What’s your walk score?

In the post peak-oil era (and even before it) the ability to walk (or comfortably bike, at least) to destinations will be come increasingly important.

What’s the easiest way to judge how walkable a neighborhood is?  By determining if there’s anything close by worth walking to.

That’s what this website is designed to calculate.  It takes into consideration the distances to destinations that Google maps has scores and assigns your neighborhood an arbitrary value based on the types of attractions around it and how far they are.

All you do is type in your address: The walking score of my neighborhood is a 32 (car dependent) :-(

The most walkable cities? In order: San Fran, NYC, Boston and Chicago.

It’s an interesting idea for a website that will no doubt play a significant role in the real estate market.  I myself have used the website is helping decide my top picks for medical schools.

I feel that the increased urbanization of america is inevitable, and that the era of the suburban catastrophe will drawing to a close.  With that in mind, (if you’re a real estate investor) buying property with high walking scores might not be a bad idea.

Post your scores here.

Posted in link out, musings | 3 Comments »