Walk Score vs Lifestyle Score?
One of the great things about living in a condo in an urban vs. suburban community is that you can walk to almost any and all of your everyday activities. To promote that advantage, more and more condo developers are including the Walk Score of the address as part of their marketing plan.
Walk Score is a number between 0 and 100 that measures the amenities in any given address that you can walk to:
90 – 100 walker’s paradise
70 – 89 very walkable
50 – 69 somewhat walkable
25 – 49 mostly car dependent
0 – 24 car dependent
Walk Score uses Google maps to find the stores, restaurants, bars, parks and other amenities within walking distance of your address. Using this data from Zillow, a real estate database, the information is plugged into a complex algorithm (mathematical equation) to calculate the score. For example, amenities within 0.4 km are given 100, while those more than 1.6 km are given a zero with those in between assigned varying scores depending on the distance.
Link: Walks Score: How it works?
While steps have been taken to improve the methodology since it was first introduced in 2007 by Josh Herst, CEO of Walk Score in Seattle, there still remains problems. For example, Google Maps doesn’t always include all of the amenities in a neighborhood. As well, the methodology doesn’t take into account topography (e.g. if it is up hill), climate (e.g. icy sidewalks in winter) or how pleasant/unpleasant the walk might be (e.g. busy road vs. quaint homes). It doesn’t take into account age and fitness level - for some a 1 km walk is very easy; for others, not so.
Living near a nature preserve or hiking trail won’t improve your Walk Score, this results in unfairly creating lower suburban neighbourhood scores. The scoring system is heavily biased to urban lifestyles.
Lifestyle Factors
If you have a dog that you walk twice a day, it is probably more important you are near a dog park than a grocery store you use twice a week.
If you go to the gym or yoga several times a week, that should trump being close to a cupcake shop.
If you are a family of four, you are probably not walking to and from the grocery store, carrying home several bags of groceries - even if it is close by. We are a family of two and when we go grocery shopping it is often difficult to carry the bags 30 feet from the garage to the back door. However, access to a playground that you might use several times a day is very important.
For families living near a playground can be more important than living near a grocery store, bakery or cafe.
Lastly, Walk Score doesn’t take into account that rarely are our daily trips planned around a single activity. Often when we head out the door, we have multiple stops to make over an extended period of time.
It could involve a trip to the recreation centre, then to a café in another community to meet up with a friend, then drop some books off at the library, then go to the wine store with the best sale this week (often not the closest) and pick up some groceries before heading way home. This is not a trip that lends itself to walking – or even cycling for that matter.
A Better Walk Score?
It would be ideal to have a formula allowing individuals to plug-in their five most frequent weekly activities, as well as how far you are willing to walk and then calculate how walkable a street or neighbourhood is for you and your family.
Buyer beware - just because a community has a high or low Walk Score doesn’t mean you should automatically embrace or reject it.
Pedestrian-Friendly vs. Pedestrian-Safety
I have always thought of Calgary as a very pedestrian-friendly city. There are few other big cities where, in residential areas, cars will stop and let pedestrians walk across the street. Try that in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver or big American cities!
One of Calgary's 1,270 signalized pedestrian cross walks.
There also are thousands (1270 signalized pedestrian cross walks and 7,118 signed crosswalks) of dedicated pedestrian crosswalks in addition to traffic signals helping pedestrians easily and safely cross busy streets. I also learned that a City of Calgary Bylaw states, “every intersection is a crosswalk unless otherwise posted” so drivers should yield to any pedestrian at a corner who indicates they are going to cross. Who knew?
As well, I have always thought our recreational pathways were a wonderful amenity that encouraged walking. However, after recent experiences on the pathways with my 80+ year old spry Mom and her experience sharing the pathways with cyclists, I am not so sure walking the pathways is always a pleasant experience for those wanting a recreational walking experience.
Recent media coverage of Calgary’s pedestrian-vehicle collisions and fatalities’ data also point to the fact that walking in our city is not a safe as it needs to be to encourage walking. Consequently, the City of Calgary is currently undertaking a major community engagement project to identify how to make our city more pedestrian-friendly for everyone. I hope that we explore some simple common sense solutions before spending hundreds of millions of dollars.
For example, I’d like to see a ban on headphones for walkers, joggers and cyclists. We all need to be able to see and listen for others when we are out on the streets and pathways. It is a shared responsibility.
Calgary has a pedestrians first culture, where cars routinely stop to let pedestrians and cyclist cross the road even when it is not a cross walk.
Calgary boasts almost 1,000 km of shared pathways for people of all ages and abilities.
Pedestrians should have to wear reflective clothing when out in the dark so cyclist they are more visible to cyclists and motorists. Too often pedestrians are dressed in black and are almost impossible to see.
The one infrastructure improvement I’d like to see is better sidewalk lighting. I don’t know if it is just me, but the roads in Calgary seem to be getting darker as the city installs new street lamp posts and LED bulbs. I have always had a problem with street lighting that is solely focused on the road and nothing on the sidewalk. If we want people to feel safe walking in the dark (14 hours of the day in the winter), every lamppost should have a light on the road and one on the sidewalk.
Last Word
In addition to Walk Scores, there are also Transit Scores, Bike Scores and Park Scores for those who love numbers. I am waiting for the Drive Score as I am sure most Calgarians also intuitively factor in how quickly they can drive to their weekly activities – school, work, recreation centre, arena, soccer field, grocery store and gym.
I expect we all have our own “algorithm” for calculating what is the best community for us and don’t really need some quasi-scientific score to help us determine where we want to live.
BL emailed:
The fundamental question should be "who decided that walking is such an important criteria?"
For me today, the most important activities in my life are visiting my kids and my grandkids, none of whom I can visit by walking; and going golfing, ditto. Pretty good life right?
But even back in the days prior to retirement, my principal daily activity, going to work, could not be accommodated by walking. Nor could I attend university, go to school (except for elementary), attend a football or hockey game, go skiing or golfing, visit my cabin at the lake, or any of the other myriad of activities which have filled my whole life.
Planning our communities around the rare individuals whose limited range of activities can be accommodated by walking would be like planning our entire food industry around organic vegans. Desirable objective, maybe; but practical? Definitely not.
For most of us the Walk Score would fall into the category of "who cares?" It's nice to have a walk down 17th Avenue on a sunny Saturday afternoon when there is nothing better to do, but the majority of the folks out strolling the avenue probably got there in their cars. How about judging communities by the "Park Score" i.e. How close can I park my car?
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