Monday, July 23, 2007

Walk Score

Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. It calculates walkability based on distances to nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. In other words, a measure of whether common services are within walking distance or not on a scale of 0 to 100.

Our current house is in a purely residential neighborhood. Except for the local elementary school, nothing is less than 1-1/2 miles away. Walk Score gave us a 6 out of 100, only slightly better than Bill Gates house in Medina.

Our old house in Arlington, MA did quite a bit better, 46 out of 100. No surprise, Arlington is much denser and the neighborhoods are a mixture of residential and commercial properties.

Going back through my old addresses, the best score I found was when I lived in the Coolidge Corner neighborhood of Brookline, MA. My apartment there scored 91. (Via Matt)