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1. New York City - 88
2. San Francisco - 84
3. Boston - 80
4. Philadelphia - 77
5. Miami - 76
6. Chicago - 75
7. Washington DC - 74
8. Seattle - 71
9. Oakland - 69
10. Baltimore - 66
Transit Score
1. New York City - 81
2. San Francisco - 80
3. Boston - 75
4. Washington DC - 70
5. Philadelphia - 67
6. Chicago - 65
7. Seattle - 57
8. Baltimore - 57
9. Los Angeles - 50
10. Portland - 50
Bike Score
1. Portland - 70
2. San Francisco - 70
3. Denver - 70
4. Philadelphia - 68
5. Boston - 67
6. Washington DC - 65
7. Seattle - 64
8. Tuscon - 64
9. New York City - 62
10. Chicago - 62
Again, what I don't like about these rankings is that they are based on city proper statistics, which hugely favours geographically smaller cities. So to compare walkability of city A with 50 sq miles with City B with 400 sq miles is simply meaningless.
Of course one can say, well, it is the cities we are talking about, but it is not about statistics and which looks good on paper, is it? What matters to a person is not the AVERAGE walk score of an entire city, it is rather about, if I want to move to city X, versus city Y, which provides a better walkability for the limited number of activities I am likely to be engaged in, which likely won't involve the entire city land mass.
Say city A appears to be a lot more walkable than B, but if B has 10% of it that is highly walkable, has everything one needs, then why does it matter the rest 90% of the city is much more car dependent? I would consider B as walkable as A. For people who live on the 10% of city B, does it matter if his city is half the size or twice the size? Not at all, but the walkability score is likely to change dramatically if size were different.
In summary, my point is, walkability is not about mathematical average scores. It is about the availability of (sizable) highly walkable areas.
I think these scores are cool. I understand what Botticelli is saying, but as long as you have a brain, you can understand that NYC has more areas to walk around than SF, but on the average if you are moving to SF than chances are pretty good you will have good walk ability. Also you can select the individual neighborhoods and see the type of environment it is. Like people always rag on Houston for being so car dependent, but with this tool you can see Midtown, Houston most daily life can be completed on foot or through transit.
I think these scores are cool. I understand what Botticelli is saying, but as long as you have a brain, you can understand that NYC has more areas to walk around than SF, but on the average if you are moving to SF than chances are pretty good you will have good walk ability. Also you can select the individual neighborhoods and see the type of environment it is. Like people always rag on Houston for being so car dependent, but with this tool you can see Midtown, Houston most daily life can be completed on foot or through transit.
Right, but not everyone has the physical area of city boundaries memorized, so it makes any kind of comparison outside of the more apparently ludicrous (since more people will be familiar with NYC and how massive it is) really fuzzy for people.
Yea, it's great you can select individual neighborhoods--however, the city rankings at face value are pretty far off the mark from what it connotes to people.
Right, but not everyone has the physical area of city boundaries memorized, so it makes any kind of comparison outside of the more apparently ludicrous (since more people will be familiar with NYC and how massive it is) really fuzzy for people.
Yea, it's great you can select individual neighborhoods--however, the city rankings at face value are pretty far off the mark from what it connotes to people.
Okay. Which ones do you think are pretty far off the mark? So It should take population and land size as factors, and make it out of a 1000?
Then it would like NYC 900/1000, Chi/Phi 200/1000, Bos/SF 150/1000 even though if you move to any of these places chances are they are somewhat walkable, bikeable, and transit friendly.
Light rail shouldn't be weighted the same as heavy rail as it can be much slower. SF has great transit coverage but it's mostly buses and that along with the light rail is very slow.
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