Monday, July 23, 2007

An interesting website regarding livability...

During my internet exploring, I found walkscore.com. The website's goal is as follows:

"Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc."
It goes on further to talk about the drawbacks of the site (it fails to take into account public transport, street length, pedestrian friendly design, etc) but as a whole it serves as an interesting resource to see how much of your life you can live within your neighborhood. This has been a constant topic for Becca and I as we continue to settle into life at home and figure out ways to cut down our driving and live more locally.

For the record, our place only scored a 58; this score placed us in the "some walkable locations" category. I have to admit I was surprised by this since we have a grocery store, bookstore, library, numerous restaurants all within a half mile of us and consider the Sellwood area a pretty walking friendly neighborhood. However I guess the lack of other important items (hospital, businesses, etc.) and the lack of consistent public transport (the buses our way come few and far between) make it a less viable place to be sans car. In fact, if you go 1.5 miles up the road, our in-law's place rates as a 73.

Interesting stuff; it's worth our US based readers to plug in their home and see how walking friendly it really is!

Brian

5 comments:

Vagablonde Bombchelle said...

The Van Betta cottage received a whopping walk score of 17 out of 100...

Brian and Becca Davis said...

How were you able to get 17 points?? :-) Becca

Anonymous said...

I came across this the other day as well, and almost posted it. My current place is a completely misleading 63. It counts the crap market across the street far too much, and disregards the fact that while yes, there's a target within 2 miles, I'm taking my life into my own hands by crossing some of those streets... Wade and Chelle's place is probably more walkable than mine.

Anonymous said...

I got a 38 on my house in south Gresham, but like Alex said it counts the local convenience store as a grocery, and the tiny deli as a restaurant. Springwater trail is close for recreational walking, but it doesn't really get you anywhere. BTW, anyone wanna buy my house? Only $290k.

Vagablonde Bombchelle said...

"How were you able to get 17 points?? :-) Becca"

I believe the Dairy Queen might have been worth 17 points (at least this time of year).