On mine it counts a non-mortar bookselling guy as a bookstore and fails to count the nearest grocery, which is organic. It calls it a coffee house.
My current home is 30 out of 100. Though I think that’s a little high, really since some of the stuff they found is inaccurate. For example, they think there’s a bookstore nearby, when in fact there’s a wearhouse for a bookstore chain nearby. Not quite the same thing.
My condo which I will move into sometime next year, is a 68 out of a 100, which makes me feel even better about my decision to buy where I did.
For me, it missed almost every one of two dozen grocery stores in a city of 150,000 people - one of which is two hundred yards from my door - and claimed the nearest groceries were in another town. It got the coffee shop across the road.
It’s not the most useless Web application I’ve ever seen, but it tries to be.
45 for me in my current place, which frankly is kind of accurate. This is a very walkable neighborhood (i.e., safe and with sidewalks) but there isn’t too much around in terms of restaurants, grocery stores, etc., that’s within walking distance.
I ran my old address in Chicago; it got a 98, which is also pretty accurate. I rarely drove anywhere when I was in Chicago, and I picked my apartment there because it was within walking distance of 3 or 4 grocery stores, tons of movie theaters, restaurants, etc., and was only a couple blocks from a subway stop.
I also ran my parents’ address; they live in a subdivision with nothing around. You have to drive a mile and a half just to get out of the subdivision. They got a 28.
So overall I’d say it’s probably pretty accurate in rough terms, even though some of the data points it uses are inaccurate.
23, but I don’t trust it. If I wanted to walk to any place after the closest one listed, I’d be crossing major highways.
Thanks, but I’ll drive.
72 out of 100, highly inaccurate.
What they missed:
2 libraries less than a half-mile away each.
3 more public parks (including one with baseball diamons and a kiddie pool)
3 more gyms/athletic facilities
2 more pharmacies less than a half mile away each
3 coffee shops less than 6 blocks away
2 major grocery stores (the one they list is a little convenience store)
5 pubs less than a half-mile away
3 medical clinics
2 more bookstores
Too many restaurants to count
Interestingly, they don’t list any kind of religious organizations/facilities becauser there are three churches within 100 yards of my front door (they’re take up three corners of the interection).
ETA: Clinics. They don’t list clinics either and there are three (if not more) within a very short walk from my place.
0 out of 100
The closest anything listed on the site is 1.72 miles, and that’s on a highway that goes up a pretty steep hill. Can’t really walk to anything whatsoever from here, but the upside is, no neighbors either.
I got an 83. I live smack in the middle of yuppie town, and I hate it.
But, I have absolutely no need for a car. And wouldn’t have anywhere to park it if I did have one.
I got 5 out of 100, which is too generous. I don’t know how it’s figuring “distance” but it’s not considering either topography or roadways. It may indeed be less than a mile as the crow flies, from my house up on the ridge to an elementary school two valleys over. But it sure as hell ain’t “walkable” by anybody’s definition, much less a first grader’s.
82/100 - mostly accurate, but what I don’t agree with:
“Jamba Juice” is a juice bar, not a bar bar (though there are plenty of restaurants around with bars)
“Continental Adult S” (I don’t know what the end of this name is) is not a bookstore that I’d go to for reading material.
CD City closed, but that’s been fairly recently, so I can forgive it not being listed.
I got a 43, but I also see dubious items listed.
For instance it shows a 7-Eleven store as a grocery, which is debatable, to say the least.
And it shows a restaurant that was in a building that was demolished at least five years ago.
My place got a 29.
Is there any way to update this? Because they managed to include the pharmacy in the mega grocery store about a kilometre away, while completely missing the grocery store itself! And they missed the grocery store and convenience stores in the plaza across the road. They did get the drug store and restaurant there, though.
The Walkscore site has had quite an improvement since the first time I looked at the site a couple of months ago.
58, but I got a “movie theater” that is actually a live theater, a “grocery store” that no longer exists and seems to have been a tearoom when it did exist, and a “restaurant” that serves mostly hamburgers and ice cream. (There are several other restaurants and a minimalist grocery store within walking distance, but definitely no movie theaters.)
My old apartment got an 18, which is wildly misleading, since it was a mile from downtown Chapel Hill, NC, and within walking distance of all kinds of cool stuff, whereas my current place is merely in a very, very small town.
9 out of 100, but it took what I have just figured out to be a vending machine restock operation to be a restaurant. And a now-closed Mexican grocery store is in that category as well. A Jamba Juice is listed as a bar; one of the local Safeways isn’t on the list and neither is the Wal-Mart. And that’s not just a distance thing, I’m sure, since both are closer than much of the other things listed.
My dorm building has a 75! It would probably have more if it counted on-campus stores- or if it had most of the restaurants downtown listed.
It mentions in the FAQ that they’re just pulling the info from Google, and that there’s really no way for you to update Google’s listings. If they’re miscategorizing something or missing a nearby business, it’s really Google’s fault.
78 for me.
Ditto on considerable obsolete info.
Did not list perhaps the biggest “walk” for a suburb - 1/2 mile to the commuter train, and bike trail.
We bought our house planning to walk/bike a lot.
Within 1 mile radius: train station, grade and high schools, library, swimming pool, shopping incl. grocery stores, doctors, dentists, hardware, barber, etc.
Golf course and community college less than 2 miles.
It’s not just obsolete or incorrect information, though, it’s their metric for what their site is purportedly for - walkability. They do mention that topography is not taken into account and that “Hills can make walking difficult, especially if you’re carrying groceries.” But come on! Aerial distance isn’t anything like walking distance. Even Google takes roadways into account getting from A to B and doesn’t tell you it’s less than a mile away. Yeah, if I could fly.
14 out 100. The distances are too short by at least half. Many of the places they list are shown on the map in the wrong places. They show schools where there never have been any. They show groceries in the middle of quiet streets. None of the fitness places are pictured where they really are.
The street grid is right, but you couldn’t find most things with this map.
54, but wildly inaccurate on their map and distances.
They have a school for autistic kids listed as “Adult Services,” and they have it located several blocks away from its actual location. They also have my son’s elementary school, on the other side of town, listed as the same distance as the high school, five blocks from here.
It gives my apartment building a score of 65/100, which I think is too low - given the vague descriptions of the scoring listed here, I’d guess that my place should score about 85-90 (“Very Walkable”, bordering on “Walkers Paradise”).
“Very Walkable” means “It’s possible to get by without owning a car”. Well, I don’t own a car. I catch the bus often, but I can walk to work in 20 minutes (and I work in the middle of downtown in a city of over 700,000 people).
The map is missing many things, including:
- two large grocery stores that are within four blocks
- a hospital that’s one block away
- a huge cathedral that’s across the street
- alot of nearby small shops and stores
- several large restaurants
- a local elementary school
- a few small local parks
- a stripmall/box store area with many businesses that’s five blocks away.