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My New Favorite Thing: Walkscore
Location, location, location may be the mantra of real estate agents but you seldom hear walkability cited as key in making places great. Cheers are in order, then, for Walkscore, a handy website for assessing the walk factor of neighborhoods in the United States, Canada, and the UK. You just type in an address and it gives you a score from 100 (walkers' paradise) to 0 (the Mariana Trench).
I must say it is mysteriously accurate. My block in Prospect Lefferts, Brooklyn, rates 86, below my old place on the northwest side of Park Slope, 97. Mother-in-law HQ in suburban Queens rates a 63; my old house in Carrboro, North Carolina (where I biked everywhere), 58; and my childhood home in car-addicted Clearwater, Florida, 34.
Too bad we're not moving again anytime soon 'cos this site would come in handy.
Posted by carrie on 08/09/2007 | Permalink
Comments
The scores usually shake down in relative order, but I wish it took more account of car-free stuff like buslines and train stops, and of barriers like freeways, versus just what's in a walkable radius. My best lifetime score was my grad school place in Madison WI--91--which is good because I never had a car there anyway. My current place should score higher, because it's walkable to the metro stop, and on several bus lines--so you can be car-less most days, even if you're not walking everywhere.
Posted by: Penny | Aug 9, 2007 6:24:21 PM
well, yeah, but it's Walkscore, not CarFreeScore.
That said, it indirectly measures transit because businesses and housing tend to thrive around transit hubs. That's the kind of thing that would only show up over time, though (a new bus route doesn't change a neighborhood overnight).
Posted by: carrie | Aug 10, 2007 12:56:53 PM
Love this! Is this viral? Let's make this viral.
Posted by: Jack Silbert | Aug 10, 2007 4:01:08 PM
It seems like it would be really hard to have something that automatedly takes into account transit, whether or not their are sidewalks, bicycle-friendliness, etc. just because the data isn't out there. Maybe the data should be out there.
As to proximity to transit -- I just noticed that my current landlords, who are also real estate agents (for buying and selling of houses), mention when a rental property is near transit but not when a house for sale is. This is despite the fact that the two sets of properties are in the same location.
Posted by: Isabel | Aug 12, 2007 8:20:02 PM
I'm excited because my neighborhood in the Los Feliz/Silver Lake region of LA got a score of 86, just like Carrie's neighborhood! LA's not so bad, honest.
Posted by: Jason | Aug 14, 2007 12:51:17 AM
I believe that walk score is cool, but nowadays more and more people prefer to drive cars. Homes are often located in an area where some establishments are easier to get to by car than on foot. I've recently found a type of service on http://drivescore.fizber.com which is called Drive Score. It shows a map of what establishments are in your neighborhood and calculates a Drive Score based on the number of places within a convenient driving distance. It doesn’t mean that drive score is better than walk score – they are equal and both necessary in the modern world!
Posted by: Wella | Dec 26, 2007 6:04:22 AM
I've visited Drive score and now I find it really convinient tool. I've also found on Fizber.com a service Climate Watch which allows homebuyers to check what the climate is like in another town or city all year round before they move there. That's cool!
Posted by: Fsbo | Jan 23, 2008 5:59:48 AM
