Walkability Factors

Find out your neighborhood's Walk Score.

Real estate agents are using this as a tool to purchase homes in "great neighborhoods", meaning those that are walkable. These are areas in which you can stroll down the street to a grocer or a coffee shop instead of jumping in your car. The benefits? Lower fuel costs. Decreased carbon footprint. And, quite probably, smaller dress size.

And, let me remind you again of the difference between urban neighborhoods and suburban neighborhoods:

Here's a suburban neighborhood in Washington:

You can see that the blue lines indicate areas within a one-mile walk. The purple fields are commercial destinations and the green fields are parks. To give you a local benchmark, this looks very similar to the subdivisions of Mandarin.

Here is a walkability index for an urban neighborhood in Seattle:

From the Sightline webpage:

"A one-mile walk in this urban neighborhood, Seattle's Phinney Ridge, takes you
through a gridlike street network with a mix of residences and businesses. This
walkable design puts stores and services within a short walk of many homes. (The
walkability maps and information presented in Cascadia Scorecard 2006 were
developed by Dr. Lawrence Frank, Bombardier Chair in Sustainable Transportation
at the University of British Columbia, and colleagues Dr. James Sallis of San
Diego State University and Dr. Brian Saelens of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital,
and were funded by King County, Washington, and the National Institutes for
Health.)"

Here are some random (or mostly random) Jacksonville addresses paired with their walkability index:

• 11 East Forsyth Street (Downtown Jacksonville): 97%
• 100 Post Street (Riverside/Avondale): 72%
• 12 East 3rd Street (Jacksonville Beach): 71%
• 3500 Kernan Blvd (Glen Kernan Country Club area): 46%
• 12000 Biscayne Blvd (Northside Jacksonvile): 6%
• 5398 Chestnut Lake Drive (Mandarin Subdivision): 3%

Be sure to leave a comment and tell us your walkability score. Make some of us that live in Mandarin subdivisions very jealous.