Walk Score is a large-scale, public access walkability

Walkability

Walkability is a measure of how friendly an area is to walking. Walkability has many health, environmental, and economic benefits. Factors influencing walkability include the presence or absence and quality of footpaths, sidewalks or other pedestrian right-of-ways, traffic and road conditions,...

 index that assigns a numerical walkability score to any address in the Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

.. Other services include a transit score and an apartment search that locates potential residences based on commute time. Walk Score “ranks communities nationwide (and soon, globally) based on how many businesses, parks, theaters, schools and other common destinations are within walking distance of any given starting point."

Company

Walk Score was founded in 2007. The company’s mission is “to promote walkable neighborhoods … one of the simplest and best solutions for the environment, our health, and our economy.” The index serves more than four million scores per day from more than ten thousand participating websites.

Walkability rankings

In July 2011, the website ranked the 50 most populous cities in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 according to walkability.

1. New York, NY
2. San Francisco, CA
3. Boston, MA
4. Chicago, IL
5. Philadelphia, PA
6. Seattle, WA
7. Washington, DC
8. Miami, FL
9. Minneapolis, MN
10. Oakland, CA

Algorithm

According to the site's creators,"The Walk Score algorithm awards points based on the distance to the closest amenity in each category. If the closest amenity in a category is within .25 miles (or .4 km), we assign the maximum number of points. The number of points declines as the distance approaches 1 mile (or 1.6 km)—no points are awarded for amenities further than 1 mile. Each category is weighted equally and the points are summed and normalized to yield a score from 0–100. The number of nearby amenities is the leading predictor of whether people walk."

Apartment Finder

In 2011, Walk Score unveiled an Apartment Search tool that locates available housing based on commute time to a given location. The tool calculates commute times for various modes of transport including walking, cycling

Cycling

Cycling, also called bicycling or biking, is the use of bicycles for transport, recreation, or for sport. Persons engaged in cycling are cyclists or bicyclists...

, driving, and public transit.

Professional

Walk Score has developed a variety of tools for real estate professionals, such as neighborhood maps and APIs. Multiple independent studies have demonstrated that above-average walkability correlates to increased housing values: in the metropolitan areas studied, higher Walk Score typically added US$4000–$34,000 per home. The company also provides data to leading research institutions, academics, and city planners including:

• Walk Score and Transit Score for all U.S. and some international addresses
• Road metrics such as intersection density and block length
• Heat maps for potentially walkable locations

This information is available in formats including spreadsheet

Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...

, GIS shapefile

Shapefile

The Esri Shapefile or simply a shapefile is a popular geospatial vector data format for geographic information systems software. It is developed and regulated by Esri as a open specification for data interoperability among Esri and other software products.Shapefiles spatially describe geometries:...

, and API.

Further reading

• Stephanie Y. Rauterkus, Grant I. Thrall, and Eric Hangen, 2010. “Location Efficiency and Mortgage Default” Journal of Sustainable Real Estate (JOSRE), Volume 2, No. 1.
• Brewster, Mark, David Hurtado, Sara Olson, and Jessica Yen. 2009. “Walkscore.com: A New Methodology to Explore Associations between Neighborhood Resources, Race and Health.” Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health.
• Carr, Lucas J., Shira I. Dunsiger, and Bess H. Marcus. 2010. “Validation of Walkscore for Estimating Access to Urban Amenities”. British Journal of Sports Medicine.