Boston Ranked Third Most Walkable City in the US
Walk Score ranked Boston as the third most walkable city in the United States.
Though it may not be warm enough for a stroll yet, Boston was just ranked as the third most walkable city in the nation, according to Walk Score, a company that ranks walkability and is owned by the real estate firm Redfin.
The Walk Score is a measure of how easy it is to walk from any given address to nearby amenities, given on a scale of 0 to 100.
Scores between 90 and 100 indicate that daily errands do not require a car, while scores between 70 and 89 indicate that most errands can be done walking.
Boston, which finished behind New York and San Francisco, received a score of 79.5. Last year, Boston received the same ranking.
Walk Score only looked at cities with populations over 300,000 for the rankings, but within those cities the site looked at 10 million different locations and “computed more than 2 billion walking routes for 2,500 U.S. cities,’’ according to the Redfin blog. The algorithm incorporated walking routes, analysis of nearby amenities, pedestrian friendliness, population, and neighborhood data in order to calculate city scores.
The ranking comes a month after the nonprofit coalition Smart Growth America identified Boston as a city “leading the country toward a walkable urban future’’ in a neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis. That study found the most walkable neighborhoods had higher real estate values for a variety of properties.
And nonprofit groups like WalkBoston want walkers to be a part of the greater transportation discussion. Its goal is to improve walking conditions in the city and across the state.
You can get the Walk Score for your specific address here.
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