How Walkable is Your Community?
Take a Community Test Score
The benefits of regular physical activity for our health
and well-being are well documented. Over the past 50
years, however, our increased dependence on the
automobile, coupled with the invention of many labor-
saving devices, has caused physical activity to be
engineered out of our lives.
A movement is growing across the country to create
more walkable communities that support "active
living." Many studies support the association between
certain features of the built environment and physical
activity. These features include the number, proximity
and diversity of destinations; the density of residential
and employment areas; the connectivity, accessibility
and safety of sidewalks and trails; the aesthetics (how
pleasing the environment is for walking); and the
accessibility of parks and open spaces.
Many tools exist to assess environments for
their "walkability." One such tool is called Walk Score.
You simply type in the address of the location
you want to score and, in seconds, Walk Score
calculates the walkability of the address. Walk Score:
- Computes the distance to walkable locations near
an address
- Calculates a score for each location
- Combines these scores into one easy-to-read
Walk Score
If we are to make any headway toward
improving the health of the nation, we will need to
touch people at multiple levels (i.e., individual, family,
community) and support them with policy and
environmental changes that make healthful eating
and active living the social and cultural norms of the
future.
