The best thing about Chichester is everything that isn't Chichester. Chichester Harbour sits to the south, the South Downs to the north, and a ring of villages with their own character separates the cathedral postcode from each. Green space averages about 160 metres from any front door. Around thirty green spaces sit inside a kilometre of the typical address. Water is under 300 metres on average. Five out of five on the surroundings, and not by accident.
Green space access is the standout. Almost every address inside the postcode area is within roughly 160 metres of a park, a common, a churchyard, a recreation ground or one of the open spaces that the cathedral city accumulated over a thousand years of being a cathedral city. About thirty green spaces are reachable inside a kilometre of the typical home, which is denser than most southern cities manage. Water is under 300 metres on average, and around forty blue-space points sit inside a kilometre of the typical address. The National Cycle Network passes within about 800 metres of a typical postcode, and about two in five postcodes sit comfortably close to it.
The surrounding villages give the area its character. To the south, the harbour-edge villages of Fishbourne, Dell Quay and Bosham trade Roman remains for sailing clubs and tidal lanes that disappear and reappear on a schedule. Fishbourne Roman Palace sits within a short drive of the cathedral, on the line of what the Romans laid out and the modern street plan still uses. To the east, Boxgrove Priory and the Goodwood estate (with the house, the stables, the golf course and Carne's Seat among the listed buildings) anchor a landscape that mixes monastic ruins, country-house grounds and rolling parkland. To the north and northwest, the villages of East Dean, East Lavant, Mid Lavant, West Stoke and Funtington run up against the South Downs, with Devil's Ditch tracing a line through the countryside in fragments that nobody now uses for the purpose it was dug, whatever that purpose was. To the east of the city, Westhampnett, Tangmere and Eartham sit on the coastal plain where the Romans first arrived.
This page also covers the surrounding villages and hamlets of Aldingbourne, Boxgrove, Eartham, East Dean, Eastergate, Fishbourne, Funtington, Nutbourne and Oving. The cathedral city draws the visitors. The postcode covers the country. Most of what makes Chichester a place worth being in lives outside the medieval walls.
So: the surroundings score five out of five and the rating is doing what it should. Cathedral, harbour, downs, Roman remains, villages with their own lives, and green space at the end of any street. The city is the postcode that gets named on the deed. The reason people stay is mostly the postcode's neighbours.