’s list of most walkable, easily leading the rest of the country. San Francisco comes in at number two, and Oakland and Long Beach round out the list at numbers nine and ten. This is especially good news for Long Beach, which has made dedicated efforts to improve the city’s walkability over the past several years. In fact, Long Beach had the largest increase in walkability score among cities in the top ten, thanks to downtown developments focusing on pedestrian lighting, rehabilitation projects, and safer sidewalks.

California is also well-represented in Redfin’s list of the top cities for urban farming, with Santa Rosa at number three and San Francisco at number six. Urban farming includes raising chickens, maintaining a plot on the roof of a condo building, or using lawns and parks for community gardening. Urban farming is a growing trend in part because it “provides food security, it creates entrepreneurs and local jobs and enriches our quality of life,” according to Danielle O’Leary, Santa Rosa’s economic development manager.

San Francisco is a standout for being on both lists, in addition to all the other benefits of living in this beautiful city. It’s not cheap to own a home here, but being able to walk to your destinations and grow some of your own produce means a significant yearly savings in transportation and food costs. According to Bankrate.com for example, it’s common for people to spend up to 20% of their salary on expenses related to owning a car. Your savings on food will vary depending on what you grow, but can definitely add up if you’re part of a community garden.

If you want to say goodbye to your commute or hello to backyard farming, GoldenStateMortgage.com would love to help.

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