Long Beach is the Only Southern California City to Rank Among the 10 Most Walkable Cities of 2016
SEATTLE — April 28, 2016 — Walk Score® (www.walkscore.com), a Redfin company, today released its 2016 ranking of the most walkable U.S. cities with populations over 300,000. With a Walk Score of 88.9, New York remains the nation’s most walkable city.
Long Beach (69) is the only Southern California city included in the top 10, narrowly beating out Baltimore (68.7). Long Beach also had the largest yearly increase of all 10 cities, up 3.2 points.
Walk Score Ranking of Large U.S. Cities
|
Rank |
City |
Walk Score |
Change from 2015 |
|
1 |
New York, NY |
88.9 |
+1.3 |
|
2 |
San Francisco, CA |
85.7 |
+1.7 |
|
3 |
Boston, MA |
80.1 |
+1.2 |
|
4 |
Philadelphia, PA |
78.3 |
+1.7 |
|
5 |
Miami, FL |
78.2 |
+2.6 |
|
6 |
Chicago, IL |
77.5 |
+2.7 |
|
7 |
Washington, D.C. |
77.0 |
+2.9 |
|
8 |
Seattle, WA |
72.9 |
+2.1 |
|
9 |
Oakland, CA |
71.5 |
+3 |
|
10 |
Long Beach, CA |
69.0 |
+3.2 |
“Recognizing Long Beach as the most walkable city in Southern California, and one of the most walkable in the entire country, is a testament to the hard work we’ve been doing to improve and expand pedestrian infrastructure and support safe and convenient travel for everyone,” said Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia. “We intend to continue making Long Beach a great place to walk and to live, work and visit.”
Notable Improvements in Walkability:
All of the top 10 cities saw an increase in their respective Walk Score ratings, indicating that the nation’s largest cities are becoming more walkable. Among the top 50 most walkable cities, only two, Honolulu (63.3) and Columbus, Ohio (40.4) had Walk Scores that improved by less than a point.
“Improving a city’s Walk Score takes work. In these communities, construction crews have built an invitation for walking,” said Eric Scharnhorst, livability analyst at Redfin. “Safer sidewalks are now connected to a greater variety of everyday amenities. This creates opportunities for both local businesses and families.”
Omaha, which ranked 32nd, had the largest year-over-year Walk Score increase among the 50 most walkable cities, with an improvement of 4.3 points. With a Walk Score of 45.4, the city is still considered “car dependent,” but many neighborhoods saw big gains in their ratings.
St. Louis, Missouri, Denver, Colorado, Aurora, Colorado, Santa Ana, California as well as Austin and Houston in Texas all saw a Walk Score increase of four points or more.
To read the full report including a ranking of the 50 most walkable cities, visit the Redfin blog.
Methodology
To calculate the rankings, Walk Score analyzed more than 10 million locations and computed more than 2 billion walking routes for 2,500 U.S. cities. The Walk Score ranking uses the Street Smart Walk Score algorithm that incorporates walking routes, the number of nearby amenities (e.g. restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores, etc.), respective distance to those amenities, pedestrian friendliness, population and neighborhood boundary data.
About Walk Score
Walk Score makes it easy to find walkable places to live. Walk Score’s website and iPhone app let consumers shop for apartments and rentals by commute time, access to public transit and proximity to “Gotta Have” amenities like coffee shops, grocery stores, schools, parks, car shares, and more. Visit http://www.walkscore.com/apartments to get started. Walk Score believes that walkable neighborhoods with access to public transit, shorter commutes, and proximity to the people and places you love are the key to a happier, healthier and more sustainable lifestyle. Walk Score delivers more than 10 million scores for apartment and home addresses per day across a network of more than 30,000 real estate sites. Find your neighborhood at http://www.walkscore.com.
About Redfin
Redfin (www.redfin.com) is the next-generation real estate brokerage, combining its own full-service agents with modern technology to redefine real estate in the customer’s favor. Founded by software engineers, Redfin has the country’s #1 brokerage website and offers a host of online tools to consumers, including the industry’s most accurate home-value estimate, the Redfin Estimate. Homebuyers and sellers enjoy a full-service, technology-powered experience from Redfin real estate agents, while saving thousands in commission. Redfin serves more than 80 major metro areas across the U.S. The company has closed more than $31 billion in home sales, and saved customers more than $335 million in fees, and counting.
For more information or to contact a local Redfin real estate agent, visit www.redfin.com. To learn about housing market trends and download data, visit the Redfin Data Center.
