Imagine this.
You’ve spent the day walking around exploring various neighborhoods on the outskirts of a large city. You’re starving. You remember a friend mentioning that there are several highly-rated ethnic restaurants in an adjacent neighborhood.
According to the map on your phone, there’s a cluster of them only two blocks away. Yes. You’d prefer not to go back to your car six blocks in the other direction. You’d love to just walk there, then take the subway back to the parking garage.
Problem is you can’t figure out how accessible they are by foot. Seems simple enough, but looking at the map gives you no information about the best way to get there, what type of street they are on or what kind of roads you’d have to cross, how complex the intersections are, the speed limits or crime in that area. Ugh.
You bail, schlepp back to your car and hit a drive-thru on the way out of town. Not what you had in mind for getting a taste of local flavor.
Not hard to imagine; right?
Moments like these inspire us to ask: What does a “walkable community” mean to most people? What factors matter most when getting from point A to point B? Are there places to walk to? Where are they? How do I get there? Can I get there? What are the roads like? What is the crime like? What about crowds and population density?
photo credit: marketplace.org
We’ve been busy asking those questions and think you’ll find that our newest product, Walkability,™ the latest addition to the Context product suite, answers these and more. Its comprehensive and customizable walk rating data gives geo-spatial meaning to the concept of “street smarts.”
Walkability considers numerous critical factors that Walk Score does not. But don’t take our word for it. Click here to read what Walk Score cites as not including in their algorithm. And check out the infographic below to see what Walkability offers and how it stacks up. (Or download it here.)
With data like this, it’s fun to imagine the places you’d go.
