Walk Score is very important for certain neighborhoods where walkability is the big selling point. It has little or no importance in areas where home and lot size are more highly valued. It's like asking if the 0-to-60 time is important when buying a car -- yes if you are buying a sports car but no if you are buying a minivan -- completely different products.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what I'm hearing here is that walkability for what people want to do is important. One doesn't need a "walk score" to understand that, and the walk score itself is misleading because people value the different types of walkability differently (schools, work, shopping, restaurants.)

Well, it obviously can't factor in your commute, can it?

Walk score is important for people who like to walk, don't mind living in more dense urban areas, and who embrace that type of lifestyle. If you are used to driving everywhere, and like it, and prefer to have a lot of greenery around you, walkscore is completely irrelevant.

Min is 89, BTW, and I'm a little surprised that it's not higher. I live in the heart of Columbia Heights, and I'm hard pressed to think of anywhere more walkable in DC. PP with a score of 99, where to you live?

That is likely one of the reasons why your walkscore is not higher. Many of us do walk to work, and I believe that it takes into account the number of jobs within a walkable distance. Here are the list of neighborhoods with walkscores higher than yours. Notice that they are all closer to job centers.

1 Dupont Circle 98 14,443
2 West End 97 3,204
3 Downtown 96 4,181
4 Penn Quarter 96 1,561
5 Logan Circle 96 16,545
6 Chinatown 95 1,032
7 Foggy Bottom 94 13,153
8 Mount Vernon Square 94 6,164
9 Judiciary Square 94 1,985
10 U Street Corridor 94 3,796
11 Swampoodle 92 783
12 Shaw 91 9,925
13 Columbia Heights 91 30,718

It is extremely important to me, but I am in a 98% range, and I don't really drive. If I had to move to anything less than an 85%, I would most likely be using my car on a regular basis, so I think that it would be more important whether I could walk to the things that I wanted to walk to than whether I could walk to a set percentage of things in general, which is what the walk score measures.

Anonymous wrote:So what I'm hearing here is that walkability for what people want to do is important. One doesn't need a "walk score" to understand that, and the walk score itself is misleading because people value the different types of walkability differently (schools, work, shopping, restaurants.)

Well, it obviously can't factor in your commute, can it?

Walk score is important for people who like to walk, don't mind living in more dense urban areas, and who embrace that type of lifestyle. If you are used to driving everywhere, and like it, and prefer to have a lot of greenery around you, walkscore is completely irrelevant.

Min is 89, BTW, and I'm a little surprised that it's not higher. I live in the heart of Columbia Heights, and I'm hard pressed to think of anywhere more walkable in DC. PP with a score of 99, where to you live?

So what I'm hearing here is that walkability for what people want to do is important. One doesn't need a "walk score" to understand that, and the walk score itself is misleading because people value the different types of walkability differently (schools, work, shopping, restaurants.)

Ours is in the 50s out in Chantilly. We are walkable to schools, the library, parks and a pretty large shopping center with a grocery store, some chain restaurants, etc. Being able to walk to these things is important to me and something we insisted on in our search for a home last year.

From Wikipedia:

Walk Score is a large-scale, public access walkability index that assigns a numerical walkability score to any address in Australia, Canada, the United States and New Zealand.[1]. Other services include a transit score, a custom commute report, and an apartment search that locates potential residences based on commute time. Walk Score “ranks communities nationwide (and soon, globally) based on how many businesses, parks, theaters, schools and other common destinations are within walking distance of any given starting point."[2] According to the site's creators,"The Walk Score algorithm awards points based on the distance to the closest amenity in each category. If the closest amenity in a category is within .25 miles (or .4 km), we assign the maximum number of points. The number of points declines as the distance approaches 1 mile (or 1.6 km)—no points are awarded for amenities further than 1 mile. Each category is weighted equally and the points are summed and normalized to yield a score from 0–100. The number of nearby amenities is the leading predictor of whether people walk."[8]

Anonymous wrote:I didn't know my score until I just searched it online.

Interestingly we recently moved from a house with a score of 64 to a house with a score of 22. We walk a lot more in the new house than before, and I constantly see neighbors out for walks.

I think Walk Score typically addresses walkability to public transportation, amenities, schools, shopping, etc., not walkability for exercise or leisurely walks like the kinds one would take in the neighborhood--though I may be wrong?

I didn't know my score until I just searched it online.

Interestingly we recently moved from a house with a score of 64 to a house with a score of 22. We walk a lot more in the new house than before, and I constantly see neighbors out for walks.

Would rather be surrounded by dense green, leafy areas than be able to walk to shops and restaurants - so the lower the better, as far as I am concerned.

Very important to us.
Ours is 98.

For most of the DC area it's not that meaningful...people who want to live in walkable areas and can afford to will choose those areas, those who are not inclined don't care.

It's funny how regional these things are - when we built our home, we were one of the few LEED certified new builds in this area, but it doesn't add anything to value, whereas in Austin or Boston, LEED certification can add 10% or more to a home's value. Walk score is similar, it seems.

Critical for us. Ours is 88. Walkability was one of the key reasons we bought our new house.

Walk score is paramount.

my walk score is 11 I think, but I walk my dogs almost every evening about 2 miles up and down my tree-lined vienna neighborhood. No, I don't walk to the store or to work (though I could bike to the store on the W&OD), that would be nice I guess.

if it were just me, I probably would prefer to live closer to a town. but with little kids, I prefer to keep them out of the way.