Walk Score

At City Comforts I came across Walk Score, a web site that "calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.," using Google Maps. The image below shows a location (88 Bedford Street in Manhattan's West Village) with a walk score of 100 out of 100. Trying a couple other locations, my current address in Astoria, Queens scores 92 and my childhood home in the suburbs of Chicago scores a 57, each reflecting their respective (sub)urban conditions.



But is this scoring the best way of measuring and determining walkability? The programming includes commercial, institutional, educational, and recreational locations (a good mix), but then measures proximity based on "as the bird flies" distances, ignoring things like safety, terrain, sidewalks (or lack thereof), climate, and other pedestrian-level concerns. The comments on the City Comforts post pick up on these and other deficiencies that probably can't be addressed by this basic programming, but that should be part of the discussion on walkability. This points to walkability being more than just mixed-use zoning and proximity, but also the design of the public realm, design that hopefully takes these and other pedestrian-level concerns into account.