Map of the Day: Walk it Off

Walkscore ranked over 2,500 neighborhoods in the top 40 U.S. cities and found that New York City is the second Most Walkable overall. San Francisco is #1, prompting Streetsblog to wonder, "Is Eastern Queens really dragging us down that badly? Doesn't pretty much everyone have a car in the Bay Area?"

In this map, the most walkable neighborhoods are in green, while the least walkable ones are in red. See if your neighborhood is considered a Walker's Paradise (38 NYC neighborhoods are). And here's what makes a city walkable or not (density, yes; suburban sprawl not so much).

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in News on July 18, 2008 3:22 PM

Comments [rss]

mithras the prophet

As breaknight noted, San Francisco wins on a mean score basis because the metropolitan area is rather small, while New York includes areas that in most other cities would be separate suburbs.

Another way to look at it, though, is that New York has

- The top 4 most walkable neighborhoods

- 4 of of top 5 neighborhoods

- 7 of the top 10

- 14 of the top 20

- and 19 of the top 30.

Since you can, you know, walk from one of those walkable neighborhoods to the next, the city contains the largest, most walkable stretch of urbanity in the U.S.

Though I haven't been to "Old Westport" in Kansas City.

Think2wice

Why even bother including airports, parks, and vacant lots as "neighborhoods", they're just bring down the score of the city.

Walkscore needs to fine tune themselves in order to be a truly reliable touchstone for car-free living.

JenChungsBaby

Walking Jamaica Bay is a bitch.

Spirit of 76

It's also a great way to get to know the city. Being inside a car or bus isn't even close. Being on one of the elevated tracks in the outer boroughs is only slightly better.

Rfive

Walking through NYC is the best way to keep fit. A few years back, some Native Americans from Montana visited us and they were EXHAUSTED by day 3 because of all of the walking we were doing. BTW, there were some fatties in the group...

Aveais Essex

No pursuits in the dusk

And no amusements in the house

Waiting for mercury to faaaaaaall...

ides_of_march

Those hills in San Francisco are murder on the knees.

breaknight

oops. "too" not "to" I hate when people make that mistake.

breaknight

San Francisco is basically a little 7x7 mile square, with very very few neighborhoods built at low density.

Manhattan blows San Francisco out of the water in terms of walk-ability, but yeah, when you factor in Staten Island and much of Queens even a lot of Brooklyn, you get dragged down.

If San Francisco's score had to include San Jose and the East Bay, they'd be dragged down to.