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Name | Walk Score | Population
U-Street 98 11,427
Dupont Circle 98 17,057
Mount Vernon Square 97 6,494
Logan Circle - Shaw 97 21,218
Foggy Bottom - GWU - West End
95 16,281
Adams Morgan 95 15,639
H Street-NoMa 95 8,315
Columbia Heights 94 35,322
Downtown-Penn Quarter-Chinatown
93 7,570
Arlington bloc:
Spoiler
Name | Walk Score | Population
Clarendon - Courthouse 93 8,712
Ballston - Virginia Square
92 13,649
Lyon Village 91 3,569
One neighborhood in Alexandria as well (surprisingly not Old Town, even though its right on its border):
Spoiler
Name | Walk Score | Population
Braddock Road Metro 90 5,168
"DC Diamond" total for 90+ Walk Score neighborhoods: 170,421
Certain neighborhoods that fall lower than expected include Georgetown at 79 (mostly due to its lack of a Metro station), Glover Park just north of Georgetown at 73, and Anacostia at 61 (despite a Metro station, it still has a lot of infill to be done despite being right across from the Navy Yard). DC's density does taper off pretty quickly when you get west of Rock Creek, with only Columbia Heights being a decent distance away from Downtown like the top cities (NYC, SF, Chicago, Philly). There's still a lot of SFH when you get off of Connecticut/Wisconsin Aves in upper NW, and south of the river still has a lot of progress to be made. But overall, DC is still an above average city if you don't like a car, and Arlington has made some tremendous improvements over the past decade along its orange/silver line corridor. Still, Columbia Heights is one of the great gentrification stories, which was a no-go for most prior to the opening of the Green Line station in the early 2000s.
Also, there's no separate data for downtown Silver Spring, but that also looks to score in the 90s as I work there and it definitely has the feel of a midsized city with all the high-rises, apartments, office buildings, retail, and parking. If you continue down Georgia Ave. from there all the way to the Waterfront, its for the most part walkable with neighborhoods in the high 70s and 80s until you get to Howard University where it jumps into the 90s, and the biggest gap is currently being redeveloped into something more pedestrian-friendly.
Last edited by Borntoolate85; 08-24-2021 at 06:22 PM..
Name | Walk Score | Population
U-Street 98 11,427
Dupont Circle 98 17,057
Mount Vernon Square 97 6,494
Logan Circle - Shaw 97 21,218
Foggy Bottom - GWU - West End
95 16,281
Adams Morgan 95 15,639
H Street-NoMa 95 8,315
Columbia Heights 94 35,322
Downtown-Penn Quarter-Chinatown
93 7,570
Arlington bloc:
Spoiler
Name | Walk Score | Population
Clarendon - Courthouse 93 8,712
Ballston - Virginia Square
92 13,649
Lyon Village 91 3,569
One neighborhood in Alexandria as well (surprisingly not Old Town, even though its right on its border):
Spoiler
Name | Walk Score | Population
Braddock Road Metro 90 5,168
"DC Diamond" total for 90+ Walk Score neighborhoods: 170,421
Certain neighborhoods that fall lower than expected include Georgetown at 79 (mostly due to its lack of a Metro station), Glover Park just north of Georgetown at 73, and Anacostia at 61 (despite a Metro station, it still has a lot of infill to be done despite being right across from the Navy Yard). DC's density does taper off pretty quickly when you get west of Rock Creek, with only Columbia Heights being a decent distance away from Downtown like the top cities (NYC, SF, Chicago, Philly). There's still a lot of SFH when you get off of Connecticut/Wisconsin Aves in upper NW, and south of the river still has a lot of progress to be made. But overall, DC is still an above average city if you don't like a car, and Arlington has made some tremendous improvements over the past decade along its orange/silver line corridor. Still, Columbia Heights is one of the great gentrification stories, which was a no-go for most prior to the opening of the Green Line station in the early 2000s.
Also, although there's no separate data for downtown Silver Spring, but that also looks to score in the 90s as I work there and it definitely has the feel of a midsized city with all the high-rises, apartments, office buildings, retail, and parking. If you continue down Georgia Ave. from there all the way to the Waterfront, its for the most part walkable with neighborhoods in the high 70s and 80s until you get to Howard University where it jumps into the 90s, and the biggest gap is currently being redeveloped into something more pedestrian-friendly.
Nice, thanks for this! I'll add it to the larger list at some point, probably when I do another city or region. I'm surprised that there isn't a contiguous bloc going from the denser parts of Arlington to Alexandria. I see what you mean with Silver Spring--it looks like they did something similar to what they did with Raleigh where they simply didn't run it for certain (and most walkable) neighborhoods.
This is with the DC update. I decided to check walkscore to see if they updated population numbers of the neighborhoods for the 2020 census, but they have not. However, I did notice that the walkscore for DC neighborhoods have changed as there are three additional DC neighborhoods now with 90 or above scores from when Borntoolate85 posted. It looks like things changed for other cities as well. This is only impactful if there were populous neighborhoods just below the 90 or 100 threshold, but again, I haven't updated those numbers. A quick look at LA shows the addition of a pretty large/populous neighborhood with Rampart Village and East Hollywood to the downtown core bloc and the creation of at least one new sizable 90 threshold bloc in Palms/Culver City. LA's now one 88 score neighborhood away from merging the Hollywood and downtown core blocs. I also know that Chicago had a lot of neighborhoods on the cusp of 90, so the new rankings and the rather centralized growth of Chicago probably means the numbers are up quite a bit.
So note that only DC is currently up to date, the rest are from last year and some of them have significant changes.
Anyhow, if anyone's interested, please let me know if there are places in metropolitan areas currently covered that have 90+ score blocs that I might have missed. Or you can add your own cities. Or you can suggest a metropolitan area, and I might do it as long as you point out where the 90+ blocs are.
They mention using multiple data sources and so I think at least some of them are automatically scraped from sites (like Google and its map data) so it should be relatively easy for them to update as long as the sources they rely on update. Are there alternatives that do something similar?
I think one large issue for doing comparisons on this level are neighborhood definitions and what places even get assigned an area walkscore. For example, as of right now, Raleigh, NC has a top neighborhood score of 66 for College Park, but if you look at the heat map for the city, there's obviously a downtown Raleigh section that is very green and thus likely very walkable so it is likely taking in the sort of amenities and service listings from third party sources correctly. However, downtown Raleigh was never classified as a neighborhood by their system and therefore has no entry. This is somewhat rare among major cities, so that's not too bad though it's odd that Raleigh would be left out. Where it also gets weird in the context of this topic is that some of the small municipalities that are urban and bustling next to larger municipalities also don't get scores.
That's interesting about Raleigh. There are certainly some neighborhoods that are starting to show higher scores measured by address. For example, my address there comes in at 92 (in a downtown district).
Oddly, my address in Miami Beach comes in at 82, yet it's more walkable IMO. So, I looked at the map that Walkscore keeps for my walkshed on their site, and immediately noticed with just a cursory check that they are missing Trader Joe's, Walgreens, Apple Store, Macy's, a Food Hall, Gap, and a whole host of other retail outlets, etc. Oddly, their database does include small and obscure liquor stores, services, stores, etc. It makes zero sense to me. Definitely the Walkscores need to be taken with a grain of salt.
That's interesting about Raleigh. There are certainly some neighborhoods that are starting to show higher scores measured by address. For example, my address there comes in at 92 (in a downtown district).
Oddly, my address in Miami Beach comes in at 82, yet it's more walkable IMO. So, I looked at the map that Walkscore keeps for my walkshed on their site, and immediately noticed with just a cursory check that they are missing Trader Joe's, Walgreens, Apple Store, Macy's, a Food Hall, Gap, and a whole host of other retail outlets, etc. Oddly, their database does include small and obscure liquor stores, services, stores, etc. It makes zero sense to me. Definitely the Walkscores need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Yea, definitely needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I do think it's somewhat better on the neighborhood level as it's sort of a composite look so the missing details get evened out a little bit and especially at higher score thresholds.
Yea, definitely needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I do think it's somewhat better on the neighborhood level as it's sort of a composite look so the missing details get evened out a little bit and especially at higher score thresholds.
Interestingly, Google doesn't even place downtown Raleigh correctly in Google Maps. It pushes downtown eastward into single family neighborhoods while cutting off the west side of downtown. Walkscore still doesn't list actual walkable neighborhoods among its options for the city.
Interestingly, Google doesn't even place downtown Raleigh correctly in Google Maps. It pushes downtown eastward into single family neighborhoods while cutting off the west side of downtown. Walkscore still doesn't list actual walkable neighborhoods among its options for the city.
Yep, it's essentially not listing any of the more vibrant downtown neighborhoods at all. I reckon walkscore probably pulls from google maps categories to some extent and likely with something like a size maximum or minimum to consolidate and some sort of border checking for overlap and that's probably messing things up a bit. The mapping for Raleigh's core in google maps as an odd hodge podge because there's a lot of mismatched overlaps and missing segments on different levels and bifurcated bits like this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hi...!4d-78.6306524
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 01-27-2022 at 05:19 PM..
Austin has a block of downtown and West campus that is 90+ with a population of 23,000. That block also borders the UT campus itself, which scores 89 and has a population of ~8k.
It's not much, but it's pretty much the only 90+ in the state of Texas. Downtown Dallas has 6k, and I don't see any other Texas neighborhoods that are 90+. New Orleans appears to have 23.5k, so Austin will probably catch them any day now in 90+ (probably already has, considering the pace of residential development in downtown and West Campus). Of course New Orleans has a much, much bigger population in the 80s and 70s!
Austin has a block of downtown and West campus that is 90+ with a population of 23,000. That block also borders the UT campus itself, which scores 89 and has a population of ~8k.
It's not much, but it's pretty much the only 90+ in the state of Texas. Downtown Dallas has 6k, and I don't see any other Texas neighborhoods that are 90+. New Orleans appears to have 23.5k, so Austin will probably catch them any day now in 90+ (probably already has, considering the pace of residential development in downtown and West Campus). Of course New Orleans has a much, much bigger population in the 80s and 70s!
That's interesting Austin being the smaller city/metropolitan area would come out on top for Texas. I reckon part of why Houston doesn't have a single neighborhood in the 90s is because its neighborhood agglomerations on walkscore seem to be huge.
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I'm updating bits at a time with the new walkscores for this time for the start of this year / Q1 2022-ish
So note that only DC and NYC are currently up to date, the rest are from last year and some of them have significant changes. NYC's changed in that the main 100s blob got a lot bigger. Interestingly enough, the BK/QN blob got smaller from before with some of its fringe neighborhoods dropping below 90. Newark had neighborhoods reach 90 threshold so forms a new bloc. I haven't looked much beyond that. I figured CT would have some though I might just do a separate CT heading rather than as part of NYC metro.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 01-27-2022 at 09:22 PM..
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