Understanding Your Property's Walk Score

What is a Walk Score?

Walk Score is a method for calculating a rating (from zero to 100) for a given address, based on the walking distance from that address to a variety of key amenities that a typical person needs on an average day.

Walk Score was originally conceived to help individuals find apartments to rent, in what the founders of the metric deemed "walkable" neighborhoods. But rather than apply the walkable label at will, they created a method to measure each address, enabling users to compare the "walkability" of one address to another.

This comparison of apartments (and now other residences) continues to be available on the Walk Score website, but the benefits of the measure have grown significantly since it was created in 2007. Through Walk Score Professional, the organization provides data, as well as digital code in the form of widgets and badges, that enable users to display Walk Scores on their websites, integrating them with real estate listings or other data sets. Today more than 30,000 websites feature Walk Score data.

Additionally, the measure is being applied to all addresses and property types in the U.S and Canada and Walk Score has expanded beyond individual address scores to rank neighborhoods, as well as entire cities. The ever-growing body of data compiled by Walk Score is being used by researchers in an array of fields, such as real estate valuation, insurance actuarial analysis and healthcare.

But how, exactly, is Walk Score calculated?

Insights from a Walk Score Veteran

LoopNet spoke with Aleisha Jacobson who is responsible for business operations at Walk Score based in Seattle, where she manages partnerships and contracts and works with researchers that use Walk Score data. Jacobson is an anchor at Walk Score. She started in 2007 as assistant to co-founder Mike Mathieu at Front Seat, the technology incubator where Walk Score was conceived and nurtured. As the company grew, she worked on many facets, ranging from customer service to finance, and she remained with Walk Score after it was purchased by Redfin in 2014.

Jacobson spoke with LoopNet about the amenities, data sets and scrutiny that go into the Walk Score calculation. Asked how she would explain Walk Score to a non-real estate businessperson, she began by making an informative distinction. She said, "some people think of walkability and they think of walking along a tree-lined street, pleasant weather and going for a stroll with the family." But that's not what Walk Score is. "Walk score is a measure of how easy it is to live in a location if you don't own a car."

The Walk Score Calculation

The Walk Score algorithm has been modified over the years and as expected, the details are proprietary. However, the overall calculation involves measuring the walking distance from a particular address to nearby amenities in seven broad categories: groceries, dining and drinking, shopping, errands, parks, schools, and culture and entertainment. Destinations within a quarter-mile walk contribute maximum points to the score for that address, with fewer points awarded for amenities up to 1.5 miles away. The nearest business or facility in each category contributes more than the second or third closest, and so on. Jacobson said that the categories are weighted but she could not provide the details of the weighting. She did share that the categories covering groceries, dining and drinking, shopping, and errands impact scores the most.

Other contributors to the score include population density and interestingly, intersections. The score increases as the population density of an area rises. This measure was adopted because, for example, dense neighborhoods with numerous people can offset the presence of a large body of water that is not walkable and might dilute the score for the area around an address. Additionally, more intersections along a route increase the score because it means that there is a network of sidewalks and short blocks, offering many, rather than just one or two, walking routes one can take from a given address to the sought-after amenities.

The result is normalized to fit a 0 to 100 scale; 0 is the lowest score, meaning the area is car dependent and all errands require a car. The highest score is 100, indicating that a car is not needed to live in the area because daily errands can be carried out on foot.

Amenities Included in the Calculation

Jacobson noted that Walk Score measures walking distance from a location to amenities in seven categories.

Dining and Drinking. "We look at distance to dining and drinking, so [we identify] restaurants, bars, coffee shops, cafes, those sorts of things."

Groceries. Distance to groceries is also measured, but Jacobson clarified, "what we're really trying to capture with [this category are places where] you can get the ingredients for a relatively healthy meal, so [that means] fresh produce, milk, eggs, bread, those sorts of things." She said that a convenience store where you can get a can of chili and a hot dog does not meet this criteria, so it really needs to be "a place where you can shop to meet your everyday meal needs in a relatively healthy way."

Retail. This includes retailers that sell clothing, books, gifts or establishments that generally fall into the categories of gifts, novelty, apparel and accessories.

Errands. This includes places like banks, dry cleaners, pharmacies and other health and service-related businesses.

Schools. Elementary through high schools are included in this category, but not necessarily colleges and universities or specialty schools that offer karate or music lessons.

Parks. Included here are green space, pocket parks, central parks, trails and trail access areas.

Culture and entertainment. Movie theaters, live theaters, museums, galleries, concert venues, etc. are counted.

Collecting Walk Score Data

The data infusing Walk Score is collected primarily from data sources (some of which are mentioned in this article), but feedback from users is also incorporated. "The majority of our amenity data is coming from a company called Factual, which recently was purchased by Foursquare," said Jacobson. Factual provides data on the location of restaurants, grocery stores and various other vendors. Walk Score also works with Great Schools.org to ascertain the location of K-12 schools and uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau to gather population metrics. Openstreetmap.org provides information about road networks, walking paths, bike paths and other mobility infrastructure.

Users contribute as well. Jacobson said, "If you go to our website and look up your house and see that we're missing a restaurant down the street, you can add that and we'll include it when we update the score for your house the next time." Conversely, if a user sees "a convenience store listed as a grocery store, you can move it to the shopping category, which is where we put convenience stores; or if it is closed, you can remove it and we'll take that information in as well." She said they have quite a few users that contribute information, noting "they tend to be active in one particular location and they'll go in and make sure that everything within their area is as accurate as it can be."

Updates for individual addresses are made roughly every six months on a rolling basis; neighborhood, city-level and census tract scores are assessed about once a year.

Short Blocks and Many Intersections

Pedestrian friendliness often evokes the image of a sidewalk; but just because a sidewalk exists does not mean an area is pedestrian friendly. The Walk Score algorithm is informed not just by the existence of sidewalks, but also by their accessibility. Walk Score quantifies the degree to which certain areas are pedestrian friendly "by looking at average block length and intersection density," Jacobson said. "A lot of people would assume that we look for sidewalks, but there isn't a national database of sidewalks in a usable format."

She added that sidewalks aren't necessarily as good a proxy for pedestrian friendliness as average block length and "intersection density," or the number of intersections per square mile. She explained that more intersections mean shorter blocks. "If you think about a neighborhood or a city that's built on a grid system where you have blocks, and you can walk around the block one way or the other, this creates a variety of ways to move" in any direction. She stated that "intersection density and the length of blocks are good proxies for speed limit, for walking routes, for access to nearby amenities, for narrower streets; all of which are also better for pedestrians."

To illustrate her point, Jacobson suggested imagining a strip mall along a six-lane highway that has a sidewalk. That sidewalk may not be accessible unless you have a lighted intersection that gives you enough time to cross. Additionally, there may be a large parking lot between the sidewalk and the street in front of the strip mall. In this example, the existence of a sidewalk is not a proxy for "walkability," because crossing the street to access the sidewalk and traversing the parking lot to get to the shopping center add distance to the effort.

COVID-19 and Walk Score

During the pandemic, Jacobson said, "We actually shut off scoring for a little while because so many places shut down abruptly with COVID-19 in March and April." They didn't want to provisionally lower scores across the country because businesses had closed temporarily. They anticipate they will begin scoring again as they work with Foursquare/Factual to get clarification about which business are closing permanently. As of this publication, Walk Score has not been updated.

Leveraging Walk Score Data

Hundreds of studies have been conducted using Walk Score data, focusing on issues relating to urban planning, government, public health and finance. A few examples are provided below.

Validation of Walk Score for Estimating Neighborhood Walkability: An Analysis of Four US Metropolitan Areas
This analysis found that neighborhood walkability can influence physical activity.

Walkability and Body Mass Index
This study finds a relationship between neighborhood walkability and lower weight.