America's most walkable big cities

As gas prices drill deep into U.S. pockets and people cast about for ways to drive less, a company has ranked the 40 biggest U.S. cities based on their "walkability."

San Francisco tops the list, thanks to eminently walkable neighborhoods such as Chinatown and the city's financial district, with a score of 86 out of a possible 100 points. The runners-up in the top five: New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia, in that order.

Jacksonville, Fla., on the other hand, came in dead last, with an overall score of 36 out of a possible 100.

The survey was the brainchild of Seattle software company Front Seat through its year-old site Walk Score, which helps users locate homes or apartments in walkable neighborhoods. A user types in an address, and the site shows a map of what amenities are nearby – pubs, dry cleaners, groceries, cafes, parks, schools – and calculates a "Walk Score" for the property.

The service works for any city in the U.S. or Canada, says Mike Mathieu, chairman and founder of Front Seat, which Mathieu described as a civic-based software company that is "generally looking at ways to make the world a better place, online."

The benefits of ‘hoofing it’
Walkability is hot these days. Within the planning field, "there's a huge focus now in what we call 'active transportation' – walking and biking as co-equal modes of transportation, not just as hobbies to be done on the weekend," says Marc Schlossberg, an associate professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon.

Advocates plug walkable communities as a way to cut down on auto use and carbon emissions. Walkable communities are also being touted as a way to curb the national obesity epidemic: In one study, San Diego residents of traditional neighborhoods who had stores, services and other facilities a short walk from their homes were found to be 40% less likely to be overweight or obese than those who lived in neighborhoods of suburban sprawl.

Though he's enthusiastic about walkable communities, Schlossberg is cautious about such obesity studies, saying it's hard to tease out such precise cause-and-effect relationships. 

Neighborhood-by-neighborhood walkability
For its survey of walkable cities, Front Seat took the score – block by block – of more than 2,500 neighborhoods (as defined by real-estate valuation site Zillow.com) in 40 major cities. The survey takes into account a neighborhood's population – so, for instance, an industrial area that has few amenities but also very few residents won't drag down an entire city's listing, says Mathieu. "It's sort of the first time it's been done algorithmically on a large scale," he says of the project. 

A heat map on the Walk Score site shows which areas of a city are most walkable (in green) and which aren't (in red). San Francisco's heat map looks like a well-tended lawn. Charlotte's (No. 38) looks as hot as a griddle. Front Seat compiled a list of the top 138 neighborhoods — out of 2,508 surveyed — that scored 90 points or higher for walkability. Seven of the top 10 were in New York City, including the three that scored perfect 100s: TriBeCa, Little Italy and SoHo.

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The No. 10 neighborhood was Old Westport, in Kansas City, Mo. – a city that otherwise ranked an uninspired 34th. Westport's walkability didn't surprise John DeBauche, a lead planner for the city’s Planning and Development Department. "Kansas City is known for people driving to their mailboxes. But down here, it's not that way," he says of the historic district, where people began their travel west on the Oregon Trail.

Old Westport is full of bars that are popular with the 20-something crowd and restaurants with patio seating, and it's notably a pain to drive around. The two- and three-story buildings are more human-scale, DeBauche says, and the big storefront windows make the street feel "very personal – a place where you can look through a window and see the activity inside." In short, he says, the district "really works well" for pedestrians.

Help finding walker's paradise
But how did Los Angeles – which Americans love to beat up as the symbol of our traffic-snarled car culture – snag a No. 9 overall city ranking? Mathieu says there are several reasons. First, the survey looked at the city proper, not the metropolitan area that experiences so much of that infamous traffic. And within the city, "the areas that are most walkable in L.A. do have large populations," so it does bring up its ranking, he explains.

There are caveats to these rankings, even the survey’s creators concede.

"This is not the list of the most walkable places in the U.S." says Mathieu. "We took the 40 biggest cities and ranked them. There are plenty of smaller towns that are very walkable."

And "most walkable" doesn't necessarily equal "best," he acknowledges. San Francisco's Chinatown may be fascinating and have lots of amenities and places to eat – but Chinatown isn't where everyone wants to live. Nor does the survey take into account other things that make a neighborhood nice and walkable, such as trees. "The best way to think of this is that it (gives people) the potential to lead a less car-dependent lifestyle," says Mathieu.

Schlossberg liked how the survey and heat maps point out that even in the most seemingly pedestrian-unfriendly cities there are areas were walkers can find small oases to live, where they can park their car.

In lowly Jacksonville – which on the heat map has a small smudge of green in an otherwise hostile sea of red – "you can find these pockets of desirability, these walkers' paradises," Mathieu points out.

More data for house hunters
The creators of Walk Score see it as a vital real-estate tool, and Schlossberg seems to agree.  

"When looking for a place to live, we often don't think about the transportation implications. We think about how many rooms (a home) has, or does it have a nice yard, or maybe the school district it's in," Schlossberg says. But there are real lifestyle tradeoffs to living in a nonwalkable place. "Once you make a housing decision, you kind of get stuck there for a while," he says.

It could be particularly useful tool for students, or renters, or people who might not be able to drive because of disability or economics.

One of those who has used the site is Scott Arbeit, 38, who recently relocated from Boston to Seattle. "Coming out here, there was just no question that I was going to live in Seattle" instead of the suburbs, he says. "It was just a question of where.

"I wanted to find a neighborhood where the things I value most were easily in walking distance. And those things would be cool coffee shops, a supermarket within walking distance, bakeries and lots of restaurants."

Arbeit searched in a few Seattle neighborhoods – Capitol Hill, Alki – "and then I found this place in Ballard; it came out with a score of 100 out of 100. I was blown away," he says.

Today he gushes about all the things within a few blocks of his nice, three-bedroom townhouse – five bookstores, a weekly farmer's market, scads of restaurants. "I am not an anti-car person. I'm from New Jersey. I love driving," he says. "But this is an urban lifestyle thing."

That's exactly the kind of user that founder Mathieu is hoping for. "Our long-term hope is that every home listing will carry a Walk Score – '3 bedroom, 2 bath, Walk Score of 85.'"