Tuesday, August 28, 2007

That's One Thing My House Has Over The Breakers

Check this neat site, courtesy of my friend at DontEatBaby:

How walkable is your neighborhood? Mine not as good as I think, according to Walk Score; my house rated a 46 out of 100. Some of their points I can see; ok, it would truly rock if there were a closer movie theater, as there used to be when I was growing up pre-multiplexes. But overall we do pretty well. We have a downtown area less than a mile from us with a grocery store, playground, library, pizza place, donut shop, coffee house, two hair salons, a flower shop, and two banks, among other things. We are less than half a mile from a church (though we prefer the next one over) and three preschools and three daycares are within a mile radius. All that adds up to a score of 46 out of 100. Given that only the movies are more than .7 miles away, I'm guessing only a Manhattan apartment would score well. What about sidewalks? That does a lot for walkability here. Or support for walking (and biking)? The local elementary school sponsors a "walking school bus" once a week where the kids who usually ride walk the route instead, escorted by parents, picking up friends along the way. (This, by the way, was called "how we got to school" when I was attending this elementary school. Unless, of course, you were late sleeping me, in which case your mother drove you in her green Plymouth Duster to the drop-off circle, which was empty by the time you got there since the on-time kids were inside already. To be fair, I lived as far from the elementary school as possible while still being in the district. But the town is less than 2 miles long.)

Meanwhile, all that pesky land surrounding the Newport mansions apparently really cuts down on walkability. Only a 45. Ha. Take that, billionaires.

2 comments:

Domestic CEO said...

Now I have to find out what my house scores!

Unknown said...

You know, if your town doesn't get anywhere near 100, what town does?

I did this with my town. The score neglected to reflect the fact that the elementary school and middle school are mere paces from my subdivision (with beautiful sidewalks, to boot). Methinks it's a bit off.

Also, I'm thrilled to see you're blogging more frequently!