How walkable is your neighbourhood?

Olive wants to know, how walkable is your neighbourhood?

One of the most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint, not to mention trim your waistline, is to ditch the car and walk to where you need to go. However, the farther away you live from amenities, the more likely you are to drive to them. Walkscore.com has created a site that evaluates your neighbourhood, based on its walkability to local amenities.  It includes your distance to restaurants, coffee, groceries, shopping, schools, parks, book stores, pubs, entertainment, banking, and more. It also identifies the local transit options in your area, and gives you commuting times based on walking, bicycling, driving, and bussing. Interestingly, it tells you how much to expect to pay each month on gasoline, if you do choose to drive, probably because driving almost always has the smallest commuting time and they want to discourage you from driving, despite that fact.

            My neighbourhood rated 67 out of a possible 100 (the best score), and is considered “somewhat walkable”, according to Walk Score . Closeness to groceries is 0.88 km, to a park is 0.29 km, to a coffee shop is 0.92 km and the nearest pub is 0.82 km away. I am also very close to many bus routes, so bussing is quite easy from my neighbourhood. So, what does this mean for my neighbourhood? It means that we are somewhat sustainable. We are pretty centrally located in terms of bus or car transportation, but we lack a density of amenities within a comfortable walking distance. For example, about four large blocks away from my house is a bakery. It is a lovely Italian bakery, which serves heavenly smelling loaves and an assortment of delicious baked goods, gelato, and coffee. I don't go there often. Why? Because I have to walk four large blocks and can get only brewed coffee and bread. If I decide that I need milk, too, I've got to walk about five more large blocks to get to a grocery store, and they are not along the same route from my house. Perhaps if there was a little dairy shop, a butcher shop, a veggie market, and a pub/liquor store on the same corner, I would walk there more frequently. By concentrating several necessities in one central, convenient location, our neighbourhood could lower its overall carbon footprint, as people would have a nearby 'village center' to shop in. 


    Previously, the neighbourhood grocery store was in a mini-plaza that had a video store and pizza shop beside it. When that was the case, we walked more often, because we could go have a few slices of pizza for dinner, pick up a movie, and buy dessert and a few groceries all at the same location. Since then, the grocery store has expanded. It has taken over the spaces that were once the pizza shop and video store. Now all you can get in that plaza, are groceries. I guess its not really a plaza anymore, but simply a large grocery store. It used to be a place that people could go and congregate, now it is strictly an in and out shopping facility. With that change our community has lost some of its sustainability. Now, instead of sticking near home, people go elsewhere to eat and congregate; thus, our local sustainability is reduced.

            While Walkscore.com is a useful tool to determine how walkable a neighbourhood is, it admits that it does not factor in several key elements in determining whether or not people will want to walk in their neighbourhood.  The first is street design. People need access to sidewalks, and crosswalks. They will often not want to walk in areas with high speed limits. Secondly, safety while walking, such as crime rates, street lighting, and traffic accident frequencies, play a key role in whether or not people walk or drive. Topography is also an important determinant in whether a neighbourhood is actually walkable. My neighbourhood has a grocery store less than a kilometer away, but we hardly ever walk there. Why? Because there are two hills between our house and the grocery store, which make it annoying to walk when we are carrying heavy bags of groceries. Weather is another factor which can make walking lovely, or horrible. Victoria has a high frequency of rainy days, which can make walking with groceries pretty miserable.

      One thing that Walkscore.com did not mention was the family size factor. In my opinion, this could play a fairly large role, because the larger your family size is, the less likely you are to walk to get certain amenities, such as groceries. This is because the more people you are shopping for, the heavier and bulkier your load will be, and the less likely you will walk. Walking seems to be best for short trips to pick up a few bags of things or less, or to go to some sort of social activity or entertainment, such as a pub. It is also worth noting that, as a dog owner, I am always interested in having nice places to walk and play with my dog. A good walkscore should also include the esthetic quality of the neighbourhood, which directly relates to the pleasantness of walking there, and the proximity to dog-friendly parks and trails.

     This year I will graduate from University and will also be facing a big move. I now plan to incorporate walkscore into my new home decision, as a way to reduce my overall carbon footprint.