Houston scores better than expected in walkability

Many neighborhoods score high

Alex Wukman, Dec 22, 10.

The Walk Score website has become a go-to tool for urban planners, real estate agents and people looking for a new place to live. Part of the reason for the interest in walkable neighborhoods is because, as Richard Florida wrote on the Atlantic’s website, 60 percent of Americans would prefer to live in a walkable environment. And research has shown that despite the recession housing prices in walkable areas have remained strong. Walkability in a neighborhood has also been linked to increased trust among neighbors and increases in citizen participation in community events, according to a recent University of New Hampshire study.

Walk Score provides a simple to understand 0-100 score for cities and neighborhoods. Nate Berg of Planetizen took Walk Score’s data and created walkability scores for 40 of the country’s most populous cities. The top scoring cities, Boston, New York and San Francisco, are some of the ones known for their pedestrian cultures. San Francisco received an 85, the highest overall score and Jacksonville received the lowest score of 36. Houston and Austin each received a score of 51 as did Detroit and Columbus. Dallas received a score of 49.

Berg also compared all 2,621 Walk Scores at the neighborhood level in all 40 cities to arrive at an average Walk Score for neighborhoods which is 54.71. His research showed that the majority of Houston neighborhoods, 56 percent, had a Walk Score that exceeded the average. Sixty-seven percent of Austin neighborhoods had Walk Scores that exceeded the average and Dallas only had 50 percent of neighborhoods exceed the Walk Score average.

(Image Credit: Galveston.com)