Good thread.
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Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin
The surrounding environment & public realm still do affect walkability in meaningful ways beyond just "proximity to stuff" though.
Walking 5 minutes to do your shopping here is much more pleasant as a human experience than walking 5 minutes here - even though the latter example has a similarly high density of retail. Having a more pleasant, pedestrian-oriented environment for walking (which inherently also means that there is less space for cars) encourages walking, which in turn begets better pedestrian infrastructure.
When the environment centres the use of cars above all else, then naturally, that becomes the default choice to get there even if it technically is walkable to nearby residents. I wouldn't be surprised if urbanites were willing to walk longer distances for services than some suburbanites drive.
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I respect what Walkscore is doing, but you've hit on their biggest failing: walkable neighbourhoods are neighbourhoods where people walk. A walkscore based on the amount of pedestrian trips in a neighbourhood would be pretty infallible. Instead, they've worked out a set of arbitrary measures to calculate theoretical walkability.
It's obvious why they've done this. Walkscore is an ad. If you couldn't build a condo tower next to a power centre and advertise its high Walkscore, you wouldn't pay Walkscore for giving you a high Walkscore.
As to their measures, they aren't bad. But they give up some funky results that bias walkscores towards well-serviced suburban areas over actually walkable areas. Smaller, independent businesses are less likely to appear on google maps, and therefore don't register on Walkscore. This means your favourite divebar doesn't count, but the Boston Pizza you'd never go to anyway does.
This gets worse when we think about the cultural ratings. I supposedly only live within walking distance of one cultural institution: a movie theatre. Walkscore, therefore, scores my neighbourhood as less walkable despite all the galleries, street art, and adapted cultural spaces that are in easy walking distance. And that's Walkscore's biggest failure: a walkable neighbourhood has emergent culture in the walking spaces. Buskers, graffiti, people who sell shit on the sidewalk, are all features of real walkable areas and not of suburban areas with a bunch of dumpy restaurant chains around of parking lot.