This doesn't make sense for many American cities where the downtown only houses the municipal government, museums, and boutique shopping, but the city itself has several other major shopping districts, not to mention residential and industrial districts. These different districts are often miles and miles apart with no easy walking routes between or often within the districts. For example, Anchorage, Alaska, is 1,704.7 sq. miles (4,415.1 sq. km) [1], and it can sometimes take over 2 hours to drive from one end of the city to the other.
