Walking can improve your health, reduce greenhouse gases, and help you meet people. According to Walk Score™, these are just a few of the reasons to factor in how walkable you next address can be. Walk Score™ uses any address to find local businesses, schools, parks, etc to assign a score between 0 and 100. 0 means driving is absolutely required and 100 means you can get most anything you need by walking. Walking is undeniably good, but check out the DOT's website on pedestrian safety for some useful information.Before signing a lease at my current apartment, I surveyed the area for local businesses (I didn't know about Walk Score™ at that time). Immediately, I discovered three major grocery stores, dozens of restaurants (including one vegetarian!), an Office Depot, Starbuck's, hardware stores and many other businesses. Walk Score™ confirms this with a score of 83 (Very Walkable: It's possible to get by without owning a car). Over the course of a year, I expect to save hundreds of dollars in gas and many hours of driving time. I'll also get some decent exercise.
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3 comments:
My walk score is 43, but it did pull up a CC's that I didn't even know existed and it's right by my complex. Thanks!
I believe that walk score is cool, but nowadays more and more people prefer to drive cars. Homes are often located in an area where some establishments are easier to get to by car than on foot. I've recently found a type of service on drivescore.fizber.com which is called Drive Score. It shows a map of what establishments are in your neighborhood and calculates a Drive Score based on the number of places within a convenient driving distance.
Hi Anonymous, Thanks for your comment. While driving shorter distances would be better, I find the idea of Walk Score much more compelling. Based on the initiative of creating dense community centers in Europe (read Green Urbanism: Learning From European Cities by Timothy Beatley), walking is much more sustainable. Also, you might consider watching the movie titled The End of Suburbia. Atlanta is a very driver-oriented city. But even here, many large apartment building are being built in walkable neighborhoods. They're even experimenting with a neighborhood built from the ground up that includes almost anything one might want to do (see http://www.atlanticstation.com/). Unless someone finds and implements a sustainable fuel (most biofuels are not sustainably produced) to replace our dwindling oil supplies soon, most of will be forced to walk.
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