The 25 areas we cover in and around Upper Arlington

The everyday centre of Upper Arlington: a 1950s shopping strip, the main library, and streets that go quiet by nine.

The 1913 garden-suburb core on the National Register: Tudor and Colonial Revival houses, curving streets, and no commerce at all.

The bluff above the Scioto beside Scioto Country Club, where Jack Nicklaus learned to play. Big houses, big trees, zero shops.

Post-war family streets around Barrington Elementary, ten minutes' walk from Kingsdale and the best-value base in the city.

North Upper Arlington around Canterbury Road and Thompson Park: 1960s houses, deep gardens, and the Lane Road library.

The streets around Upper Arlington High School on Ridgeview Road — Friday-night lights in autumn, silence the rest of the year.

Built around Northam Park's tennis courts, pool and the main library — the most walkable, most sociable corner of the city.

Nineteen-twenties brick shopfronts, a pocket park and the best-kept streets in Old Arlington — walkable, photogenic, and asleep by nine.

Upper Arlington's practical centre: a big grocery, medical offices, apartments over shops, and free parking for a thousand cars.

Post-war ranches, curving streets and the city's best parks — a quiet, car-dependent base for families and long stays.

The Scioto River edge along Riverside Drive: reservoir sunsets, boat ramps, big houses, historic golf — and nowhere to walk to.

A separate small city next door: two proper walkable strips, real bars, a drafthouse cinema and the nearest hotel cluster.

A village of six hundred people on the Scioto: old money, old trees, quarry history, and a Metro Park two minutes upriver.

Cheap beds, late food and 100,000-seat football across the river — the busiest, loudest and best-connected base near Upper Arlington.

Gaslit brick streets and turreted houses west of High Street, Goodale Park at the centre, Short North noise exactly one block away.

Columbus at its loudest and best: lighted arches, galleries, patios and the city's densest run of hotel rooms on North High Street.

Ravines, roses and a four-mile strip of independent shops north of campus — cheap, leafy, and desperately short of actual hotel rooms.

A 1803 New England village transplanted to Ohio: green, spire, antique shops and a year-round Saturday market, eight miles north.

Historic stone village on one bank, glass-and-brick Bridge Park on the other, joined by a curving footbridge over the Scioto.

The cheapest decent rooms near Upper Arlington: motorway chains, a small restored old town, big parks and free parking everywhere.

Upper Arlington's east-side twin: big trees, big houses, an art deco cinema, a governor's residence and almost no hotel rooms.

The only real hotel cluster in the region: Statehouse, arena, riverfront museums, and a 15-minute drive back to Upper Arlington.

Brick streets, 19th-century cottages and Schiller Park just south of downtown Columbus — pretty, low-rise and short on hotel rooms.

Twelve miles north of Upper Arlington: the Columbus Zoo, a compact old crossroads village and a car-dependent family base.

A real county-seat town 25 miles north: college campus, working main street, two state parks and the cheapest rooms in the guide.