Walk Score: Every Big-City Neighborhood in America
WorldChanging Team, 17 Jul 08
40 cities, 2,058 neighboords, and one Walk Score to rule them all.
It's here! The biggest 40 cities in America ranked by their walkability. Plus, every single neighborhood in those cities -- all 2,508 of them -- rank-ordered for your walking pleasure.
** In a surprise upset, San Francisco edges out NYC for top honors in walkability. Who else made it into the Top 10?
** The Northwest's most walkable neighborhood is in Portland. It's the Pearl District, no suprise, ranking as the 15th best neighborhood for walking in the nation. (Seattle's best showing, Pioneer Square, is 18th). See the rest of America's best walking neighborhoods.
** But Seattle is the Northwest's walking leader, earning a higher overall score than Portland. (The Emerald City ranks 4 slots higher than the Rose City.) Still, both Northwest metropolises do well by national standards. Who doesn't do so well?
** Plus, there are all kinds of new goodies at the Walk Score site. You can take a photo tour of a walking oasis in an unwalkable city. Or you can learn the secrets of walkable cities. You read the Walk Score blog. And then you can help improve America's Walk Score.
Today's release from Walk Score is truly path-breaking. It's the first time this stuff has been quantified and compared on such a large scale. And it's a huge step toward creating great urban places. Walkable neigbhorhoods are easier on our pocketbooks; good for our waistlines; great for kids, older folks and others who don't drive; and helpful to the whole planet. All of us here at Sightline extend a big fat "Congratulations!" to our friends at Walk Score. Walk on, you guys!
Readers, you already knew all about Walk Score, right? We've written about it on Sightline here and here (and on Worldchanging here), among other places. And we loved it when they roled out an early release of the Seattle neighborhood rankings last month.
This article originally appeared on Sightline Daily.
Photo credit: Flickr/LFL16, licensed by Creative Commons.
This post seems to omit the site's URL: http://www.walkscore.com/
Posted by: Allen Varney on 17 Jul 08
More precisely, the first link on this post redirects back to this post. But I see that the other links do in fact go to Walk Score. Sorry for the confusion.
Posted by: Allen Varney on 17 Jul 08
My walk score is just 20 so as you see my present neighborhood is not very walkable. This service can be especially useful for those who are going to buy a house cause it can help to estimate a particular location. But how often do we walk nowadays? I ve found one more service called drive score at http://drivescore.fizber.com/ With it one can see how close establishments are by car. Homes are often located in an area where restaurants, libraries, grocery stores, hospitals and other businesses are easier to get to by car than on foot.
Posted by: Tina on 22 Jul 08
