Walking
Someone on one of my email lists posted a link to WalkScore which is a google maps based site that attempts to measure how walkable a neighborhood is, mostly based on the proximity of various places you might want to go (stores, schools, parks, etc).
Our new house scores a 25 out of 100, right between not walkable and driving only. I think that’s probably fair, although my subjective rating is mostly based on the things that didn’t make it into their scoring system. There are a bunch of things we go to that are within a mile, and they seem to assume that people won’t walk that far. I’m happy to walk that far, but I’m not willing to cross Columbia Pike other than with a stoplight, even when there’s a marked crosswalk. D’s elementary school is about 1/2 a mile away, but there’s no sidewalks for part of it, so the county provides a bus. Lots of things are in biking distance, although I’m not sure I’d be willing to bike the places I won’t walk, and the hills are brutal.
Our old house scores an 83, which I think is about right, maybe a bit low. The first time I entered the address in NYC where I grew up (a week or so ago), it gave me a 97 or 98, which seemed like proof that you couldn’t get a 100 using their algorithm. But I just tried again, and it spit back a score of 100, so I guess they fixed that glitch.
I’d love to see some analysis of the distribution of the population of the US across their index. My guess is that no more than 5 to 10 percent of the US lives in places that score as very walkable (70 or higher), and that probably 1/3 of those who do live in New York City.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Our house scored 58. There’s a Giant, a library, a nice park, and a school all very close by. However, they also list quite a few things as “walkable” that I wouldn’t walk to if you paid me, like the Starbucks in Woodmoor, which is a mile and quarter away, with intermittent sidewalks and several busy roads to cross. Our old address in NYC only scored 97 as well. The house I grew up in scored 29, probably because it’s a rural area and the nearest movie theater is 30 miles away, LOL. However, you could walk to grocery store, walk to school, walk to the library, and walk to the playground no problem.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Our neighborhood (in Long Beach, CA) scored 77. But we consciously looked for a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood when we were looking for an apartment.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:16 am
cool site.
32 at our current place, 63 at our old place. Seems relatively accurate. But, it doesn’t take into account the fact that we live on a ridge, so walking in any direction but north or south means steep a steep hill.
I need to check out the coffee shops & restaurant it found, though. I guess part of the proof of relatively low walkability is that we don’t know the places within walking distance, ’cause we tend to drive.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:08 am
Really cool site. Where I lived in London only scored 68, which I found quite unbelievable, given we only used a car to get out of London when we lived there. But we did use public transport a lot, rather than walking – to get to the cinema for example – and I don’t think all the shops were properly categorised.
Here in Sydney, unfortunately none of my local shops are in google maps, so I can’t test it properly. I was expecting something up in the 90s, but can’t work it out without the algoritm.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:36 am
Our house scored a 35, but our neighbor on the next block scored a 75. That’s odd. Our old house (.8 miles away) scored an 85.
Our problem is that we live between a lake and a park. We walk to the lake and the park ALL the time, but it doesn’t count those as desirable walking targets. Being so close to the lake really limits our “walkability” to shopping. (water, water, everywhere.) But, it is one of our top daily walking destinations, and that is hard to measure.
Still, really cool site.
I wouldn’t cross Columbia Pike on foot, either. Although in High School, I attempted to….many times…
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:38 am
Very cool site.
Our current home scored a zero, which strikes me as perfectly accurate.
Our old house in CT scored a 37, which also strikes me as about right.
The house I grew up in, in suburban Minneapolis, scored an 86. It wasn’t quite that high when I was a kid, because the grocery store in the strip mall 5 blocks from my house burned down when I was 5 and was replaced with a hardware store, but I could walk everywhere — and hop on a bus to ride downtown in less than 20 minutes. Plus, sidewalks on every single block of the housing area (which turned quiet very quickly after you left the main streets), around the corner from my elementary school — God I miss that neighborhood…..
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:45 am
Thanks for the link to the site. It’s actually from my neck of the woods, which I stumbled on when I saw their example “walkable” and “non-walkable” neighborhoods.
The http://www.sightline.org/ organization that sponsors it is also interesting. I wish they would expand their “livability” arguments further into social factors (as well as environmental factors). But, it’s a start towards creating positive development. I think that people’s ability to live in what environmental groups consider “livable” neighborhoods is significantly impacted by having children. Schools drove a significant part of Elizabeth’s decision (right?) Laura (at 11D) was moved by safety concerns and the exhaustion of dragging strollers around. We moved (still in city though) for more space.
Some of these factors that influenced our moves into lower walkability neighborhoods might be truly incompatible with higher density walkable neighborhoods, but some are not (schools!). And, families with children gain some real advantages from walkability (there’s a huge difference between loading a 4 year old into a car to go to the market, and strolling to the market). Those needs and arguments need to be addressed.
The sightline folks are still too focused on young urbanites. But families are the ones who drive the development.
bj
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:01 pm
I totally agree that kids affects what you consider desirable in a neighborhood. Our decision to move was driven in part by schools, in part by wanting more space (due to kids and their stuff and their need to run like lunatics) and in part by a search for community. I’m still thinking about the complicated ways that community and walkabilty interact.
The thing about walking with kids is very age-dependent. We walked all over the place with the boys in strollers — we easily put 1000 miles on the stroller the the first year. And we did a fair amount of our grocery shopping with the stroller, loading stuff underneath. But now that the boys are too big for strollers, but not big enough to walk long distances, that’s much less practical. I’m willing to walk a mile, but my kids get awfully whiny before then. And even when they’re in a good mood, everything takes 3x as long. (That’s actually one of the reasons that we were willing to move away from the old neighborhood — because we were no longer able to take as much advantage of the walk down King street to the river.)
And then when the kids get older, walkability (and access to public transit) become a big deal again. As I’ve written before, NYC was a great place to be a young teen, because not having a driving license was a total non-issue.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:29 pm
my house scored a 60, but i was surprised that it missed 2 city parks that are within a mile of our house, one just 2 blocks away. it also didn’t include the public swimming pool that is within a mile, or the boys & girls club.
still a good site, and i like that it gets people thinking about these livability issues.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:57 pm
My house, in inner SE Portland, OR, in what was originally built (1908) as a trolley suburb, rates a 93.
Walkability isn’t a very important measure, though, as it assumes that you are able-bodied. I think convenient access to public transit that also serves the kinds of places you need to go (businesses, parks, schools, jobs) is more important.
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Great site, thanks for posting about it. My in-laws are looking to retire from Rochester, NY, to Columbus, OH, to be closer to family and walkability is a big factor for them. Their current house is an 86 and I told them they could use the site to help in hunting for a new place.
Our home here in Shaker Heights, Ohio, is a 46, which strikes me as low. We have two shopping areas less than a mile heading either east or west–grocery stores, restaurants, hardware store, etc. And as a older suburb we have sidewalks throughout and good cross streets. By contrast, our old place in Fairlington (South Arlington) is a 62, but in order to get to most of the places that they list as walkable you’d either need to be walking down/across Route 7 or up and down the big hill between Shirlington and Arlington–neither option is very stroller/child friendly. Our old place in Minneapolis is an 86, but while the neighborhood may have changed in 15 years, it was pretty sketchy when we were living there, so we avoided walking around when possible! Ah well, I guess no algorithm takes everything into account.
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:19 pm
As others have said, that is a really cool site. Thanks for the heads-up. Our score is 49, although of all the restaurants that it lists, it didn’t list the four we actually walk to. And in thinking about one of those particular restaurants, now I’m in the mood for chili dogs….
August 4th, 2007 at 12:46 am
I think this site is terrible. It’s not taking into account the *experience* of walking places, which I belive matters more than distance and sometimes even destination (note commenter above whose daily walks to the lake weren’t counted in her neighborhood’s ‘walkability.’)
From my house they included the community college library, to which I would NEVER walk since it’s almost a 1000′ elevation gain, and also only students can use that library; but they left out the public library, to which I walk twice a month. The public library is slightly downhill from here, on sidewalks almost the whole way, and goes through two lovely parks which are connected by a footbridge over the river. Walking to that library is a treat, so even though it’s a mile my kids and I walk it often.
August 4th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
My current home scored 11, which I pretty much expected to be 0. The only things walkable to are the library and schools. The home I grew up in scored a 58 and an apartment I lived in scored 52. I can’t figure out how the apartment scored less since the neighborhood seemed to be planned out for small housing. Necessity stores were close. I don’t know why bookstores and movie theaters are calculated into this since public transportation is extremely accessible in two out of three the addresses I looked up. Public transportation accessiblility would be another good site to look up scores. Does anyone know of any?
August 4th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Interesting. Our house scored an 82, although that’s partly based on their counting the free movies in our local park in the summer as a ‘movie theatre.’
August 5th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
My neighborhood scored a 17, which at first didn’t surprise me until I realized that the rating didn’t recognize the fact that both the elementary and middle school are right next to our subdivision. My younger child’s preschool is also less than half a mile away.
August 7th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Just back from vacation…This is fascinating. Our current house scores a 43. Our old one a 71. I think that’s right. Our neighborhood is great for walking for exercise but you can’t get many places by walking. I feel the same way about crossing Duke Street as you do about crossing Columbia Pike.
August 7th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
My Long Beach, CA address (hi Rachel!) generated a WalkScore of 85. This makes me happy, not just because I’m competitive (which I am) and not just because I hate the anti-walkability around my workplace in Orange County (which I do), but because I actually *do the walking* that the WalkScore confirms is possible. I love the weekends when I don’t get in my car from Friday night to Monday morning.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:57 am
We’re a 92, which seems right to me. We walk just about everywhere whenever possible. A ton of the places that we walk to have been built since we moved in, so the score wouldn’t have been as high back then, but it still would’ve been fairly high.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:08 am
The house we rented before we bought this place is a 73.
The apartment I grew up in, also in Arlington, is a 62. It probably wasn’t that high back then.
And growing up, I would cross Columbia Pike only at a stoplight, so I totally see you there, Elizabeth, especially with the kids!
August 11th, 2007 at 11:06 am
That’s a fun link. We’re a 71 here; our last place was an 89. I found some things I didn’t know were in my neighborhood!
When we were looking for this house, we told our realtor that our top priority was sidewalks — we wanted a walkable neighborhood. I don’t think she’d had that request very often, but her willingness to respect it was the reason we went with her instead of the guy who insisted we had to find a place with a three-car garage for resale value.
August 11th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
I got a 100 for our NYC neighborhood! Also, my neighborhood growing up, in St. Louis, got an 85 and our Florida one got a 66. My happiness in an area is directly related to its walkability. I love it here in NYC and loved my StL neighborhood, but really did not like the Florida one.
December 12th, 2007 at 9:45 am
My walk score is 35. That’s not so bad I should say. This service can be rather useful especially for those who are going to buy a house or just want to estimate their present location. So as it turned out my neighborhood is quite walk able. I have also tried one more service at http://drivescore.fizber.com/. It is called Drive Score. With the help of it you can see how close establishments are by car. My result is 50.