Austin to New York. Lace up those walking shoes!

Walkability is not a new concept to urban planners, but it is increasingly becoming a concept important to consumers as they pick locations for healthy living.

Walkability is a measure of the infrastructure, access, and other aspects that support walking as a form of transportation. Walk Score is an online resource that gives scores for any location or area you may wish to know about such as specific addresses, neighborhoods, cities, and countries. They use algorithms to calculate each score. The results have been compared to Geographic Information Systems for validity and have been shown to be accurate, with research publishers even advocating for the use of Walk Score by more to promote access to useful walkability and built environment information (Duncan, 2011).

This site also provides a valuable overview to a few benefits of walkability. Overall, walkability promotes health and well-being. Those who live in a walkable neighborhood “weigh 6–10 pounds less than someone who lives in a sprawling neighborhood.” Beyond weight, walkable cities that support public transit and access to amenities promote happiness, higher levels of creativity, and civic engagement (Walk Score, 2018). Walk Score provides even more enticing information; by walking, a resident can help fight the 87% of CO2 emissions which come from cars. Money, another big factor in people’s decisions, supports the concept of walkability. “Cars are the second largest household expense in the U.S. One point of Walk Score is worth up to $3,250 of value increase for your property.” Imagine if you didn’t need a car anymore, how much would you save each year?

Of course, different neighborhoods and cities offer varying levels of walkability. Living in Austin the past five years allowed me to experience the walkability (or lack of) in a few areas of the city such as the University of Texas campus and Downtown Austin. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit Manhattan for a week and traverse the most populated city in the United States. How does the walkability of the two cities compare? There may be a few obvious results and a few intriguing observations from my experience. The three aspects that are most prominent to both my experiences in Austin and New York are accessible public transportation, green spaces, and safety.

Living in Austin for the past five years, I didn’t know how good I had it in terms of access to green space till I visited Manhattan. There are a few small parks that dot the New York City map, but the couple parks I visited were small and almost equivalent to “token” green spaces. Austin’s Lady Bird Lake, Waller Creek, and Zilker Park cover significant areas across the Downtown Austin area, providing considerable green space access to residents. Manhattan’s saving grace may indeed be Central Park. The expansive green block covers a huge part of the busy island, but the busy aspect to it also detracted from the park. Bike highways with five lanes of cyclists cut through the park and sidewalks full of pedestrians added to the fast-paced atmosphere of Manhattan itself. Winter may also play a crucial part in how the park is used. During my visit, I was sad to see many of the Central Park lawns closed for the season. Overall, it would significantly improve walkability if there were more green space integrated throughout Manhattan, rather than relying solely on Central Park and the other small cutaways. Because, as soon as I stepped outside of the park, concrete, buildings, cars, and endless pedestrians were all I could see.

Both cities have better support in different aspects of walkability; Austin with lush greenery, New York with a well-developed public transportation system, and both with similar rates of crime (depending on which data set you choose to use). In the end, Walk Score justifies their grading, by expanding upon some of the other urban planning concepts their algorithms integrate into the final calculations. New York is a much more walkable neighborhood, but Austin may one day catch up.

Doyle, S., Kelly-Schwartz, A., Schlossberg, M., & Stockard, J. (2006). Active community environments and health: the relationship of walkable and safe communities to individual health. Journal of the American Planning Association, 72(1), 19–31.

Litman, Todd Alexander. Economic value of walkability. Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 2017.

Müller, G., Harhoff, R., Rahe, C., & Berger, K. (2018). Inner-city green space and its association with body mass index and prevalent type 2 diabetes: a cross-sectional study in an urban German city. BMJ Open, 8(1), e019062.

Sallis, James F., Rachel A. Millstein, and Jordan A. Carlson. “Community design for physical activity.” Making Healthy Places, edited by Dannenberg. Andrew, et al. Island Press, Washington, DC, 2011. 33–49.

Related posts:

Most businesses buy Google Business Reviews because they know the effects of word of mouth! In the case of your business reputation, what people are saying about you can make or break your business…

The time has come for me to end my journey observing in the library. I have enjoyed my time and realized more about my surroundings than I ever have before. There are something that caught my eye and…

Want to become a top blogger? Want to produce a living by authoring a topic that you like, all with no anything getting close to a boss or perhaps a timetable? Well… enter the queue! You will find…