Despite that we will soon be getting another car, I do like being able to walk a lot of places in my neighborhood. Mostly to my daughter’s school, but once in a while my husband and I walk on a date, since it’s only 1-2 miles to a variety of restaurants.
So I found Walk Score to be a very interesting website. They didn’t rate my neighborhood as terribly walkable; just 32 out of 100. That doesn’t surprise me since for most people a mile is pretty far to walk, and it’s more than that to the nearest real grocery store.
I say real grocery store because they counted places such as 7-11 as a grocery store. I would have said convenience store for that sort.
I don’t walk to our local grocery store because a mile isn’t so far on the way out, but it’s pretty far when you’re on the way back with a load of groceries, some of which are heavy and need to be refrigerated soon.
The site also pointed out to me some businesses I hadn’t noticed yet. The categorization was pretty interesting… I didn’t know that a self storage place and U-Haul should be filed under Clothes and Music!
Having kids of course limits my interest in walking long distances. Mine do enjoy long walks, but have more patience for nature walks than anything on a sidewalk. Not that I mind.
Overall, it’s a nice reminder that there are many places in a lot of neighborhoods that you can walk to. Some of it is a matter of personal perception, but the reminder that you can walk in your neighborhood isn’t a bad one at all.
My neighborhood scored a 63. I think they need to do some tweaking though. They have listed places not even in my town. I think my small town is very walkable and everything is within less than a mile but places listed from towns 15 miles away have affected the score and shouldn’t even be on the list.
I think for my town the score was an 74 but my neighborhood was 18. There are places listed that aren’t here anymore but that’s ok. I do a lot of walking around anyways.