So you know about my Walking Santa Monica project, and you know about Zipcode Village — an initiative to help people live, work, and play in the same spot. But how walkable’s your neighborhood as it is now?
Visit Walk Score, plug in your address and zip, and find out.
Turns out, I’m v. lucky. My ‘hood ranks a 91 out of 100 — meaning I live in a “Walkers’ Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car.”
Hell yeah. Of course, I moved to Santa Monica expressly for this purpose — so I could get what I needed and get to where I needed to go without fighting traffic. My life, I have to say, has become much lovelier post-move to Santa Monica, especially since I ditched the roommate.
The Walk Score app isn’t perfect. Its google mashup map’s supposed to point you to nearby spots, but its list of grocery stores fails to pick up my fave Co-opportunity, which is just 3 blocks away from me.
Still, Walk Score’ll give you a good sense of what sort of neighborhood you live in — and where you might consider moving to, if a change of residence is in order –
I still don’t get how this Zipcode Village thing is any different from a user-driven review site like Yelp.
Am I missing something?
Comment by Rafi — July 14, 2007 @ 11:10 am
I’d be careful basing my decisions on walkscore - check out the neighborhood yourself. When I checked mine, there were plenty of places that don’t exist any more (and haven’t been here for a year or so), and others are missing.
Comment by Robert 'Groby' Blum — July 14, 2007 @ 11:57 am
My neighborhood came up at 86, which means “Very Walkable: It’s possible to get by without owning a car.”
That’s about right. It would be cumbersome, but doable–primarily because we live within bus and bike commutes of work.
Comment by Kate — July 14, 2007 @ 9:12 pm
My neighborhood got a twenty-five, yet I manage to get most places on my bike. But I do think the low score is a good indication of my neighborhood’s suckitude.
Comment by Brian — July 15, 2007 @ 7:55 pm
It seems to be largely an indicator of how many businesses are close by. It doesn’t seem to take into account things like transit or bike path access at all, and its identification of amenities is suspect: It calls the Ionis Masonic lodge on La Cienega a park! It also thinks that Borders is a lot farther south down La Cienega than it is.
Comment by Don Hosek — July 16, 2007 @ 10:03 am