Neighborhood is walkable?

Searching in an unfamiliar neighborhood for your new place is quite tasking. It would be easier if you know what these neighborhoods offer and what they don’t.

WalkScore is a website that helps people find out what services and facilities are within the vicinity of communities all around the country.

"WalkScore measures how easy it is to live a car-light lifestyle," according to the Web site

Mike Mathieu, chairman of FrontSeat Management founded WalkScore in July2007. This site works with Google Maps and census data. Within seconds of typing a street address, a map will appear showing the nearest schools, restaurants, hospitals, gyms, supermarkets. And this is all for free.

The site works for any address within the United States, Canada, and even Britain. It can also point locations within a mile of the given address. These shows the walkability of the address to other locations

Places that show walkability

In Manhattan, an apartment was labeled a walker’s paradise. It is within a quarter mile of seven gyms, seven coffee shops and eight grocery stores. In fact, most of Manhattan's residential areas fall into this category. An apartment on West 80th Street scored a perfect 100.

Scores for suburban homes tends to be lower than those in the city. Houses in Chappaqua, in Westchester County, scored between a 5 and 10 on the walkability scale, earning the tag of "car dependant."

Reasons for the low scores included a distance of over two miles to the nearest school and grocery store.

WalkScore also has a list of what it doesn’t include in the searches one of which is the distance to public transportation.

"We do think mass transportation is important, but data varies widely from city to city," Mr. Mathieu said. "In fact, some cities do not provide any data at all."

The site also does not include, among other things, statistics on crime, topography and weather.Mr. Mathieu said the site would add transit data whenever a uniform source could be found, and he is also considering altering the formula used to calculate the walking distances.