Another factor that the walk-score site doesn't acknowledge is the coincidental placement of city limits. My own city of Atlanta scores fairly low. While the suburbs are admittedly sprawl-y, the urban core likely scores fairly well. We just have the misfortune of effectively including a large suburb (Buckhead) in our city limits, dragging down the average. San Francisco's city limits basically only include the dense urban core, allowing them to score so high on average.
You should read some Jane Jacobs and Howard Kuntsler this summer - you will find most of your points echoed and expanded upon.
For the counterpoint though, follow some discussions in Houston which, while not having much of a downtown has the most robust urban economy and one of the lowest costs of living and arguably the best opportunities for class mobility: houstonstrategies.blogspot.com/
(note I live in walkable Philadelphia and prefer it to auto-suburbs)
May I ask what you consider to be a "large body of water"? If I wanted to be pedantic, I would say it's controversial that ANY of the ten most walkable are not on a large body of water. More to the point, Memphis is most definitely on a large body of water. I say this confidently because I live in New Orleans, which is on two large bodies of water, neither of which is the Gulf of Mexico.
The first things that struck me about the two lists were heat and humidity. I wouldn't be suprised if the decision to walk is based more on sweating in some of these hot, humid, southern cities, compared with showing up at work dry and ready to go (if a little chilled) in the northern cities. Even though there are hot "walkable" cities (e.g., LA, Long Beach), they lack the humidity of the others. Maybe it's not the whole story, but it's possibly a part of it.
Yeah, Portland's the sort of place where people made tough decisions and decided we'd rather have a livable city than a highway-dominated mess.
Over the past forty years, from reinvesting in downtown to discouraging wasteful suburban sprawl through our land use planning laws, we've gone a different direction.
I think it is probably the newness of the growht... and that might be correlated better to cul-de-sacs per road mile.
building neighborhoods with cul-de-sacs makes everyone depend on cars.
having lived in some of the "best" and one of the "worst" cities on the list, that is my non-scientific analysis.
@ michael - i live in an ATL suburb that scores poorly when I plug in my address... there seemed to be a lot of walkable sites missing, so i've added them. need to check to see if that has improved the score. we walk everywhere, though our neighbors often ask us if our car is broken or something.
The reason LA and Long Beach are counted as walkable is that they both make up only a small portion of what any layperson would consider LA. The ENTIRE BASIN should count as LA, not just the small subset that is Municipal LA. Notice that as soon as you get away from the small LA downtown everything turns bright red. In New York almost the entire 5 boroughs are dark green. That's walkability.
Note: the reason that San Francisco is above New York City is because of places like Staten Island and eastern Queens dragging down the rest of the city.
For Portland, we artificially created growth limits. Where San Francisco's growth was limited by the bay and the ocean, Portland created a "Metro" boundary that severely limits suburban sprawl. Portland was so effective in it's implementation of Metro that I am surprised that it is languishing at number 10. This is all the more remarkable considering that Portland is generally considered the nation's most "bikable" city.
While I believe the above comment (Nate's) shows an impressive amount of insight, humidity tells only a part of the story. To illuminate the entire hidden side of walkability, one must consider another factor: obesity. This distinctly American trait, like humidty, is far more proliferative in the swealtering barbeue joints of Fort Worth than the yuppified coffee houses of Seattle. And while one may take a trolley to a San Franciscan sushi bar, only most mud flap-laden of Dodge Rams will suffice to be parked in the lot of a Kansas City steak house. The roots of walkability may lie in the history of these cities, but recent divergence (look at Portland vs. Indianapolis) is surely due to the cultural underpinnings of the cities' residents. Our active and imminently exuberant Portlanders or Bostonians will continue to reward centrally-located attractions with their business, while the rotund citizens of Memphis or San Antonio will continue to roll to their destinations in air-conditioned serenity.
if you want to go into further analysis on walkable cities, you should look outside of the US. Compared to the rest of the world, we're actually pretty bad at making walkable cities (maybe due to some sort of cultural isolationism issue). I would prefer wandering around on foot in Taipei, Taiwan any day compared to S.F., it's just not walking friendly enough.
here's a shout out for philly- very walk-friendly indeed- i would vote atlantic city for honorable mention- not only do they have an integrated (board) walk, but they have an excellent jitney system- i've heard jitneys work well in some 3rd world cities- i reeeally wish that a jitney system would take hold in philly (ie, a formal 'hack' system)
I applaud your sentiments and as a former Angeleno I agree that Los Angeles is much more walkable than it is generally perceived to be. I wouldn't put absolute faith in the numbers that WalkScore generates, however. I actually do walk most everywhere for routine errands and I take long recreational walks as well but when I plugged in my current address it was classified as only somewhat walkable. Furthermore, I was surprised to discover that I live next door to a lumber yard which, when I looked it up, is actually located 300 miles away. The web site is apparently a work in progress.
This is more proof that there are problems inherent in any algorithm. As jpmeyer pointed out, New York City is brought down by a county that, for these purposes, is not part of the city. (Staten Island, while one of the boroughs of New York, is not a place any person living in Manhattan/Brooklyn/Queens/The Bronx would want to 'walk' to on a whim.
New York is the only city in the country where more than 50% of the residents do not even own a car. No other city even comes close. I think that in itself is a huge testament to its walkability.
'New Development' - if by this, you are talking about developments in eastern Queens, then sure, but this region of the city is really more comparable to the suburbs just outside LA (a part which you conveniently do not include in your calculation for LA). Queens is within the city limits, but it should not factor into the walkability for, say, Manhattan. The two regions are too far apart geographically, and people who live in Manhattan have few reasons (other than perhaps work or visiting friends) to venture out to Queens anyway, mostly for the reason that - surprise! - almost everything is available within walking distance in Manhattan.
With respect to Atlanta, if you look at the map, Buckahead actually fares relatively well. It is the large Western and Southern parts of the city that really bring down the score. The city of Atlanta is already relatively small. The "urban core" with respect to both the city limits and especially to the entire metro area is very small.
Be Aware: Walkscore.com needs major improvements: it listed a quack medical website (elixa.com) as my nearest grocery store and a corporate office as my nearest restaurant when I used my home address.
An interesting yet flawed statistic. The walkability scores are flawed due to the influence of local topology - relates to post 7's basic point out comfort level of walking. I tested my two most recent residences. Both had very walkable scores which did not match with the reality. One residence was in fact very walkable, amenities close and a relatively easy walk. The other residence, while amenities were close in an absolute sense was not in reality. The tool did not account for the 500 ft deep canyon that actually separated my residence from those amenities and made the real path of travel much longer.
How much do factors like this effect the real walkability of cities? I suspect significantly - just because you could, in theory, walk somewhere does not mean you can or will.
I feel a need to represent for eastern Queens. It's a two-fare zone, but that doesn't require anyone to own a car. Is it less walkable than Manhattan? Of course. But it's hardly the suburban sprawl some are making it out to be. The mass transit setup is excellent, and many people get along just fine without a car.
Northern Blvd, Union Tpk, Hillside Ave and Jamaica Ave are fully built up, well beyond the Nassau border. Throw in the cross-boulevards (Francis Lewis, Bell, and Springfield), and you've got a strong grid of businesses and services within walking distance of most residents.
I'm not so sure about the accuracy of the locations on this site...
There's apparently a movie theater within a mile of my home, and yet in reality the movie theater it is referring to is miles away, and the actual location has a bank.
The list also does not take into account the experience of someone stuck in the San Francisco or New York City Financial Districts on a Sunday afternoon with a growling stomach and nothing to do. Density alone does not confer walkability if there's nothing to walk *to* except a bunch of closed lunch places and empty office buildings.
Seven out of the ten most walkable cities lie near a body of water. As stated in the post, these cities had less land to build the cities on, so in order for them to have all necessities, there is more density. This means that you would find everything you need at a walkable distance, making walking a very good alternative to car usage. Also, many of these cities are very congested and there is no place to park your car. Take New York for instance, almost all the time during the day, the streets are full of taxis and other cars, making driving very uncomfortable and slow. People usually take cars to make their lives easier and to get faster from place to place, but in these big cities, where congestion is a major issue, as well as parking, driving a car actually makes it slower for people to move from place to place in a car rather than walking.
If you actually look at the walkability rating on the site, they are rating the most walkable NEIGHBORHOODS, not cities. take a look for yourself.
walkscore.com/rankings/most-walkable-cities.php
If you actually type in a whole cities rating in the search bar, they almost always get a phenomenal score because so much of the ranking has to do with things you pass on the street (ie, shops, theatres, parks, libraries, etc.) Both my city Minneapolis, and Los Angeles, got a score of 97 out of 100 when the whole city was looked at, and Jacksonville, last on this list, got a 95. somehow i doubt those numbers would all be so high if walkability was calculated differently.
First of all, using the site to compare walkability is foolish. The site mentions some of its shortfalls, chiefly that it uses a one size fits all algorethem. Walkability in northern cities is severly diminished in winter, bicycle oriented places (Portland) and hilly places do not change a rating. Also many businesses are not where the site says they are. sidewalks are also not mentioned. I guess this post was a little premature, a week after you mentioned walkability, it is still in its infancy and it is not ready for its rankings to prove anything.
Nate: You may be right about humidity, but having lived in both DC and New York, I can tell you summers in both places are no picnic. I routinely get to work sweaty here in New York, and I certainly did in the DC Swamp.
RS, #23 - This is kind of a spurious argument. Presumably you're only in the financial district on a Sunday because you live there. If you live there you don't really have reason to complain. Otherwise I don't really get what you're getting at.
Hey, what about Brooklyn?? I realize it is part of New York, but my walk score in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn is 95. My walk score in Chelsea was 87.
I've lived in Philly, and although I love Philly, it does not even come close in terms of walkability.
I'm a bit surprised that San Fran comes close to NYC, too. I mean, if you look at the average walkability score per resident, and mulitiply by the total residents, NYC trumps all.
BTW, this blog should also talk about why walkability is important. Everyone takes this for granted but why? Is it the density, the lack of car, the convenience, the neeighborhood, what is it? It's not enough to say that being in the city confers walkability, because there are poorly "designed" parts of NYC that I would never want to visit, let alone live, and other parts that combine all the disadvantages of the city AND the 'burbs together. Just some food for thought.
I looked up my neighborhood, and I'm not really impressed with the results. It's a "very walkable" neighborhood, which is probably true... but the data is garbage, and the algorithm is trivial (it appears to be "how many destinations are within a certain radius").
About the data: one block from here is the mailing address for a small business that drives around to mid-size and larger companies and cleans the coffee machine, stocks disposable cups, delivers cases of coffee, sugar, etc. It's the owner's condo. This is listed as a "coffee shop" in the data.
The school district's administrative office is listed as a "school". The pre-school branch for a private K-8 school is listed as a "school" -- nevermind that the K-8 part is at least another mile further away, on the wrong side of a four-lane freeway.
About the algorithm: You'd think that living directly across the street from the bus station would affect the walkability score... but apparently not.
They also (sadly) don't have any clue whether there are sidewalks or what the terrain is like. I looked up a friend's house, and the score is astonishing, until you remember that they ignore the fact that there ought to be steps instead of a sidewalk going up that hill.
Re: the people who say Staten Island and Queens are "dragging down" New York City. Well, yes. But why the controversy? New York City, contrary to popular opinion, is composed of all five boroughs, and within some of those boroughs, Staten Island and Queens especially, the are suburban-like neighborhoods. While even most of these places are quite dense for a suburb, you'd want to own a car in them. I've always thought one of the things that makes New York great is how huge and diverse it is, and how it encompasses so many different neighborhoods and lifestyles. San Francisco, though a great place, isn't like that. It's smaller, and on average, more walkable. I don't think anyone would deny that Manhattan is the most walkable place in the U.S. by a longshot, but Manhattan contains less than 10% of NYC's land area and less than 20% of its population.
That said, if the score included topography, I'm guessing that New York would move ahead of San Francisco. The giant hills in SF, though I think they're pretty cool, are an impediment to walking for many.
Nothing really suprising here. We are not building walkabiilty into our new cities and developments and this is the reason for our American's high obesity, uninteresting sprawl, and high energy usage.
As for the comments on Long Beach and Los Angeles, it doesn't suprise me that both made the top 10. Outside of California, Long Beach is just considered a suburb of Los Angeles, but it is a fairly compact city of half a million people and would be considered a relatively major city if it weren't in California.
These scores measure each city within its city limits. Not sure why New Yorkers insist only really Manhattan should count for New York, but for Los Angeles anything in the Basin should count even if it is 80 miles away from Los Angeles itself because that is their image of Los Angeles and Manhattan represents the image of New York.
It is noteworthy that the most walkable cities tend to vote Democratic and the least walkable, Republican. This might explain why when Republicans talk about energy independence, they mean off-shore drilling. And when Democrats do so, they mean energy conservation.
That's because middle class can afford cars for every driver in the household.
There is a study in Toronto, in which the researcher found out the urban sprawl was caused by religious groups sweeping up farm land to avoid building restriction in the cities. i.e. Build a church and school, people will come.
So, tighter zoning in rural area and looser zoning in the cities?
To all the naysayers, Walk Score it the first to claim its faults and shortcomings. And they do make very clear that it is an APPROXIMATION of walkability. But is the best thing out there so far.... If you don't like the results, you might consider building a better model or algorithm.
Or...
"You should use the Web 3.0 app called going outside and investigating the world for yourself" before deciding whether a neighborhood is walkable!
It is no mystery why cities aren't as walkable as they could be. The reason cities aren't walkable is because of a wide variety of regulations:
1. Absurdly wide streets that are hard to cross. 2. Setback and minimum parking requirements that ensure that commercial buildings are set back behind huge parking lots. 3. Regulations that limit density and thus limit walkability.
Also, water isn't such a big deal- I live in Jacksonville (very much a water city) and it is pretty darn unwalkable. And other Fla. cities (all on the water except Orlando) aren't much better.
A couple of things on the topic of the walk scores. First, the fact that none of the top cities (with the exception of LA) surprise me, nor do any of the not-walkable cities. That indicates to me that the data used is at least moderately accurate.
As someone who lives in Kansas City, I looked at a majority of the neighborhoods, and would have to say that most of the ones that were high in walkability were, indeed, the most walkable areas of town. The ones that weren't, aren't. Although, I will say that one area they should add is the amount of crime in an area. There were several neighborhoods that were listed as walkable that really are not because they are not safe to be in.
But other than that, I found it to be at least fairly accurate -- even if not precisely so.
I like the idea of just driving my car everywhere. No streetcars and no trains for me! So what if the parking is bad. I still love my car!
ResponderEliminarAnother factor that the walk-score site doesn't acknowledge is the coincidental placement of city limits. My own city of Atlanta scores fairly low. While the suburbs are admittedly sprawl-y, the urban core likely scores fairly well. We just have the misfortune of effectively including a large suburb (Buckhead) in our city limits, dragging down the average. San Francisco's city limits basically only include the dense urban core, allowing them to score so high on average.
ResponderEliminarYou should read some Jane Jacobs and Howard Kuntsler this summer - you will find most of your points echoed and expanded upon.
ResponderEliminarFor the counterpoint though, follow some discussions in Houston which, while not having much of a downtown has the most robust urban economy and one of the lowest costs of living and arguably the best opportunities for class mobility: houstonstrategies.blogspot.com/
(note I live in walkable Philadelphia and prefer it to auto-suburbs)
May I ask what you consider to be a "large body of water"? If I wanted to be pedantic, I would say it's controversial that ANY of the ten most walkable are not on a large body of water. More to the point, Memphis is most definitely on a large body of water. I say this confidently because I live in New Orleans, which is on two large bodies of water, neither of which is the Gulf of Mexico.
ResponderEliminari don't like the exception
ResponderEliminarThe first things that struck me about the two lists were heat and humidity. I wouldn't be suprised if the decision to walk is based more on sweating in some of these hot, humid, southern cities, compared with showing up at work dry and ready to go (if a little chilled) in the northern cities. Even though there are hot "walkable" cities (e.g., LA, Long Beach), they lack the humidity of the others. Maybe it's not the whole story, but it's possibly a part of it.
ResponderEliminarYeah, Portland's the sort of place where people made tough decisions and decided we'd rather have a livable city than a highway-dominated mess.
ResponderEliminarOver the past forty years, from reinvesting in downtown to discouraging wasteful suburban sprawl through our land use planning laws, we've gone a different direction.
Cul-de-sacs.
ResponderEliminarI think it is probably the newness of the growht... and that might be correlated better to cul-de-sacs per road mile.
building neighborhoods with cul-de-sacs makes everyone depend on cars.
having lived in some of the "best" and one of the "worst" cities on the list, that is my non-scientific analysis.
@ michael - i live in an ATL suburb that scores poorly when I plug in my address... there seemed to be a lot of walkable sites missing, so i've added them. need to check to see if that has improved the score. we walk everywhere, though our neighbors often ask us if our car is broken or something.
The reason LA and Long Beach are counted as walkable is that they both make up only a small portion of what any layperson would consider LA. The ENTIRE BASIN should count as LA, not just the small subset that is Municipal LA. Notice that as soon as you get away from the small LA downtown everything turns bright red. In New York almost the entire 5 boroughs are dark green. That's walkability.
ResponderEliminarNote: the reason that San Francisco is above New York City is because of places like Staten Island and eastern Queens dragging down the rest of the city.
ResponderEliminarFor Portland, we artificially created growth limits. Where San Francisco's growth was limited by the bay and the ocean, Portland created a "Metro" boundary that severely limits suburban sprawl. Portland was so effective in it's implementation of Metro that I am surprised that it is languishing at number 10. This is all the more remarkable considering that Portland is generally considered the nation's most "bikable" city.
ResponderEliminarCan't stop a guy determined to create a proof, at all costs, that you can walk in LA.
ResponderEliminarWhile I believe the above comment (Nate's) shows an impressive amount of insight, humidity tells only a part of the story. To illuminate the entire hidden side of walkability, one must consider another factor: obesity. This distinctly American trait, like humidty, is far more proliferative in the swealtering barbeue joints of Fort Worth than the yuppified coffee houses of Seattle. And while one may take a trolley to a San Franciscan sushi bar, only most mud flap-laden of Dodge Rams will suffice to be parked in the lot of a Kansas City steak house. The roots of walkability may lie in the history of these cities, but recent divergence (look at Portland vs. Indianapolis) is surely due to the cultural underpinnings of the cities' residents. Our active and imminently exuberant Portlanders or Bostonians will continue to reward centrally-located attractions with their business, while the rotund citizens of Memphis or San Antonio will continue to roll to their destinations in air-conditioned serenity.
ResponderEliminarif you want to go into further analysis on walkable cities, you should look outside of the US. Compared to the rest of the world, we're actually pretty bad at making walkable cities (maybe due to some sort of cultural isolationism issue). I would prefer wandering around on foot in Taipei, Taiwan any day compared to S.F., it's just not walking friendly enough.
ResponderEliminarhere's a shout out for philly- very walk-friendly indeed- i would vote atlantic city for honorable mention- not only do they have an integrated (board) walk, but they have an excellent jitney system- i've heard jitneys work well in some 3rd world cities- i reeeally wish that a jitney system would take hold in philly (ie, a formal 'hack' system)
ResponderEliminarI applaud your sentiments and as a former Angeleno I agree that Los Angeles is much more walkable than it is generally perceived to be. I wouldn't put absolute faith in the numbers that WalkScore generates, however. I actually do walk most everywhere for routine errands and I take long recreational walks as well but when I plugged in my current address it was classified as only somewhat walkable. Furthermore, I was surprised to discover that I live next door to a lumber yard which, when I looked it up, is actually located 300 miles away. The web site is apparently a work in progress.
ResponderEliminarThis is more proof that there are problems inherent in any algorithm. As jpmeyer pointed out, New York City is brought down by a county that, for these purposes, is not part of the city. (Staten Island, while one of the boroughs of New York, is not a place any person living in Manhattan/Brooklyn/Queens/The Bronx would want to 'walk' to on a whim.
ResponderEliminarNew York is the only city in the country where more than 50% of the residents do not even own a car. No other city even comes close. I think that in itself is a huge testament to its walkability.
'New Development' - if by this, you are talking about developments in eastern Queens, then sure, but this region of the city is really more comparable to the suburbs just outside LA (a part which you conveniently do not include in your calculation for LA). Queens is within the city limits, but it should not factor into the walkability for, say, Manhattan. The two regions are too far apart geographically, and people who live in Manhattan have few reasons (other than perhaps work or visiting friends) to venture out to Queens anyway, mostly for the reason that - surprise! - almost everything is available within walking distance in Manhattan.
With respect to Atlanta, if you look at the map, Buckahead actually fares relatively well. It is the large Western and Southern parts of the city that really bring down the score. The city of Atlanta is already relatively small. The "urban core" with respect to both the city limits and especially to the entire metro area is very small.
ResponderEliminarBe Aware: Walkscore.com needs major improvements: it listed a quack medical website (elixa.com) as my nearest grocery store and a corporate office as my nearest restaurant when I used my home address.
ResponderEliminarAn interesting yet flawed statistic. The walkability scores are flawed due to the influence of local topology - relates to post 7's basic point out comfort level of walking. I tested my two most recent residences. Both had very walkable scores which did not match with the reality. One residence was in fact very walkable, amenities close and a relatively easy walk. The other residence, while amenities were close in an absolute sense was not in reality. The tool did not account for the 500 ft deep canyon that actually separated my residence from those amenities and made the real path of travel much longer.
ResponderEliminarHow much do factors like this effect the real walkability of cities? I suspect significantly - just because you could, in theory, walk somewhere does not mean you can or will.
I feel a need to represent for eastern Queens. It's a two-fare zone, but that doesn't require anyone to own a car. Is it less walkable than Manhattan? Of course. But it's hardly the suburban sprawl some are making it out to be. The mass transit setup is excellent, and many people get along just fine without a car.
ResponderEliminarNorthern Blvd, Union Tpk, Hillside Ave and Jamaica Ave are fully built up, well beyond the Nassau border. Throw in the cross-boulevards (Francis Lewis, Bell, and Springfield), and you've got a strong grid of businesses and services within walking distance of most residents.
I'm not so sure about the accuracy of the locations on this site...
ResponderEliminarThere's apparently a movie theater within a mile of my home, and yet in reality the movie theater it is referring to is miles away, and the actual location has a bank.
The list also does not take into account the experience of someone stuck in the San Francisco or New York City Financial Districts on a Sunday afternoon with a growling stomach and nothing to do. Density alone does not confer walkability if there's nothing to walk *to* except a bunch of closed lunch places and empty office buildings.
ResponderEliminarSeven out of the ten most walkable cities lie near a body of water. As stated in the post, these cities had less land to build the cities on, so in order for them to have all necessities, there is more density. This means that you would find everything you need at a walkable distance, making walking a very good alternative to car usage. Also, many of these cities are very congested and there is no place to park your car. Take New York for instance, almost all the time during the day, the streets are full of taxis and other cars, making driving very uncomfortable and slow. People usually take cars to make their lives easier and to get faster from place to place, but in these big cities, where congestion is a major issue, as well as parking, driving a car actually makes it slower for people to move from place to place in a car rather than walking.
ResponderEliminarIf you actually look at the walkability rating on the site, they are rating the most walkable NEIGHBORHOODS, not cities.
ResponderEliminartake a look for yourself.
walkscore.com/rankings/most-walkable-cities.php
If you actually type in a whole cities rating in the search bar, they almost always get a phenomenal score because so much of the ranking has to do with things you pass on the street (ie, shops, theatres, parks, libraries, etc.)
Both my city Minneapolis, and Los Angeles, got a score of 97 out of 100 when the whole city was looked at, and Jacksonville, last on this list, got a 95.
somehow i doubt those numbers would all be so high if walkability was calculated differently.
First of all, using the site to compare walkability is foolish. The site mentions some of its shortfalls, chiefly that it uses a one size fits all algorethem. Walkability in northern cities is severly diminished in winter, bicycle oriented places (Portland) and hilly places do not change a rating. Also many businesses are not where the site says they are. sidewalks are also not mentioned. I guess this post was a little premature, a week after you mentioned walkability, it is still in its infancy and it is not ready for its rankings to prove anything.
ResponderEliminar2 things:
ResponderEliminarNate: You may be right about humidity, but having lived in both DC and New York, I can tell you summers in both places are no picnic. I routinely get to work sweaty here in New York, and I certainly did in the DC Swamp.
RS, #23 - This is kind of a spurious argument. Presumably you're only in the financial district on a Sunday because you live there. If you live there you don't really have reason to complain. Otherwise I don't really get what you're getting at.
Hey, what about Brooklyn?? I realize it is part of New York, but my walk score in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn is 95. My walk score in Chelsea was 87.
ResponderEliminarI've lived in Philly, and although I love Philly, it does not even come close in terms of walkability.
I'm a bit surprised that San Fran comes close to NYC, too. I mean, if you look at the average walkability score per resident, and mulitiply by the total residents, NYC trumps all.
BTW, this blog should also talk about why walkability is important. Everyone takes this for granted but why? Is it the density, the lack of car, the convenience, the neeighborhood, what is it? It's not enough to say that being in the city confers walkability, because there are poorly "designed" parts of NYC that I would never want to visit, let alone live, and other parts that combine all the disadvantages of the city AND the 'burbs together. Just some food for thought.
I looked up my neighborhood, and I'm not really impressed with the results. It's a "very walkable" neighborhood, which is probably true... but the data is garbage, and the algorithm is trivial (it appears to be "how many destinations are within a certain radius").
ResponderEliminarAbout the data: one block from here is the mailing address for a small business that drives around to mid-size and larger companies and cleans the coffee machine, stocks disposable cups, delivers cases of coffee, sugar, etc. It's the owner's condo. This is listed as a "coffee shop" in the data.
The school district's administrative office is listed as a "school". The pre-school branch for a private K-8 school is listed as a "school" -- nevermind that the K-8 part is at least another mile further away, on the wrong side of a four-lane freeway.
About the algorithm: You'd think that living directly across the street from the bus station would affect the walkability score... but apparently not.
They also (sadly) don't have any clue whether there are sidewalks or what the terrain is like. I looked up a friend's house, and the score is astonishing, until you remember that they ignore the fact that there ought to be steps instead of a sidewalk going up that hill.
So I think they need to do some more work.
Re: the people who say Staten Island and Queens are "dragging down" New York City. Well, yes. But why the controversy? New York City, contrary to popular opinion, is composed of all five boroughs, and within some of those boroughs, Staten Island and Queens especially, the are suburban-like neighborhoods. While even most of these places are quite dense for a suburb, you'd want to own a car in them. I've always thought one of the things that makes New York great is how huge and diverse it is, and how it encompasses so many different neighborhoods and lifestyles. San Francisco, though a great place, isn't like that. It's smaller, and on average, more walkable. I don't think anyone would deny that Manhattan is the most walkable place in the U.S. by a longshot, but Manhattan contains less than 10% of NYC's land area and less than 20% of its population.
ResponderEliminarThat said, if the score included topography, I'm guessing that New York would move ahead of San Francisco. The giant hills in SF, though I think they're pretty cool, are an impediment to walking for many.
Nothing really suprising here. We are not building walkabiilty into our new cities and developments and this is the reason for our American's high obesity, uninteresting sprawl, and high energy usage.
ResponderEliminarAs for the comments on Long Beach and Los Angeles, it doesn't suprise me that both made the top 10. Outside of California, Long Beach is just considered a suburb of Los Angeles, but it is a fairly compact city of half a million people and would be considered a relatively major city if it weren't in California.
These scores measure each city within its city limits. Not sure why New Yorkers insist only really Manhattan should count for New York, but for Los Angeles anything in the Basin should count even if it is 80 miles away from Los Angeles itself because that is their image of Los Angeles and Manhattan represents the image of New York.
It is noteworthy that the most walkable cities tend to vote Democratic and the least walkable, Republican. This might explain why when Republicans talk about energy independence, they mean off-shore drilling. And when Democrats do so, they mean energy conservation.
ResponderEliminarThat's because middle class can afford cars for every driver in the household.
ResponderEliminarThere is a study in Toronto, in which the researcher found out the urban sprawl was caused by religious groups sweeping up farm land to avoid building restriction in the cities. i.e. Build a church and school, people will come.
So, tighter zoning in rural area and looser zoning in the cities?
To all the naysayers, Walk Score it the first to claim its faults and shortcomings. And they do make very clear that it is an APPROXIMATION of walkability. But is the best thing out there so far.... If you don't like the results, you might consider building a better model or algorithm.
ResponderEliminarOr...
"You should use the Web 3.0 app called going outside and investigating the world for yourself" before deciding whether a neighborhood is walkable!
Now shut your laptop and get walking!
It is no mystery why cities aren't as walkable as they could be. The reason cities aren't walkable is because of a wide variety of regulations:
ResponderEliminar1. Absurdly wide streets that are hard to cross.
2. Setback and minimum parking requirements that ensure that commercial buildings are set back behind huge parking lots.
3. Regulations that limit density and thus limit walkability.
Also, water isn't such a big deal- I live in Jacksonville (very much a water city) and it is pretty darn unwalkable. And other Fla. cities (all on the water except Orlando) aren't much better.
When I looked, all 10 most walkable cities are near water, which ones are not near large bodeil of water?
ResponderEliminarA couple of things on the topic of the walk scores. First, the fact that none of the top cities (with the exception of LA) surprise me, nor do any of the not-walkable cities. That indicates to me that the data used is at least moderately accurate.
ResponderEliminarAs someone who lives in Kansas City, I looked at a majority of the neighborhoods, and would have to say that most of the ones that were high in walkability were, indeed, the most walkable areas of town. The ones that weren't, aren't. Although, I will say that one area they should add is the amount of crime in an area. There were several neighborhoods that were listed as walkable that really are not because they are not safe to be in.
But other than that, I found it to be at least fairly accurate -- even if not precisely so.