While cruising through my Blogroll one day, I ended up on One Green Generation, which had a link to a fascinating site called Walkscore.com.
Basically, it uses Google Maps to calculate your distance from important amenities like grocery stores, libraries, parks, restaurants, cinemas, etc. to give your neighbourhood a certain score based on proximity. The higher the score, the less need you have for a car.
Our score in Centretown Ottawa? 93/100 (woo hoo!)
Our two old places in Toronto: 83 and 77 respectively
My parents’ place in Sudbury: 53
The house I grew up in: 10 out of 100
Interestingly, every move I’ve ever made has brought me to a more walkable location! (Well, except for my year in Montreal but we won’t count that.) Though I often dream about farm life, walkability is something I really value and would find it a major adjustment to live without. In fact, I think it’s a key component of my being frugal and urban!
So, what’s the deal with walkability? The website gives a few points:
Walkable neighborhoods offer surprising benefits to our health, the environment, and our communities.
Better health: A study in Washington State found that the average resident of a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood weighs 7 pounds less than someone who lives in a sprawling neighborhood.1 Residents of walkable neighborhoods drive less and suffer fewer car accidents, a leading cause of death between the ages of 15–45.
Reduction in greenhouse gas: Cars are a leading cause of global warming. Your feet are zero-pollution transportation machines.
More transportation options: Compact neighborhoods tend to have higher population density, which leads to more public transportation options and bicycle infrastructure. Not only is taking the bus cheaper than driving, but riding a bus is ten times safer than driving a car!2
Increased social capital: Walking increases social capital by promoting face-to-face interaction with your neighbors. Studies have shown that for every 10 minutes a person spends in a daily car commute, time spent in community activities falls by 10%.3
Stronger local businesses: Dense, walkable neighborhoods provide local businesses with the foot traffic they need to thrive. It’s easier for pedestrians to shop at many stores on one trip, since they don’t need to drive between destinations.
I would agree with all these points, and would also add that being able to walk to work (something possible in Centretown Ottawa) means having more time to spend at home with the kids. My “commute” is less than 5 minutes door-to-door, which means I maximize the time I can spend with my daughter instead of sitting in traffic. Same goes for my husband, whose “commute” is about double mine.
Another thing I’ve noticed in my years living in walkable neighbourhoods is that where people can walk, they do, and the fact that there are people out walking around, usually at all hours of the day & night, greatly increases the safety of neighbourhoods. Jane Jacobs calls this “eyes on the street”. The more mixed use and pedestrian traffic a neighbourhood has, the less crime tends to exist in a place. In fact, many parks in dense urban neighbourhoods are actually safer than suburban parks at night, simply because there are more people strolling around.
Finally, having a car would mean greatly increasing our cost of living since we would not only have to worry about the car (and most likely a car loan), but also the insurance, gas, maintenence and repairs that go along with car ownership. Not to mention an automatic $100/month just to park the thing!
I found this website really fun, and as you can see, used it to check out all the places I’ve ever lived. I would definitely use this when choosing our next apartment or house.
Frugal + Urban 
Interesting website. I’m behind you with an 82.
Great point about not having to park your car saving you money. It’s one of the reasons I tried to find a job in the area.
That website is really neat. And makes me miss my childhood neighbourhood in Vancouver – it scored a 95!
Wow! That’s impressive. Vancouver must be a very walkable city. I’ll have to ask you about what it was like to grow up so urban–my experience was quite different, and now I find it a bit strange raising my kid(s) in the city!
It’s a great thing, except that it doesn’t work for me, me being Czech. My small hometown is definitely a very walkable place – I can get almost everything in walkable distance (with some exceptions like bookstores – there’s none here I’d know of), but the problem is, there are none of the spots I can go to in Google Maps! No small local shops there, no small local cinema, no actually-not-that-small local library! There are only restaurants on the map I get there, and there’s a list of nonsensically faraway things in the left collumn. The silliest of which is definitely a grocery store that’s almost 30 km from me. Considering there’s one grocery store just about two houses from our house and another one at the nearer end of our street. 🙂 Or schools… the nearest according to the site is 12 km away, but in fact the Grammar school I went to is just one block away and the elementary school where my school years started even a bit nearer!
I tried it then with Brno, where I study. The score I got was 85, but, at the same time, I also think it must actually be higher. I walk almost everywhere in Brno; I live near the centre and all the shops (including forementioned bookstores), school and library, cinemas (if I ever go there), restaurants (if I ever go there), parks, the railway station, post offfices, everything with the exception of my friends’ and family’s homes + the church where I go is walkable. 🙂 I walk a lot in Brno. (And there are even actually three perfectly walkable congregations of my church in my proximity; it’s just that I have friends in the one I go to.)
I guess it could be similar even with some places in the US. Many things are not on Google Maps. And that’s actually a good thing. Local businesses do not need to advertise themselves on the internet when things work as they should.
My current address is an 80, although a few of the places it lists aren’t really accurate – a little mending shop up the road is listed as a clothes shop, for instance. We do walk a fair bit, but we also use a car regularly as our parents all live too far away to walk, and the local grocery shop is in no way good enough to do all our shopping in. However, I’m sure I could find more ways to walk more rather than using the car. Also, the buses in Cardiff are so expensive, especially if you take children over five with you, so it’s really offputting, and only financially worth it to avoid high parking charges in the centre of town.