Inside the Walkability Score
Walkability is the most misunderstood number on a town profile, so here is exactly what it is.
A modeled walk, not a vibe
For each town we identify a center — a civic or commercial cluster, or the Census internal point when no cluster can be found — and then walk the actual street network outward for 15 minutes at typical walking speed. Everything reachable in that network is the town’s walkshed. Three measurements come out of it:
- Destination access (45% of the score). Everyday destinations inside the walkshed: grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants and cafes, libraries, post offices, parks, schools, civic buildings, banks, retail, places of worship — counted from OpenStreetMap with per-category caps so one strip of identical storefronts cannot dominate.
- Network connectivity (30%). How connected the reachable street grid is — blocks and intersections rather than cul-de-sacs and dead ends.
- Compactness (25%). How compactly the town’s form sits around its center.
The combined score is normalized nationally across the candidate corpus, so a 60 in Mississippi means the same thing relative to the corpus as a 60 in Minnesota.
What the score cannot see
This is the part to read before trusting the number. The model sees streets and destinations in a database. It does not see sidewalks, crossings, lighting, traffic speeds, dogs, weather, or hills. It does not confirm that walking is pleasant or safe — only that the town’s form makes it possible. OpenStreetMap coverage in small towns is also uneven; where inputs were incomplete, the profile says “partial” next to the analysis and counts it as a limitation.
A high score tells you the bones are there. A low score tells you daily life will involve driving. Neither tells you what it feels like at 7 pm on a Tuesday. For that, there is no substitute for visiting.
Why it matters anyway
Because form is destiny at the town scale. A group that moves to a compact, connected town will simply see each other more — at the post office, the park, the diner — and community compounds on casual contact. The walkability score is the closest thing public data has to a measurement of that capacity. Use it as one input among many, alongside the full methodology and your own two feet.