I Can’t Walk Anywhere, Apparently
Nov 19th, 2007 by Alex
Joel Spolsky recommended a neat mashup today, rating the “walkability” of an address according to how many places of interest (stores, restaurants, etc) are nearby. The area surrounding my house has a Walk Score of 23. That’s pretty low, but if I use the address of a house nearby the entrance to my community I get a 68. It makes sense that I would have to get out of my community in order to walk anywhere. I drive everywhere except to my car and to the mailbox, so that shouldn’t surprise me. That’s what I get for choosing to live in suburbia. I walk enough during the work day to make up for it, health-wise. I keep meaning to borrow a pedometer to see how far I really do walk in an average day.
If you get a pedometer I recommend checking out the site http://walkertracker.com
That’s cool. I got a score of 77. Not bad.
DJ: Oh nifty. I’m tempted to buy this guy just to find out how much I really am walking. I’d guess its a few miles a day.
I love my neighborhood: 85!
My old neighborhood was 83. My current neighborhood is 31, and I don’t want to go to any of the places they recommended anyway.
My home’s walk score is a mere 26, and looking at the places listed on which that score was based, they take a very generous view of what’s within walking distance…and what’s worth walking to. Neat idea, though!
ACW & Bilbo: The biggest limiting factor of it (aside from the as-the-crow-flies distances) is the desirability factor of going to the places listed and that the only places listed are the ones that Google knows about (which apparently isn’t everything).