When people imagine an ideal neighborhood or community for their families they envision a place that has a cozy downtown, they can walk to parks, has mass transit, and is bike friendly. This neighborhood feels safe and friendly, with high social capital. But how does one find such a community in this age of urban sprawl? We summarize some user-friendly online tools to help you check your current community or prospective home.
Walkscore.com is a great resource that evaluates the walkability of a neighborhood. Walkscore has collected data around the United States (and some international locations) and scored neighborhoods based on their walkability from 0 to 100. Community members of cities a with higher walking scores are happier, weigh 6-10 lbs less, and have less stress. Not only is walking good for you and the environment, it also increases land value. According to this recent report one walkscore point adds $3,000 to a homes value, think about that next time you wonder why certain neighborhoods cost so much.
Community with a high walkscore
image courtesy of http://www.walklive.org
Walkscore was such a huge success they created two other databases, for bikeability and transit. Bikescore.com scores communities based on their bike lanes, hills, destinations and road connectivity, and bike commuting mode share. Currently bikescore only evaluates the top 10 most bikeable large cities in the U.S. and Canada, they encourage you to “Tweet” to ask for a bikescore of your city. Transitscore.com grades the largest 25 cities in the United States on their transportation network. It values things like frequency, types of transit available, and distance between stops. This is a great tool for people in larger cities looking for a new apartment wanting access to public transit.
The Trust for Public Land created Parkscore and has info about the 40 largest cities in the United States and promises more to come. Parkscore evaluates a city’s entire park system and grades it on acreage, services, and access. They also rate each aspect of the park system to show where the city needs improvement.
Using these tools in your community can help to show areas that are lacking and help to create sustainable, healthy, complete streets. Although these tools offer guidance and a starting point for evaluation there are certain qualitative aspects of a community that are unquantifiable, such as place-making, social capital, and its citizens.
Plan for the Public 