What is Walk Score?

We help homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.

Killer app. Gold star.

What is Walk Score?

We help homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.

Killer app. Gold star.

[ Well, it will get one from me eventually perhaps... they need to find a way (hard, no doubt) to incorporate other information.

For example, my address scores a 57/100, which, granted, isn't very good, but I still think is too high. They count the Tara as walkable from my place. I won't deny that it's physically possible to walk there - I've walked to the diner down there before - but there aren't sidewalks for a large portion of the walk, and it'd be (er, was) scary as hell at night, if sober (and if not, it'd be just plain dangerous).

Perhaps my metrics are too strict, but I say if there aren't sidewalks along a road as major as Briarcliff or La Vista, it's not effing walkable, even if there's a pile of good restaurants and stuff along the way.

Also, it calculates things under 1 mile away, AS THE CROW FLIES. Using Google Maps directly to get distances along actual roads, a place shown as .5 miles away on WalkScore is in fact 1.4 miles away. That's a pretty major oversight, even if you leave out the lack of usable sidewalks.

Finally, and this is more blue sky than bottom line, I guess, but still would make a big difference to me, is some way to rate the quality of various road segments for walkability (perhaps collaboratively). Let's face it, the walk from a condo in midtown to a nearby bar is distinct from walking in Decatur and is definitely distinct from me walking across the 85 Bridge on N. Druid Hills Road to get to a little grocery store. -k]