Is your neighborhood walkable?

"Is your neighborhood walkable?" can be interpreted in two different ways: the easiness to run all errands by walking, or the quality and the design of the pedestrian walk in your neighborhood. This question may seem irrelevant for those who always drive regardless of the distance. However, this question will become important when choosing living neighborhood for non-drivers. Even for frequent drivers like me would still enjoy talking a stroll some times, for example, in the beautiful Saturday afternoon or after dinner (to help digestion). The answer to this question may reflect the life convenience at some certain level.

If you are living in the downtown of a city, the answer is likely to be positive. Possibly negative answers are expected if you are living in a countryside. However, how do you rate if you are living in the suburbs which is kind of a mixture of city and countryside? Or, how do you know the walkability of an area that you never have a chance to be physically there? For example, you are a non-driver and you are going to move to a new city. You might need the walkability information as a reference when choosing housing.

Interestingly, I found a website that may give us some idea. Walk Score is a website which rates the walkability of any neighborhood by computing the distance to a public transit, grocery store, restaurant, parks and etc from a given address. It also considers the walking quality of pedestrian walk. It investigated most major cities in North America, and the most walkable neighborhood was rated 100 (possibly the one with highest shop density and good road condition). All the other neighborhoods were rated based on relative walkability. The following shows the description of scores. For your information, the most walkable city in North America is San Francisco. To see more cities, go to here.

Walk Score	Description
90–100	Walkers’ Paradise — Daily errands do not require a car.
70–89	Very Walkable — Most errands can be accomplished on foot.
50–69	Somewhat Walkable — Some amenities within walking distance.
25–49	Car-Dependent — A few amenities within walking distance.
0–24	Car-Dependent — You can walk from your house to your car.

This is really interesting, and I tried the intersection of Yonge St. and Sheppard St., which is the most populous area in the North York region of Toronto, right away. The score was 85, not too bad. To make some comparison, I tried a random address in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto. It turned out to be 38, which means highly car-dependent region. This is about right. However, the rating isn't perfect.

First of all, the transit rating (which is one of the most important factor...) may not be very representative since the transit authorities may not provide transit information such as station and bus stop locations to the software developer. It can be misleading sometimes. The accessibility to the area of interested may be highly underestimated. Second, the distance to the closest shops are calculated based on data on Google Maps. You may be able to find some shops that are even closer to your home. Third, I am not sure if the rating considers the total number of shops in the same category. For example, if the distance to all kinds of shops are identical in neighborhood A and B, but neighborhood B has more shops in each category than A, will B get higher scores or not?

Nevertheless, Walk Score still provides a good first-cut estimate, which may be very useful for choosing future house locations.