How Walkable Are D.C. Neighborhoods?

We've talked about D.C.'s walkability before a bit, but have yet to delve into the implications of the online tool at Walkscore.com, which rates the walkability of cities and neighborhoods around the country. Walkscore launched in late May, and many other local bloggers noted the site then.

The online tool allows you to plug in your own address in order to receive a "walkability score" based on the closeness of amenities like grocery stores, bars and restaurants, parks, and so on. According to their rankings, D.C. is the seventh most walkable city in the country, behind the usual suspects like San Francisco and New York (which makes a lot more sense than this ranking). They rank Dupont Circle as the most walkable neighborhood in the city, with a 99 out of 100 score. Dupont is also the 17th most walkable in the nation - take that, Center City Philadelphia! Adams Morgan, Logan Circle, Downtown, and 6 other neighborhoods rank as "walkers' paradises" with scores of 90 or above.

The site also highlights some problems the city has, with most of the city East of the Anacostia being ranked in the red "car-dependent" category, with patches of "somewhat walkable" yellow, while most of the rest of the city is "very walkable" or better. Other residential neighborhoods, like Palisades and Barnaby Woods, receive low scores too, which makes sense.

The rankings aren't perfect though — their methodology doesn't take into account public transit, barriers like highways and water bodies, topography (luckily for San Francisco) and so on. Their neighborhood boundaries, which come from Zillow, a real estate website, are a little suspect as well — Anacostia consists of almost all of the city east of the Anacostia River, for example. The business data, which comes from Google's Local Search API, is a bit out of date too: for my neighborhood, Columbia Heights, it doesn't include bars like Wonderland, and still has Visions ranked as a movie theater. If only. Business owners can add their spots to Google, but that can be asking a lot.

Despite the issues, it's a pretty neat site, and it's fun to see how walkable your house (or better yet, maybe a potential house) is.