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Do you all know about Get Your Walk Score - A Walkability Score For Any Address Just enter your street address and zip code and it comes up w/ a Google map of your house location and all of the restaurants, bars, coffee shops, grocery stores, etc., near your location. It's on a scale from 0 - 100, 0 being the worst. It also has the walk score ratings for 40 of the US largest cities.
I'm finding it really helpful in planning our move to the city. Currently our walk score in the suburbs is a miserable 14 - car dependent.
We're looking at places to move to that are in the mid 80's and up.
inahandbasket
I have a 85, which is about right. I very, very rarely use my car on the weekends.
My previous post was 7.5 years ago and the walkable amenities for both homes have expanded. Oddly, both scores have come down a bit, despite the increase in amenities. In Miami Beach, I am in the general Sunset Harbor area with access to 3 grocers by foot, soon to be 4 with the recent Trader Joe's announced. The pending pedestrian bridge from Lincoln Ct. to Purdy Ave. (in the next few months) is going to add even more walkability that will connect the West. Ave., Belle Island and Sunset Harbor neighborhoods. Much of this greater area is already labeled as a walker's paradise and, in my opinion, is the most convenient walking place to live in Miami Beach, if not all Florida. The city is implementing its Bicycle and Pedestrian Masterplan as the sea walls and streets are rebuilt, resulting in wider sidewalks, narrower car lanes and more bicycle infrastructure.
In Raleigh, a huge mixed used development is about to break ground 2 blocks away from my DT condo. It will bring a much closer grocery option to the two that already exist. A flood of new multifamily housing continues to be poured into the immediate submarket, which should result in even more mixed use and retail in the future. Bike share is coming to Raleigh this year, following aggressive progress in bike lane infrastructure across the core and into other parts of the city the last half decade.
I can only see both of the scores going up over time.
I have always desired for them to improve the walkability both inside the Sunset Harbor neighborhood (maybe due to all the construction, but walking there I'm forced to walk in the street) and improve the walkability to that neighborhood from South Beach.
Me personally, I love the Standard, and the walk across the Venetian is absolutely beautiful. It's one of those walks that at night is just magical, with all the high-rise condo's lit up over Biscayne Bay and the Venetian Islands.
My address got a 50 in a walkscore......which makes sense because this neighborhood is mostly residential. However, I'm not sure how accurate that score is, because I know there's one school nearby which is NOT listed, and a few restaurants/stores are listed, and they've long since closed.
From my house in car-centric, clogged freeway California, within a 10-minute walk are the following:
three supermarkets
two banks
numerous doctors, dentists, orthodontists
9 or 10 restaurants
library
city hall
theater
home improvement store
pet store
three city parks
regional wilderness park
I looked up my address on that walkability website, but it's screwed up. It says you can get "downtown" in 2 minutes by car, 60+ minutes by walking ??? Makes no sense when it usually takes 1 minute or more just to get through the traffic light at the end of the street. For the short distances I mentioned above, walking is barely longer than driving.
Wow! You picked a great neighborhood...our old neighborhood in Oakland only had a couple of restaurants and a community grocery store within a 5 minute walk. Everything else required a drive -- and the hassles of parking. Got old after a few years...
I can walk to 2 city parks in 5 minutes, a small shopping area (nicely growing too, as some new condos are popping up) in 10 minutes and a larger shopping area in 20 minutes. My favorite part is that I can walk through the larger of the parks to run some of my errands, so I get nature and commerce together in one trip.
I live within 10 blocks of:
A hospital
Post office
4 drugstores
Local chain supermarket
Whole Foods
Aldi
Target
Independent boutiques
Mall-type retail stores
A dozen bars
Restaurants serving the following cuisines:
New American
Pizza
Chinese
Japanese
Korean
Taiwanese
Asian Fusion
Burgers
Diner
Cajun
Ethiopian
Mexican
Spanish
Morrocan
Mediteranian
French
I can walk to 2 city parks in 5 minutes, a small shopping area (nicely growing too, as some new condos are popping up) in 10 minutes and a larger shopping area in 20 minutes. My favorite part is that I can walk through the larger of the parks to run some of my errands, so I get nature and commerce together in one trip.
Lakeview area of Chicago. I'm 2 minutes from the L, 4 minutes from a grocery store, 2 minutes from a convenience store and within 10 minutes of about any bar or restaurant I want in the neighborhood.
I walk basically everywhere. We own a car, but honestly only use it once every few weeks or so. A few times I've gone down to the garage just to make sure it's still there since I realized I hadn't visited it in almost a month!
Scores an 83. If not for work our cars would grow cobwebs. We pretty much walk everywhere, whether to the cool little village-like shopping/restaurant/pubs 5 minutes away, the largest urban park in the nation-canyons/golf/zoo/museums complex as our backyard to downtown ballgames, concerts, plays, entertainment and the bay a couple of miles down the hill.
We sought out a vibrant urban neighborhood- but as our first house we weren't sure. Now that we've experienced this lifestyle I see no way of moving to a place where this isn't possible.
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