Green space sets Raleigh, N.C., apart on Redfin’s list, where the city ranks ninth overall. Ninety-three percent of Raleigh residents live within half a mile of a park, the highest share among all cities studied, and the city ranks fifth for the number of social clubs per capita. Five Points puts that park access to use with shops and green space within walking distance of most homes, while Mordecai builds its community around active neighborhood groups and shared gardens.
The Mordecai Community Action Coalition has organized an annual picnic in the neighborhood for more than 40 years, alongside a yard sale day each spring and park work days throughout the year for weeding, planting, and mulching. A nearby brewery, Pelagic, has taken over sponsorship of the neighborhood’s stream cleanup from the coalition, keeping the tradition going even as the group that started it has moved on to other projects. Mordecai Historic Park adds its own recurring event with an annual heirloom plant sale each spring, drawing gardeners from across the city to a lawn that once belonged to one of Wake County’s largest plantations.
The typical home in Raleigh sold for $430,000 this year, down 2.4% from a year earlier, a decline similar in scale to Austin’s. Unlike Austin, though, Raleigh’s ranking leans almost entirely on physical proximity, in the form of parks within walking distance of nearly every home, rather than on any single volunteering or civic-engagement statistic, showing that access to shared outdoor space alone can pull a city up the list. Five Points backs up that pattern with roughly 7,500 residents packed into a walkable grid of shops and parks north of downtown. Residents there consistently point to the same handful of traits when describing the area, including charm, convenience, and dog-friendliness, all qualities that depend on people actually being outside and running into each other rather than staying indoors. Mordecai’s own park work days, organized every year for weeding, planting, and mulching, give residents a similar reason to show up outdoors on a schedule rather than by chance.
