Calculate Your Walk Score
How great is it when you find a new website that provides a truly unique (and useful) service for free? Pretty freakin' great, right? Well, check out Walk Score ... it is a diamond in the knee-high rough that is the Internet.
What is Walk Score?
Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.
Walk Score is very simple. You punch in your address and click submit, then the site queries Google Earth to find stores, restaurants, schools, theaters, etc. near your address. Using its proprietary ranking algorithm, Walk Score calculates a customized score somewhere between 0 (you can't walk to anything but your car) and 100 (walk nirvana).
I just noticed that the site is currently not functioning because it is over its Google Maps quota, but when I tried last week, I scored a dismal 18. I live in Albany, NY - but not near the downtown area. Other than a small park across the street, we have nothing closer than 0.6 miles away from our door. Seems like a half mile is a critical marker for Walk Score's algorithm. If you have stores & restaurants within a half mile, you are likely to score above 50.
If you visit the site and can't run your score, try back in the morning the next day. The Google Maps quota resets daily.
I have Walk Score bookmarked. An invaluable resource when considering relocation. Great stuff!
Comments
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 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 | December 6, 2007 5:38 AM