The NWI only measures “census block groups,” which are areas with a population of 600 to 3,000 people. That is because the NWI is not fine-grained enough to accurately determine walkability in many instances. On the other end of the scale, some of the most walkable places are severely downgraded by NWI.

I estimate there are thousands of similar places in metro areas nationwide that NWI calls Most Walkable that are not in the least walkable. Once again, this gets the Most Walkable rating by NWI. No sane person with any other choices would try to cross this street on foot. Here’s another example from Irvine, California.īristol Street in Irvine is dreadful for pedestrians. Virginia Beach Boulevard, at this location, should get a Below Average Walkable rating at best. The photo tells the story-lots of cars and no people. There are no active frontages and little of interest to see, except for cars rushing past. Who would want to walk here anyway? Despite the abundance of destinations in stores, restaurants, and other businesses along this thoroughfare, the distances are too great, and the walk would be dead-on boring. This thoroughfare is difficult and dangerous to cross. Notice there are no pedestrians in the Google view-not even in the far distance. The site of the photo is marked on the map, and dark green is labeled by NWI as “most walkable.” Below is a Google street view of Virginia Beach Boulevard, and the map from NWI. Many miles long, Virginia Beach Boulevard is the locus of sprawling commercial development, including stores and eateries of all kinds. Places that are, on the ground, objectively dangerous and unpleasant to walk-with few actual pedestrians-are listed as “highly walkable.” Virginia Beach Boulevard in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is one example. The NWI, extensively used for research, is often wildly wrong in its assessment of the walkability of suburban areas with shopping centers and malls. To the extent that the research is founded in inaccurate data, the conclusions will be flawed. Also, substantial research is now devoted to walkability, which impacts the environment, livability, and the economy. People who are banking on walkability, and putting dollars toward making places more walkable, need to accurately assess how well the money is spent. Even in the suburbs, walkable places are attracting substantial investment. The unmet demand for living in mixed-use, walkable places is tremendous-which is why we have seen a revival of downtowns and urban neighborhoods nationwide. But first, why is measuring walkability critical? Walkability is a key factor for real estate investment. In this article I’ll explore the problems with NWI, which are similar to Walk Score’s inaccuracies, which I wrote about in this article. A combination of walking and driving data could go a long way to fixing problems with walkability indexes.

This data does not seem to be particularly intrusive. It is in the public interest that we know how many people walk as well. We already have this information for driving, in real time. With data from smart phones, we could measure how much people actually walk. Fortunately, there is a way, at least theoretically, to create a far more accurate of measure of walkability. There is no easy way to fix these indexes, which are based on the faulty premise that proximity to destinations makes a place walkable-or at least is an accurate proxy for walkability.

They systematically overestimate the walkability of certain types of places, while underestimating walkability in other places. While walkability indexes are useful, they are severely flawed. That year, the US EPA launched a National Walkability Index (NWI) as an alternative. In 2014, Walk Score was purchased by the national real estate brokerage Redfin, and it lost its public-spirited mission. Walk Score began as a small-scale project with a mission, “to promote walkable neighborhoods.” It proved highly successful because it is useful for real estate marketing, research, and journalism I have used it extensively in my writing, but always with a grain of salt. For the first time, you could type in an address anywhere in the US and get a score from 0 to 100 on “walkability.” Walk Score was launched in 2007 and it was hailed as a big advance for pedestrians and urbanists.

Suburbs are unwalkable