The problem with walking in NYC is that it's hard to find a place to pee without buying another beverage, exacerbating the issue.

This was on Yahoo! yesterday.
San Fransico being #1 gave me yet one more reason to want to live in this city.

Yay Boston! Reading this gave me the warm fuzzies.

There is a problem of scale that these 40 walkability scores don't really address. For example (as I lay out in my blog), Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, and Detroit should have much lower scores if their full metropolitan urban areas were considered, just as Jacksonville's is.

HA! Brennan, that's pretty funny. A couple recommendations:
- Most big book stores or record stores have public bathrooms
- Walk into any NYC hotel. Go in like you are a guest and find the public bathroom.

Good luck!

i know what you mean, i want to live in san fransisco so bad, itd rock, id want to live right next to the water. with alot of cool buildings right next me, like a cookie shop. hell ya. i would go that cookie heaven every day.

What a strange list. All of the neighborhoods in Dallas have no residents and no grocery, so it's "walkable" but only after you've driven there. With little to no mass transit it makes it even worse.

Hah! Honolulu isn't even on the list. Honolulu, with its extensive mixed use neighborhoods and year round pleasant weather is one of the most walkable cities in the US. A third of the workers in my office don't even own a car. Gasoline purchases are down 15% vs. the same period last year, indicative of how easy it is to get around the city without a car.

Whoa whoa whoa... LOS ANGELES ranked ahead of my beloved PORTLAND? You kiddin' me?!

Maybe this comes from a biased point of view since I live in downtown, but buck for buck, there's not a more walkable neighborhood- and I have family in SF (which, with those hills, WalkScore doesn't really take into account...) and grew up in the L.A. area. Seattle isn't really a great city either. Walkscore is a helpful tool, but it is also very inconsistent- and it should really work on taking terrain into account. I would've expected to be NY to be the top city BY FAR.

I think I'm going to have to disagree with that. I grew up in Honolulu and I think it is a terrible city to walk around in! Unless you really live in downtown, there is no grid system to the city planning, which makes walking difficult, on top of that, TheBus is very unreliable. I now live in San Francisco so in comparison, I think it's fair that Honolulu didn't make it there on the chart. It's a beautiful city like you said that has so much potention to be walkable but i think a lot of work needs to be done.

Pittsburgh doesn't make the list, but WalkScore is a great tool for people searching for a new home who want to make sure it's in a walkable neighborhood.

yay philadelphia! its very walkable indeed. in fact there really arent that many cars on the road there just people walking and taking the subway. i can see why we ranked 5.

Yeeeaaa Philly! :) I walk almost everyday in center city. Top 4 places to walk #1 Ritton house square/walnut street #2 Boathouse row #3 Upenn / Drexel campus #4 South street if you like the scene

@ Candace

What part of Honolulu is not walkable (please don't count places like Makakilo, Mililani, and Wahiawa which aren't part of the city)? What "work" needs to be done? Even Salt Lake has stores and bus routes within a 5-10 m walk, never mind Makiki, Kalihi, downtown, Manoa, etc.. And The Bus won America's Best Transit System for 1994–1995 and 2000-2001 and continues to perform well today.

Honestly, it sounds like your info is out of date.

I've lived in Portland now for several years, and I've been to a lot of cities...this one is easily the best I've seen. I've moved a few times since coming to town, and I've never had the need for a car. Grocery stores were always walking distance for me. Parks, walking distance. Resturants, walking distance. And the air is way clean...some of those cities might be walkable, but the question becomes...do you really want to walk in that?

Walk in L.A.? You have to be kidding.
Last time I walked there I almost got
knifed twice the same day. You have
to pick your spots. It's as smart as
walking in Oakland.

Three big problems with this site; the evaluation does not consider the presence of sidewalks, bad topography (steep hills), and does not consider parks important.

It also ignores greater metro area and considers only city limits. I believe it ignores mass transit as well.

This is a pathetic site that is getting way more coverage than it deserves.

Philadelphia? South St, okay, but where else? Totally winging it / mailing it in. I'd rather walk through Wilmington.

I have to put in a word for that much maligned city, WDC.

I have walked around cities all over the world—London, Stockholm, Tel Aviv, Chennai, Barcelona (never made it to Paris) and I have to put DC up against any of them. The whole ten mile length of Connecticut Ave. is great, something new or old or surprising in every block, all swathed in leafy green, with gardens everywhere, and endless bistros to duck into.

Isn't it amazing how adding a couple of bucks a gallon in gasoline prices can change the focus of an entire nation in about fifteen minutes? What are all those poor folks in their McMansions going to do with their McDrugs on the market?

Yes, LA is quite walkable it's the San Fernando Valley that gives it such a bad impression. And to Ethan you said "if LA's entire metropolitan area was considered then it would be lower" well that defitnetly goes for San Francisco if you began to include San Jose, alot of Oakland and so on. Same goes for NYC if you began to include Long Island and northern New Jersey which are part of its metro area. No other city in the US over the past 20 years has built more rail than LA with an almost 100 mile Heavy and Light rail system and no city in the US has a more extensive bus system(check the APTA) and a commuter rail system that is nothing to sneeze at. LA never gets the credit until now with walkscore that it sorely deserves.

Los Angles? Really? (City of angles?)

I live in Los Angeles and in regards to LA, this article is right and wrong. The individual neighborhoods may be very walkable, but no one I know stays in their area. For example, I have many friends that live in LA, but live 50 miles from me. My university is 15 miles from my house.

So, the areas listed in the article are nice to walk in, but not practical. Venice Beach is very nice to walk around in; they even have a nice farmers market, but to get there I'd have to drive 30 miles each way.

The shear size and layout of LA make it impossible to use public transport too. It would take two hours and three buses to get to my school-- 15 miles away.

I have lived in Downtown L.A. for the past 5 to 6 years now and don't use my car as much. I have never been assaulted or felt intimidated by anyone. Not sure what part of town Lars was in. I grew up in South L.A. and from age 0 to 18 was assaulted once with a knife. I think it might be a gross exaggeration on his part. LA's walkability, specially Downtown, the general ambience is safe, comfortable and energizing. Ofcourse, there are scarry parts in the city, like anyother place, but lets hold the exaggerations to a minimum.

So move closer to your school and don't make friends 50 miles away. You are stating your argument from a car-centric standpoint because if you didn't have a car or access to a car the "luxuries" of having friends 50 miles away would just seem too burdensome. When I lived in NYC I barely saw my friends in Brooklyn when I lived in Manhattan 13 miles away and quite accessible by pt. First you got to get yourself out of a car-centric mindset of having the freedom to go anywhere at anytime with no timetables then the city will begin to open up for you. Presently I live in Silver Lake and everything I need is accessible by pt to me in Hollywood, Echo Park, Downtown, Koreatown or Mac Arthur Park. And when people go on about how large LA is that too is from a car-centric mentality seeing that the city is only 469 sq miles with 15% of that taken up by moutainous regions, hardly a gargantuam city.

I looked at these comments wondering how long before I saw someone from Portland bitching that they weren't number 1. And Portland didn't disappoint. Cause everyone knows Portland is number 1 in everything good, and if any place is ranked above Portland in anything, there is something screwy going on.

I am so sick of Portland. It should be number 1 on the list of my overrated places and most pompous inhabitants.

Most of the cities with poor walking infrastructure in the south? With all that energy and "can do" attitude they have down there? I'm shocked! Shocked, I say!

The only problem with walking in Washington, DC is you're reminded where you are.

I have been to LA a number of times and moved to Portland 2.5 years ago. Portlands is way more wlakabl and has better public transportation than LA, period. LA is one large suburban sprawl. My friend had a dumpy apartment in Hollywood and we walked a lot of places, but it does not compare to Portland

With respect to NYC, Long Island and Northern NJ are not part of the greater Metro area - that does not extend beyond the 5 boroughs.

It’s difficult to me to understand how computer counts my walk, drive and others scores. By what criterion it judges? I don’t agree with my mark and I feel upset every time! I don’t need most things (Gas Station, Railway Station) that computer proposing to me. But I found a service http://drivescore.fizber.com/ that offers me to choose things by myself. So my score become much higher then it was.