If you haven’t checked your home’s walk score, you should. Walkability contributes to higher property values, a more livable neighborhood and a healthier community.
by James A. Bacon
Walk Score, a web-based service that measures walkability, is taking the urban planning profession by storm. Using an algorithm that awards points based on the distance to amenities within a location’s walking distance, Walk Score purports to measure the walkability of a neighborhood, city, county or even an entire region. The algorithm is far from perfect but it gives a pretty good rough cut.
Walkability matters a great deal. This crucial amenity affects property values; houses with higher Walk Scores enjoy higher property values per square foot. “In the typical market, an additional one point increase in Walk Score was associated with between a $500 and $3,000 increase in home values,” writes Joe Cortright in “How Walkability Raises Home Values in U.S. Cities.” Walkability also affects public health — there is a strong correlation between a person’s weight and how much he or she walks.
Walk Score rates places on a 1-100 scale, with 90-100 rated a walker’s paradise, 70-89 as very walkable, 50-69 as somewhat walkable, 0-49 as car-dependent.
The Tysons example points out the limits to the Walk Score methodology. Although the business district has a relatively high level of density, which means destinations are relatively close to one another, the ubiquity of parking lots and the paucity of pedestrian-friendly streets makes it one of the more pedestrian-hostile places outside the Daytona Speedway. Additionally, there is a poor balance of residential and retail-commercial; the only reason people working in Tysons have for walking is to traverse the parking lots to get to their cars and drive home! (See the metro-wide heat map here.)
The Walk Score people freely concede that their system, based on Google Maps, does not take those factors into account. “Walk Score simply measures the straight-line distance to … locations and makes no adjustments for ease of walking or other obstacles to walking,” states the website. “In essence, Walk Score is a measure of the proximity of a range of typical goods, serviecs and activities to a particular household.”
Considerably lower down the scale comes another college town, Harrisonburg, which rates a “somewhat walkable” score of 53. (See map.)