Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Transportation Location, Location, Location
Posted by Mary Cashiola on Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 2:09 PM
(It even namechecks a CEOs for Cities study of 90,000 homes in which amenities within walking distance of neighborhoods were shown to boost home values.)
"For a lot of Americans, the whole problem of traffic congestion and having to drive everywhere to do almost anything has made other choices more attractive," says Kaid Benfield, director of the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council's Smart Growth Program. Urban planners say it's also a matter of demographics: Baby boomers are coming of empty-nest retirement age, and at the same time their children are buying their first homes, and neither group wants large lots in remote places where little is going on. Fear about future oil prices is also increasing the attractiveness of walkable neighborhoods.
Another study released in January by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that the measure of transportation costs in a given area affect the number of foreclosures.
With Walk Score, which the article references, a potential homebuyer can easily find how a place rates re: walkability.
The site acknowledges its limitations: It doesn't take sidewalks, street design, topography, or traffic into account. And after playing with it a little bit, it's clear there are some deficiencies (nearby movie theaters cited the Orpheum, which does show movies, but ...) but an interesting tool nonetheless.
Comments (13)
Showing 1-13 of 13
When I moved to Nashville, I jumped from a 14 to a 60. Of course, my nearest movie theater is across a river and still undergoing repairs from the time when the only things it could show were "Finding Nemo" and "Waterworld," but it's still a VAST improvement.
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11, baby! Woohoo!
It would be even lower, if not for the nearby restaurant (that isn't a restaurant), coffee shop (that isn't a coffee shop) and grocery store (that isn't a grocery store). Factor those out and I bet my neighborhood would rank somewhere around 6.
The site should also factor in street-level crime. Just because you could walk somewhere doesn't mean you would.
45 - but only because it includes Rhodes' library and bookstore. (But, doesn't include Rhodes gym.)
I'm also pretty leary of what it calls the nearest grocery. I suspect it's just a convenience store.
I'm 49 but it could be higher or lower. My nearest coffee shop is closer than Starbucks and I live right off of the Trolley line, just a few blocks from the Downtown bus terminal but I get "no data" under transit. On the other hand it also lists the Canon Center as a movie theater.
I'm 82, but it's skewed because I'm a block off of Union. Walking on Union is never a good idea.
77! not bad. i'm actually surprised it's not higher. i'm about a block from McLean-Union - which is about as walkable as i guess you could ask for. notwithstanding BVW's fairly on the money assessment of Union's walkability...
49 in VECA. The site missed Snowden School and the Zoo but you can add features to your neighborhood on their site. Very cool. It should be interesting to see how the score changes with those two features added.
My downtown Memphis home - 89.
My downtown Chicago home - 95 (walkers paradise)
I haven't owned a car in more than a decade!
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