Walking By The Numbers: Here's One Way To Measure The Walkability Of Your Annapolis Neighborhood

November 18th, 2008 Categories: Buyers, Sellers

A Nifty New Website Is A Great Resource for Annapolis Residents Who Like To Put Their Best Feet Forward

Say you’re searching for a new home in the Annapolis area and you’re wondering how it rates for walking. If you’re not already familiar with the area – or even if you are – here’s a neat way to find out.

It’s called WalkScore.com, a website that enables you to enter the street address in question and pull up an amazing amount of walker-friendly information about the area, like where to find the library, coffee shops or local theater.

The site was launched in July 2007 and – unlike a lot of stuff on the Internet that gets dreamed up by brainy MIT dropouts who never leave their basements – this site has the stamp of maturity, and feels like it’s run by actual people who like to walk. Indeed, the site talks to the desires of an increasing number of people who are looking to reduce their reliance on cars and settle into walkable communities.

Walk Scores Around Annapolis

To that end, WalkScore ranks more than 2,500 neighborhoods in the 40 largest U.S. cities. Three of the neighborhoods – Tribeca, Little Italy, and Soho – scored perfect 100’s, but you’d have to move to Manhattan. A score of 90 or more equates to a “Walker’s Paradise.” A score of at least 70 indicates you might be able to get along without a car.

I took the site for a test drive and plugged in some local addresses. (Try it, using the WalkScore widget in the lower right-hand margin.) If you live on Main Street in downtown Annapolis, you’d score in the high 90’s – excellent. A Boucher Ave address in Eastport where we recently sold a home pulled a 69 – “somewhat walkable.”

Our own neighborhood – Riva Trace – got a modest 31, or “car dependent”, which points to the limitations of the site: Riva Trace is a great place to walk, with lovely tree-lined streets, nice neighbors and friendly dogs. I give it high points for overall desirability. There’s just nothing much to walk to.

Whether you’d like to move to a walking community or out to the burbs, we can help you find your dream home. Just give me a call at 410-507-7222 or email me at kenhaedrich@kw.com and let me know how we can help.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Buyers, Sellers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.