This is a pretty cool tool. You just type in an address, and it tells you how "walkable" the area is, in terms of how close different services and stores are. My neighborhood scored an 86, which is pretty good but makes me wonder what neighborhood could possibly get a 100. Maybe if you lived in a shopping mall, or in certain parts of New York.
Also, it's clearly not a perfect program, as it told me that my closest bar was an Orange Julius. I wouldn't have moved here if that was true.
Tell me what your neighborhood's walkability score is!
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Very cool program, though. Thanks for sharing!
It's also funny how they class things though, a Key Food is classed with supermarkets but so is the corner bodega, so it can be misleading when it tells you you're near all the essentials. Also lots of bookstores in my neighborhood, but most of them are Judaica stores.
86 must be pretty awesome!
However, they told me my nearest bookstore is the Naughty and Nice Boutique. They probably need to sell instruction manuals for many of their strappy-lingerie devices, so perhaps it constitutes a bookstore.
Leominster walkability score is much more like a 10 or lower.
Edited at 2008-05-05 05:36 pm (UTC)
Outdated though it is, I do like that is provides at least a little bit of an attempt to rate places by "Places to live that you are least likely to need an automobile to get basic goods and services." I mean, a state park is wonderfully walkable if the only goods and services you are looking for are fresh air and nature. :) But if you want groceries and stuff, I think the score changes. I wonder how many points a Dunkin Donuts adds to it?
Now, if I'm looking at a neighborhood I don't know but am considering moving to, then this chart helps.
Hm, I wonder if they calculate that into the index at all? (Since by definition that's mostly useful if you're NOT walking.)
I am curious about their algorithm as well. My neighborhood easily scores high for me, but for example, I have to walk a mile to get to even a single screen theater. However, I can catch the train 1/2 a block from my house and walk less than 1/2 a block to a theater downtown once I am off the train.
The longest regular weekly "must" walk we do is to the grocery store, which is six blocks away. I have one less than a block away, but it suck-diddly-ucks.
88
My mom's house in suburban urban Cleveland:
About 78
My dorm in New Paltz,
NY: 9 ...yeah I can attest to that.
My high school house in a small town in suburban Cleveland:
65
cambridge (near porter square) is 88
lincoln is 29
I have done this before in the past, but always fun to do it again: Walk Score: 92 out of 100
So, it seems I have improved my lot for walkability. I know we haven't had a care coming up on 9 years now.
I wish there was some explanation of how the scores are calculated.
The funny thing is, it listed the nearest grocery store as a butcher shop. :)
Edited at 2008-05-05 09:27 pm (UTC)
I probably would get a 25 in reality.
My sister's old house in Montpelier got an 89, although her new place in the middle-of-nowhere Vermont gets a 0.
Our old apartment in Columbus Ohio got a 75. That place had 4 different ice cream shops in walking distance. Ahh, I miss them!
My bike-riding score would be considerably higher, and that's only because my husband and I happen to both work within 3 miles of our house. Pure chance, that is.
I put in the addresses of a couple of condos we rent out near the train station -- not that that counts, but it means that more things in the categories you want are there -- and it gets a 98. They also happen to be .25 miles from the nearest movie theatre. The searcher would not understand that that's as the crow flies and that it would involve over a mile of walking, but the general idea of the engine seems to work in the greater NYC area.