what's your walkscore?

how accurately*

not sure how many non-american countries are included in their data, but I tried some big euro and canadian cities and they seem to be there

98! (rounded to 100 for voting purposes)

seems accurate. that's why i moved here. i don't own a car and don't want to own a car, so i live close enough to walk to the metro, a few blocks away from the grocery store, entertainment/food nearby, etc.

mine used to be 94 at my old apt, now it's 85 -- still okay!

45. There's stuff you can walk to here, but not much that you'd want to walk to.

My current locale is a 2. At the end of the week I'm moving to a 58, which seems a tad low (maybe by 10 points or so?).

The 2 is actually a bit high if you ask me.

My last five addresses have been above 80. My license expired in '03, and I haven't drive a car in ten years, although my wife still has to for work. Do not miss it.

23, rounded to 25 for voting purposes. The only place I can imagine going where I would walk would be the playground across the street, the beaches, and maybe the elementary school, if I had some spare time on my hands.

40. seems about right. at least i have a pizza place just next door.

they should give bonus points for that

92, which seems low if anything

5

pretty accurate, i live in an apt complex on a narrow road w/ a 50 mph speed limit

88

wonder how the score is computed - it's comparative, right, to all addresses in your area. but how big do they define area?

like if you lived in a place with only one pizza place and nothing else, and you lived next to the pizza place, you should get 100 right, because you are closer to the pizza place than everybody else who lives there

oh okay http://www.walkscore.com/methodology.shtml

96, still have no idea what this means. i walk everywhere, i don't mind walking 4 miles for something though. is it to measure accessibility or more people's laziness. I really don't want to live on a block that has a police department, fire station, hospital, etc.

maybe if there were 9 pizza places arranged in a circle and you lived in the middle of that circle you would get a 100

100. Totally accurate. /bragging

85, which seems about right.

My in-laws' house gets a zero, which I think is rather impressive.

yeah, so their critical distance is .25 miles. It takes me about 4 minutes to walk .25 miles and I routinely walk 40-45 minutes for services/amenities/commute etc.

they should allow the metric to be a user-defined, rather than their predefined "THIS IS THE DISTANCE THAT WE FEEL IS TRUE CONVENIENCE".

the site is timing out for me, but last time i checked it was about 85. it feels higher though; it's a very walkable part of town.

i agree that it would be nice to let the user adjust the score a little bit by defining a comfortable walking distance, but the value of having a uniform metric is that different people can compare their walk scores (like in this thread) with consistency.

my parents' place (where i grew up) gets like a 96!

the place where I grew up gets an 88. I remember walking to the KFC for some delicious chicken strips as a kid when I was left home alone. that walk seemed like it took a long time as a kid!

hundo ftw

As mentioned in the other thread, I score a 75, but depending on what you consider "walking distance" -- e.g., less than 2 miles? -- I can walk easily to two movie theaters, two grocery stores (including a Whole Foods), a Wal Mart, a Target, a Macy's, several major bus lines that go to two different rail stations (both within 10 minutes), a library branch, countless local restaurants (not chains), etc.

The house where I grew up gets a zero, ha — no surprise there

the key thing about walking to a grocery store though is walking back with heavy grocery bags in both arms, and then to have the bags break and everything spill out on the pavement a la Home Alone

One of these = essential for non-car living.

http://Img3.targetimg3.com/wcsstore/TargetSAS//img/p/10/79/10794453.jpg

my first attempt at entering my location put me a mile further out of town, somewhere with no shops within that mile

weirdly, when I got my real location (right opposite a row of shops with 3 small/medium supermarkets, restaurants, cafés; city centre is less than 2 miles away and so walkable, though I usually bus, as buses are p. frequent) my score went DOWN by 5, to 54, which seems a bit low

used to live in a depressing transport-less smalltown with hardly any shops which actually gets a higher score (67), which is plain crazy

lol, if you look at the "entertainment" category for said smalltown, the top 3 are

Telephone Sockets Ltd 5.69 miles
Aerials and Satellites 9.69 miles
___ Handyman Services 9.86 miles

woo yeah, that's some good entertainment, walking 6 miles to a company that sells telephone sockets, or 10 miles to some TV repair companies

20, seems very low. If I move a mile I'd be an 80.

this doesn't have a ton of the stuff that's around me and it hangs when i try to add stuff so boo

98. About right, seeing as I live in the centre of town and am surrounded by shops and pubs.

seems slightly suboptimal if it uses the same radius for all the different categories of stuff - I definitely like to live within 0.25 miles of a grocery shop for carrying purposes or emergency single-item dashes, but the nearest cinema being 1.5 miles away also seems perfectly fine to me, wouldn't want to live right opposite one thanks

anyway there's lots of stuff near me it doesn't count (2 out of 3 supermarkets opposite, 2 out of 3 coffee shops opposite) or counts wrongly (office HQ of a supermarket chain shows up as "groceries" but isn't a retail unit) but you need a Facebook login to correct it and, eh, fuck it

68

which seems about right

98

51, points given because there is a Dixie Pig .29 miles away.

(I would never walk to the DIxie Pig. How would I walk back?)

good point phil! but in my head grocery carts = old ladies :/

based on the scores of previous places i've lived, i'm not too sure about the algorithm

Highest ranking I've had was when I lived in the dorm at Mizzou -- 92.
Hood I lived in with 1217 bus lines -- 78.
Rural lot where I grew up -- 2.

80, hoboken NJ

dayo, my wife and I lived in Lakewood, a relatively near-in suburb of Cleveland, for a few years without a car, and one of those carts allowed us to do like two weeks of shopping at a time so we didn't have to stop on the way home on the bus every night. Love those things. Now I use bike bags, and don't even have to wait for a bus.

that's awesome! I am still working on the 'planning to buy enough groceries to last two weeks' part for my own life though :/

It gave me a 35 but it should be a lot lower because it's not taking hills into consideration. The details are really ridiculous though. The restaurant it lists is actually a coffee shop and then for coffee it lists something that's miles away. Same with bars & entertainment. And I can't see why they would include banking. Who goes to a bank anymore?

I think once you're under 40 it almost doesn't matter. has anyone here lived in a <50 without a car, as an adult?

hills should def be a factor and another thing that's hard to measure is the type of street. someone could live .25 miles from a suburban strip mall, but would have to cross an 8-lane road to get there.

some of the u.s. is unusually hostile to walking imo. disappearing sidewalks, huge embankments, uncrossable roads, centers of commerce that can only be driven into, so that even public transport makes weird detours into the heart of shopping centers etc.

almost all of the us is!

well, urban centers are ok

70, should be higher

some of the u.s. is unusually hostile to walking imo. disappearing sidewalks, huge embankments, uncrossable roads, centers of commerce that can only be driven into, so that even public transport makes weird detours into the heart of shopping centers etc.

This should be the Wikipedia entry for "Fairfax County (Northern Virginia)."

some of the u.s. is unusually hostile to walking imo. disappearing sidewalks, huge embankments, uncrossable roads, centers of commerce that can only be driven into, so that even public transport makes weird detours into the heart of shopping centers etc.

― zvookster, Sunday, September 4, 2011 2:06 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

wait how much of the us have you been to? you're not from around here are you

a handful of urban areas, sure, but even much of SF and NYC are actually pretty shitty places to walk

I got a zero, but I live out in the sticks--the nearest amenity listed is about five miles away.

a handful of urban areas, sure, but even much of SF and NYC are actually pretty shitty places to walk

― iatee, Sunday, September 4, 2011 11:16 AM (34 seconds ago)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_HmDd4_JAc1M/S6Q9ORad_fI/AAAAAAAAAPA/ULRkfcJ1E4Q/s320/ORLY_logo_small_520.jpg

do you enjoy crossing van ness on foot? walking anywhere south of the mission? I lived on Masonic, where people and bikers got hit like once a week.

i lived in chicago and atlanta for a bit, know louisville and tampa quite well, and have some passing experience of a few other places. xps

scored a 89, which i think is down from the last time i checked?

grew up in a 0

atlanta's got a reputation for being a car-centric city doesn't it? xp

ime living in a walkable area in america is very much the exception and not the rule

would also be interested to see a graph of walkscore vs. average income of people who live in the area. like the place I grew up in philly was definitely very urban, inner-city but the walkscore was only an 88, and I do remember that we only had a few bodegas and such within walking distance, you had to drive to the strip mall to go to the supermarket (granted we did have 2 or 3 such strip malls within a 5 minute drive).

atlanta struck me as incredibly stretched out, so everyone had a car or a truck, but it didn't seem actively hostile to walking at the same time.

did you live there during the summer?

but yeah the culture of the place plus yr armies being in the middle east is very sci fi

yup xp

Mother's home: 23
Father's home: 22
Home I'm about to make an offer on: 98 (and it still has a decent sized yard for vegetable gardening and midnight fertilization be Teufel the luvbeast)

I love what walkscore is contributing to the evolution towards healthier and more sustainable housing. I do, however wish that it permitted user weighting of categoies,. That 98 is because the property is just off a commercial street of restaurants, bars, and cafes, while what i'm seriously interested in is larger grocery stores and off-leash dog parks, neither of which is nearby. I also wish it distingushed between milk-run convenience stores and groceries large enough to have a decent produce section.

I'm on my phone, someone plz link to recent Atlanta woman story

http://www.grist.org/infrastructure/2011-07-20-when-design-kills-the-criminalization-of-walking

cars and america

yeah i saw that story tho i don't think i was reading ilx for that thread

97 for downtown Asheville, seems high. Lotsa shops and restaurants but you have to go a mile out of downtown for groceries. And Taco Bell.

yeah lots of downtowns might be walkable but if they're directly surrounded by 30s and 40s then that isn't quite the same thing. your # should also include the metro area #

SF/NYC pedestrian crossing signs:
http://disparate.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/crossingsign.jpg

http://disparate.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/crossingsign.jpg

pretty much

*lols darkly*

75, rounded from 77, but that seems a bit low, maybe. Got a sizeable shopping mall less than 10 minutes away (essentially across the street), bus terminal maybe 12 minutes walking time away.

I actually think the green/red maps are more useful/interesting than the score itself

80. accurate for where I live (shaker heights)

the only thing i can think of that the nieghborhood needs is emergency medical care and a super bowl appearance

surprised that my neighb isn't lower due to the lack of any central grocery store type place

was once in a band with a guy who wanted to call us "shaker heights". Big Paul Newman fan, he was.

i was going to get Paul Newman to star in a horror/sci fi movie called H.U.D. didn't pan out

88, actually thought it might be higher. I mean I have a pub, bottle shop and good pizza restaurant 1 min walk away at the end of my (very short) street. The shops w/supermarket etc are a 10 minute walk, which is completely normal, and anyone saying more than 5 mins walk away is not is a lazy ^&%%#

Weirdly, my old sharehouse back in canberra gets only a 46 - it was directly across the st from a small shopping village that had a supermarket, bookstore, good bar, travel agent, butchers, and takeaway shop, and the bus stop was directly in front of my house! wtf.

I think their system outside of america seems like it needs a lot of work

I just tried the place I lived in paris and got a 68 (should be 100)

they don't even list foreign cities in their stats so it's prob still in the experimental phase

Well the thingy recognised all the stuff across from my old house, and said it was 400m away. But gave that a 46!?

46 - I think that's pretty high as it doesn't take climate into account. Basically the entire months of July and August, and most of June, were 105+ and never below the high 90s. This just isn't an environment where you can walk two miles to a grocery store or work for a big chunk of the year.

I suspect it not picking up our tram/bus/train systems might knock the points down? if it included that my current place would likely be closer to 100 I'm guessing (bus 200m away, tram 2 blocks away, train 10 mins walk)

Sharehouse? Canberra? Speak English!!

:D

yeah that's at least as walkable as the american neighborhoods that are 95+

70

Its pretty accurate, but with one minor flaw. The place a few blocks away that it seems to want to keep counting as movie theater is in actuality a movie theater concession distribution warehouse. Good luck catching a film there.

Oops, I mean 72. 70 was my rounded off poll answer.

I was trying to find out the score for the farm I lived on in high school, but it keeps defaulting to the center of the nearest town and giving me a 40.

My childhood home is a 0. We lived in a field.

http://www.walkscore.com/professional/street-smart.php

for those w/ problems, here's the beta of their new feature - you can add/remove things that the computer missed

http://www2.walkscore.com/pdf/WalkScoreMethodology.pdf

and here's the methodology

essentially this:
amenity_weights = {
"grocery": [3],
"restaurants": [.75, .45, .25, .25, .225, .225, .225, .225, .2, .2],
"shopping": [.5, .45, .4, .35, .3],
"coffee": [1.25, .75],
"banks": [1],
"parks": [1],
"schools": [1],
"books": [1],
"entertainment": [1],
}

x6

if you have all of those within .25 miles = 100

dumb.

well, it's always gonna be arbitrary on some level and it's hard to measure some of the most important aspects w/ publicly available data. there's also an attempt to factor in the roads:

Intersection density (intersections per square mile):
over 200: no penalty
150-200: 1% penalty
120-150: 2% penalty
90-120: 3% penalty
60-90: 4% penalty
under 60: 5% penalty
Average block length (in meters):
under 120 m: no penalty
120-150 m: 1% penalty
150-165 m: 2% penalty
165-180 m: 3% penalty
180-195m: 4% penalty
over 195m: 5% penalty

but I don't think road width and speed limit data for every single road in the entire country is easily available. I think the algorithm does a good job, all things considered.

though they really shouldn't give anything in america a score of 100

My childhood home is a 0. We lived in a field.

― Jeff, Sunday, September 4, 2011 6:52 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1v6tZ-805AE/TE_p7SI4cGI/AAAAAAAABjI/Aoh4jJ02qlA/s1600/fouryork.jpg

You could walk to some hog houses. For entertainment.

I agree with Shasta. What's dumb isnt the things listed, its the distance! 400 metres!? Thats gotta be less than a 5 minute walk, we cant all live in a condo with a shopping mall in the basement!?

well it's done w/ the assumption that you're a lazy-ass american

I must admit I'm further the other way - I dont drive, so I think nothing of not only walking 15-20 minutes just to get somewhere, I would also carry all my groceries a 15 minute walk home. Dont have a choice. But I imagine if I had a car I'd use it even for that, so.

you're also somewhere that doesn't have unbearable climate. as milo mentioned earlier, that should probably be a variable.

Well, we have 100+ summers, but only for a week here or there, I suppose.

look at you with your 400 metres and your 100+ summers! you're amphibious ambidextrous

nyc should get -5 for having 120 degree subway stations

haha you complain about that one time that happened to you so much

new york I love you but youre bringing me down

dayo where are you now? back in hk?

haha nah still in america

but HK would probably stomp every other city in the world except for maybe some cities in india and japan

nah, you said something the other day about it being crazy hot when it was not crazy hot where i thought you were, is all

My neighborhood (parents' house arrrgggh) has a walkscore of 24. 18th out of 19 neighborhoods in the suburban town where I live. The town's average is 54, better than Detroit or Atlanta. The town's core area is about 95.

rip detroit

nah, you said something the other day about it being crazy hot when it was not crazy hot where i thought you were, is all

― mookieproof, Sunday, September 4, 2011 8:15 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

mookieproof.xls

lol everywhere around Chapel St is close to 100, goddamn yuppies.

rip detroit

― mookieproof, Sunday, September 4, 2011 5:19 PM Bookmark

put your hands up

it's like when a gun store owner gets robbed at gunpoint

actually that probably doesn't happen that often

mookieproof.xls

lol fair enuf

This thing is weird. I moved an address maybe 100 metres down the same street and the walkscore dropped 10 points!

haha stop worrying about australia, it's clearly fucked up outside of america

50 (rounded up from 48). But am I the only one whose map showed "Home" as several blocks away from its actual location? My real address seems to me to merit more like a 60.

In better news, a neighborhood in which I'd like to live scored 95! Now if I could only afford to move there....

100 out of 100! FTW

where u live

manhattan/upper west.

i live a block away from riverside park one direction and a block away from broadway in the other. nyc in general is a walkers paradise i've always thought but not 100 out of 100.

yes I agree

riverside is both one of the best parks in the world and a symbol of why nyc is not a 100/100

96 which is imo low considering every amenity is w/in .25 miles although the transit score is 100

I think once you're under 40 it almost doesn't matter. has anyone here lived in a <50 without a car, as an adult?

― iatee, Sunday, September 4, 2011 11:00 AM Bookmark

Living in my 24 (which is really too high, it's counting stuff that doesn't exist and stuff that isn't accessable as the crow flies. the only amenities within a 20-minute walk are the corner store and a playground) without a car, or buses after 7PM or on weekends, and surrounded by 400 foot hills in most directions that impede biking. :(

88 in San Francisco, and 85 back home in UK. I like walkable cities.

My husband's family's house back home is 8, and it classes a guy on a local farm who gives driving lessons as a 'school' of driving...

(out of curiosity, how did you meet your husband?)

70--if you're an energetic walker, I'd go higher, but that seems fair. I'm in the west end of Toronto, not downtown. A lot of smaller and older businesses are close, nothing that special. You can walk south to the lakeshore in 10 minutes, but a lot of places go under there. 15 minutes north there's a big trendy mall and a lot of big-box stores. My drivability score would be close to 100; you can get anywhere worth going to in 30 minutes or under.

no drivability itt

what about via transit?

The site scored me at 67 for public transit. I've got one of those things...one of those drivability contraptions...so I rarely use it.

oh

okay

I bet I'd score 90 or 95 on bikability. Once you reach the lake, there's a well-maintained bike path that will take out outside the city by 10 km in either direction.

outside the city! bikability would be the capability to get to your job or do your chores on a bike, not leisurely bike trips by the lake. I don't know what toronto's streets are really like but I know there's a lot of political controversy w/ bike lanes and your evil mayor.

I'd be interested in a bikability rating — I'd guess Chicago would rate fairly highly

I'd love it if Melb had dedicated bike paths. We instead have shitty narrow bike "lanes" next to the parked traffic and a car culture that regards cyclists as moronic, in the way lycra-brains, so theres no way I'd cycle to work as it stands now.

(and so many people I know who do have been knocked off and hurt thanks to cars turning/opening doors/stopping)

Greenpoint = 100/100

My parents home is 6/100

"coming back after I graduated" lol was not an option

nobody who lives on the g should get 100/100

you can have 99

Walk Score 100 Out of 100 (NW Portland)

The suburban street where I grew up (small town 40 minutes outside of Toronto) gets a 48. That's now--at the time, I'm sure it would have scored under 20.

86. That seems right tho if you expand the permissible walking distance to .5 miles, it would be higher. We're on a residential block in the midst of a few commercial areas.

Our last apt was a 98, but this one has a washer/dryer and is closer to the train so it's good.

XPs: Mookie, we met in the nearest city to our families' places - my parents' town where I lived at the time scored a respectable 75 though (it has about 20 pubs and a post office)

oh but *really* we met online in ye olden dayes of the information superhighway

Places I lived in Portland:

82nd & Thompson - 60
Williams & Alberta - 75
56th & Halsey - 65

Last one was really the easiest to get around from tho, a few blocks from a max station and a 3-minute bike ride from a neighborhood that had p much anything I needed to handle errands.

My parents' house is in a development w/ no sidewalks and you have to walk half a mile on the shoulder of the road and cross a dual highway to get anywhere, and they got a 52. Once you get across the highway you're golden but it's dangerous to walk to the things that make the address ostensibly walkable.

yeah I mentioned upthread, but I don't think they have the data to really differentiate types of roads, which can be pretty huge. *most of the time* the measurement still ends up accurate cause dense clusters of amenities are generally going to exist near walkable roads. but there are certainly exceptions where it ends up being pretty off.

85, which seems about right.

How are you 85 and I'm 82?

(quoting Askance Johnson there)

Ha, who knows? Looking at the site, I'm guessing it could be because I'm slightly closer to the library and welles park?

new apt is 78

old one i just moved out of was 94

still would rather be here than there tbh

When it comes down to it, do I really need to live that close to a bank?

98 (central London). Previous apartment in Chicago is 97, childhood home 20.

Looked up my ex's parents place which is in a brand-new, outer edges suburb of perth, and felt like it was the middle of the middle of nowhere, and even it got a 40.

my neighborhood's 98. sux because i have no feet

40 apparently. From my house the only places I walk to are the golf course and my car tbh

73, which means Very Walkable.

Yay, our neighbourhood.

Where I work scores 98.

This seems to score highly if everything is close.

I would have thought a high score would indicate "everything is about a mile away, through pleasant park lands or waterways, and little crime"

78, but i would say it should be at least 90.

38 where i am
0 for home, no surprise.

87, Very Walkable.

lol i got 100

so it seems like this currently works for america/canada/england

73 very walkable

93, live in London.

97, London (Brixton).

49 -- seems a bit high.

"69 - Somewhat Walkable"

I can't imagine any place being more walkable than where I live now. On the crossroads of downtown, less than 2 blocks from restaurants, pubs, groceries, banks, 1000s of other people, three bus stops, well policed, people around 24/7, safe despite urban locale. What else do you need before this site gives your neck of the woods a score of 100?

I'll miss all of this when I move soon.

where do you live? the site's flakey outside of america

US, northeast of Washington DC

I posted the algorithm they used upthread so you can look at it and see why exactly you got your score. sometimes they just don't catch stuff and you can have the site recalculate your score by adding it.

What makes the site flaky outside of the US, out of curiosity? Is it simily lack of data and if so, could I go add some?

simily=simply.

51, but I wouldn't walk to the Subway unless whiney was crashing at my place.

it says "Walk Score uses a combination of leading data providers..." - so I don't know what their exact method of auto-categorizing neighborhood amenities is, but I'm sure it's USA-based.

if you look at the middle of the page, there's a button that says 'try street smart'. that's their new feature that lets you add whatever you want to the map. if you're really curious you could do that. but I'm sure you live in a 95-100 neighborhood.

xp

There are so many problems with the premise of this site. If you look at their "Why It Matters" page they list health as a factor. And yet I walk all of the time in my "unwalkable" neighborhood, just for the hell of it. Walking to consume goods and services is not the only type of walking you can do.

Then they list "Finances: One point of Walk Score is worth up to $3,000 of value for your property." which is just laughable. But they only looked at a weird cherry picked list of 15 cities.

The only real benefit is the environment, and yet the site doesn't factor in working from home. Living in an unwalkable neighborhood but working from home trumps the person who lives next door to the supermarket/restaurant/coffeeshop/bank/stripmall but commutes an hour to work. And the same applies to their "Communities" bullet point.

Now (Berlin) 82 (Seems low, I live above a supermarket, and within five to ten minutes walk there are parks, waterways, other supermarkets, cafes, two Ubahn lines and pretty much every other shop you could want)
Last place (Hannover) 85 (Seems a little high, it was close to some good stuff, but a bit of a schlepp to go to the supermarket. I guess you can pretty much walk through the whole major part of the city in a couple of hours)
Last place (Melbourne) 87 (Seems about right)
GFs house (Melbourne) 87 (Having a Maccas and a KFC within two hundred metres should not add to 'Walkability')
Parents' House 65 (About right, given the rather small distance range)

My score is 67, but seems like the Helsinki info on the site isn't very good. It says my nearest grocery store is 820 meters away, but there's one right across the street, and several others much closer than 820 meters. Also, the site seems to think the whole Helsinki only has 5 parks, when in fact there are more than that just in the district where I live.

I think the proper score should be something like 95. All the places for daily errands (grocery stores, supermarket, post office, library, drugstore, pubs, parks, gym) are within a walking distance. The nearest bank office is a bit further, but since I use my accout via Internet, I don't have to visit the physical bank except maybe once in 2 years.

yeah they've left out a load of local pubs and restaurants from keel to bunnacurry to get a '0' rating for achill. What a crock.

Also, kinda what mh said- zero rating for walks doesn't seem to be putting off all the tourists who come here to....walk

60, which is a bit higher than i would have figured. we have a lot of services nearby as the crow flies, but the shape of the development mandates a really lengthy, circuitous route. if planners had simply provided a sidewalk right of way directly toward that area, walking to the grocery store would be MUCH easier. but they didn't, probly because it was 1978 and... walking? lol!

I'm putting my walkscore right beside my clout score on my resume.

grew up in a 0, live in an 82.

progress

there is definitely a noticeable difference

the pint of convenient pedestrianism

There are so many problems with the premise of this site. If you look at their "Why It Matters" page they list health as a factor. And yet I walk all of the time in my "unwalkable" neighborhood, just for the hell of it. Walking to consume goods and services is not the only type of walking you can do.

dude

The only real benefit is the environment, and yet the site doesn't factor in working from home. Living in an unwalkable neighborhood but working from home trumps the person who lives next door to the supermarket/restaurant/coffeeshop/bank/stripmall but commutes an hour to work. And the same applies to their "Communities" bullet point.

dude

Currently 45, but my guess is that in five years it will be at least 60 (under development / rehab).

28. The nearest thing they find for entertainment is a sex shop!?

lol again and again this thing sucks for Europe but don't worry cause...you live in Europe

Haha, that's true! Hunter's post above where he complains about the lack of sidewalk sounds kinda absurd to me... How could a road not have a sidewalk?

.....

by not having a sidewalk

Ba-dum-tishhhh

Yeah, but in here you don't have roads without a sidewalk! Except for highways and unpaved country roads... But definitely not in the city.

oh fair enough, it's common enough here, outside of town centres.

Ah, okay.

Here in Helsinki, I was actually weirded out when friends of mine moved to a road that has a sidewalk only on one side! Almost all the roads in Finnish cities have sidewalks on both sides.

current home: 74
college dorms: 98, 89
first apt: 89
pre-marriage apt: 86
post-marriage apt: 60

childhood home: 0 (hi-five, gbx)

do people born in 0-zones tend to move to higher scoring areas? is the inverse true?

well, my parents moved from a city to a larger city to the middle of the woods; I don't know if there's any discernible pattern beyond "ppl be buying houses/condos"

ppl who grow up rural move to hipster neighbourhoods film at 11

what film is it

Jeff and I are examples of people moving from low scoring areas to major cities. Walkability was absolutely part of that consideration as we both really hate driving.

lol some of the stores listed as places where you can buy "groceries" are hilarious

why yes, the shitty convenience store next to the leasing office of our first married apt should ABSOLUTELY be considered a grocery store; after all, they sell $10 packs of batteries and scores of ramen noodles, of course anyone would do their primary shopping there

xp And we live in a yuppie neighborhood, thankyouverymch.

Just checked, and I'm 70 steps away from the nearest coffee machine. May as well live in Nome.

Childhood home: 2. (Shd be 0; I think those 2 pts are only because there's one restaurant, open seasonally only, that's 2 miles away.)

Now: 85. Half the businesses/stores on the map don't really exist or are just bodegas. This should be lower.

xxxp lol some of the stores listed as places where you can buy "groceries" are hilarious
otm! otm!

Now (Berlin) 82 (Seems low, I live above a supermarket, and within five to ten minutes walk there are parks, waterways, other supermarkets, cafes, two Ubahn lines and pretty much every other shop you could want)

― Circlework de Soleil (S-), Tuesday, September 6, 2011 9:37 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah it's based google maps data i think, so it's definitely missing lots of data about amenities/shops/etc. in germany.

I know we've done this before, even if informally on another thread and I'm still suprised Shasta and I aren't at 100 given the plethora of services and establishments easily walkable around where we live.

It's either the bodegas or the bulletproof Chinese food restaurants with no tables or chairs, but somehow walkscore thinks my neighborhood is Park Slope or something??

91. I'm surprised it's not higher. It doesn't get much more walkable than where I live. There is absolutely everything within a few blocks of my house, and certainly within 1 mile.

http://www.walkscore.com/score/550-w-diversey-pkwy-chicago-il (This link shows 92 b/c it's a few doors down b/c internet stalkers don't need to know my exact address.)

Childhood homes: All 0!

Minnesota

Montana

Montana should have gotten lower than 0. Car dependent is an understatement.

Roving gangs of Montanans drive around and chain whip anyone over 14 who does not own a vehicle.

And driving sucked in the long winters b/c they don't salt the roads in Montana, so your Subaru would fishtail all 65 miles to and from the mall.

My current address in Montreal is 98. Higher than my old place in Hackney which doesn't seem right, but I guess they are both pretty walkable. Grew up in a 32, which seems a bit high.

91. That seems pretty accurate.

what is your wakascore?

I'm not sure; mine seems a bit fozzy.

ages 0-17: 0 (no surprise, an ACTUAL ZERO for my parents' house)
18-19: 37 (surprised the dorms at UMD are so low tbh)
20-21: 69 (other side of a really big campus, but still a really huge increase considering how samey my life felt?)
22: 65 (off campus after graduation)
23: 82 (arlington, va; next door to some other ILXors)
24: 68 (first actual DC address, kind of a weird place, but still had my car)
25-27: 72 (really miss this place! first year with car, then it broke.)
28: 97 (damn yo welcome to SF)
29: 97 (should be rated higher than our first SF place but i mean, both just so near EVERYTHING)

72

I'm @ an 88 right now but that is heavily dependent on your gender where I'm at imo/e

91 - hollywood, probably because i live about two blocks from both a metro and a major grocery store

71

xp unsafe neighbourhood or...?

wheelie king XP.I don't judge my nabe by the crap on sale. Walk includes: opportunity to see loose giant llama and lasso it from the back of a passing utility truck using their corrugated plastic piping. Several bears. A baby turkey not well-habituated to the wild that you can pick up and keep as an awesome pet. A donkey who's honking for the treats I usually have. Hard core cyclists doing their faux Paris-Roubaix training. Spotted salamanders. Big butternut squash random at the side of the road (don't eat those). I walk my road every day. There's nothing for sale. Boo hoo. Walk score 100 IMO. I can get crap delivered, and I can sort-of-work from home.

I do envy your ILX0r urban lifestyles.I've enjoyed that previously. Dropping off your laundry and picking up your food by bike is walkscore 1000.

so you live in brooklyn?

ha! I miss it. Jay St Borough Hall represent!

75; 85 transit score. Seems about right. I'm not right around the corner from everything (which I was in a previous 100 apartment), but still a place you could live without a car if you are willing to walk 10 minutes.

Dropping off your laundry is a good thing? Isnt having ones own washing machine better than having to go to a laundromat>?

people who wash their clothes are trying to destroy our planet imo

Yes having your own machine is better but barely. Own washing machine requires repairs. Anyway we're OT.

other

my childhood home in the ohio suburbs rated 35 which feels way high. getting chased by dogs while cutting thru neighbors yards undoubtedly not factored in

my sister's place in the city (86) rates lower than my other sister in the 'burbs (94)

what burb is #2?

elmhurst

looking at the greater chicago map, it seems like there's a very walkable center of elmhurst surrounding the train station. presumably she lives on that? however that 94 has to be put in perspective, cause she's surrounded by <50

she drives lol~25mi to work one way

but powers her car with her own shit and compost

92

My closest entertainment option is listed as the Living Torah Museum, which I admittedly have never been to.

whys your cocksore?

I would totally visit the Living Torah Museum!

Childhood home ranks 35, "car-dependent", which is at least 20 points too high for a burb where you were stuck with only your neighbors for entertainment unless you were a strong bicyclist. Some of the cited nearby parks and shopping hadn't been built yet. I remember as a kid sometimes one of us would arrange a 20-minute group bike ride to the closest shopping center, where we'd hang out all day reading comic books at the apothecary, bowling, pinball/arcade games, eating pizza & ice cream, and we had a good time. Ah, the days when a trip to the strip mall passed for fun....

Place I lived 10 yrs ago still "car-dependent" at 46 although there's a grocery store, bakery, dry cleaner, hair salon in the building, and 5 minute walk to subway stop. Not best place for carlessness but certainly doable and I knew several without cars there. Where I am now seems about 50% have a car, large transient population.

grocery store in the building and it's 46? that must be off

kind of want to start a 0 club

77

the house i grew up in in iowa? 78, lol

kind of want to start a 0 club

But where would you meet?

dunno, but we're all driving there

gigantic empty parking lot

it'll be like tailgating without a football game

We're not talking about klan meetings again, are we?

shh

I always enjoyed the tailgating more than the actual game anyway....

I bet you were a bird of paradise at Burning Man this year.

nope - totally not my scene....

our neighborhood is a 50 which is kind of bullshit. still, i dont walk it. i spent 32 years of my life walking and/or on public transportation so taking a walk is work for me not a pleasant stroll.

i got a 95, which is fairly accurate. It's not as commercial an area as I used to live in, but it's still got a lot of restaurants, shopping, parks etc within a short walking distance. i live <1 block from the train

66 - not that low, but also not really reflective of the resources/businesses conveniently located ALL around my joint. I think it is b/c everything seems to be around .5 miles away, rather than .25

yeah i got a 60 and was surprised - 5 busroutes and all the other amenities within half a mile.

seems like dudes who put this together define walking as can fall out of my door and into a cheese shop instead

http://images.wikia.com/familyguy/images/b/b8/Hickory_Farms.jpg

it's always gonna be arbitrary but I think it's safe to say that *most people* won't walk to someplace .5 miles+ on the reg, not that it's not feasible

95

lazy MFs iirc

xp

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Until I moved to the Chicago, it would never occur to me to walk more than a couple of blocks. In college I used drove the 4 to 5 blocks from my house to class.
I mean it would occur to me, but only in the sense walking specifically for exercise or as a novelty on a nice day.

When my car was broken down for a while, I would usually get co-workers to give me a lift to work 1 mile away.

Ugh - work was a restaurant where business lunchers regularly pissed and moaned that they couldn't find parking. We were in the fucking center of the business district! That means: a) no parking lot and b) you can park at the garage 3 blocks away. But like with me, to those whiners, 3 blocks was unequivocally not reasonable walking distance, at least not under the circumstances.

For some people, three blocks isn't a reasonable walking distance for good reason--they're disabled, old, very out of shape, etc.

88, which seems low since i p much can walk to anything

80

recently moved from a 92 to a 78. Prefer it here as the quality of walkable destinations is far higher.

For some people, three blocks isn't a reasonable walking distance for good reason--they're disabled, old, very out of shape, etc.

Certainly true, and I would not gripe about visibly disabled people griping about lack of parking. I'm just saying that it is absurd to expect a downtown business to have a parking lot like you'd find at a strip mall on the edge of town.

And it was pretty fucking ridiculous for me to drive 4 - 5 blocks to class! Esp since I had to feed a parking meter.

yeah i got a 60 and was surprised - 5 busroutes and all the other amenities within half a mile.

this occurred to me as well and then I remembered that riding a bus is not walking

Non visibly disabled persons can gripe about parking too.

people who are too old or disabled to drive can bitch about more than parking...

(or poor)

None of those statements refute what I am getting at, which is clearly stated.

I agree!

My statement has no concerns with what you clearly stated you were getting at.

basically I just feel more for old people who have *completely lost mobility* than those who have to take a bad parking spot. this is happening more and more as the boomers age.

91-not sure what I think of that.

95

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

average: 73.1