My neighborhood has a Walk Score of 42:
Not Walkable: Only a few destinations are within easy walking range. For most errands, driving or public transportation is a must.
I agree that public transportation is a “must” for my neighborhood; we’re not close to offices or other places where most people work. On the other hand, we’re a mere 2 miles from the Capitol building downtown! If that’s not a short walk to an urban location, I don’t know what is.
From our home, on a nice day, we could easily (3o minutes or less) walk to:
- Sacred Heart Cathedral (2.1 miles)
- Frank’s Pizza and Italian Restaurant (1.0 miles)
- Food Lion, a laundromat, and a Chinese restaurant (0.3 miles)
- Three public libraries (1.0, 1.0, 1.2 miles)
- The North Carolina Museums of Science and History (2 miles)
- Three small building supply and hardware stores (1.5 miles or less)
- A meat market, an Italian market, an Oriental market, an international foods market, and a health foods market (1 - 2 miles)
- One independent movie theater, plus a chain (2.2 miles)
- A bowling alley (0.9 miles)
- Several bars, including a BBQ & Seafood restaurant and an Irish pub (1.0 - 2.0 miles)
- Border’s bookstore (2.0 miles)
- An auto repair shop (0.5 miles - Oh, wait… I don’t need to go there anymore!)
- A bicycle & repair shop (2.1 miles)
- A hospital (1.2 miles)
- A barber (0.9 miles)
- Two colleges and a university (1.0 - 2.0 miles)
- An animal hospital (2.2 miles)
- Ten dentists (1.5 miles or less)
…and at this point, I’m running out of ideas of shops to look for.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Tara // Dec 5, 2007 at 2:32 pm
This is awesome! We are so far from any of these things! The closest “store” to us is a mini-mart, and it’s over 2 miles of very unfriendly walking or biking terrain. I’m jealous!
2 rebecca // Dec 5, 2007 at 6:22 pm
It seems like most newer homes are in more remote subdivisions than their post-World War II counterparts… although I have to admit that we don’t have the obvious “walkability” of the homes in more expensive areas like Oakwood or Mordecai.
A casual drive through our side of town doesn’t really lead you to think it’s a good place to live without a car. But when you start searching Google Maps for various types of stores, all kinds of places pop up.
It makes me curious how many more options someone in New York City would have!
3 Brittany // Dec 7, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Wow, I thought we bought a very walking friendly house. Ours scored 29, but I feel like I have all I would need in a 1.5 mi. radius (grocery store, restaurants, drug store, pediatrician, dr., shops, playground, lake, etc.
4 Tara // Dec 7, 2007 at 8:11 pm
OK - I calculated our walk score. It’s a 0. Seriously, a 0. That is worse than the worst!
5 rebecca // Dec 7, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Brittany - I kind of wonder if you have to live within a stone’s throw of everything to score decently well.
Tara - Dude. I guess it could be a negative number… like maybe if squirrels attack pedestrians.
6 Jerry (mouse) // Dec 14, 2007 at 10:47 am
My walk score is 22… I was rather upset with it. And I was surprised to know that there is another score called drive scoreto evaluate my house. I found the way to calculate it online at Fizber site (http://drivescore.fizber.com/). I’ve got much better results – 44.
7 Nicole // Dec 16, 2007 at 10:39 am
haha. my walk score is 8 out of 100. The only thing closer than 3 miles is a bar. (Comes in handy when you need a soda quickly…)
Everything else is 3 miles or farther up and down hills and along the highway with no sidewalks for at least 2.5 miles. That’s what we get for living on the mountain.
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