This week, I went to www.walkscore.com; a website where you can enter your street name or postal code, and it estimates how ‘walkable’ your community is. My walk score was determined to be 67/100, or what is considered a somewhat walkable community. This is based on the idea that proximity to key amenities defines the walkability of a community. When using this walkscore estimator, amenities include groceries, coffee shops, restaurants, shopping, schools, parks, books, pubs, entertainment and banking. Within 1km of my house, there are several amenities available.
For example, Costco and the Millstream Market are within 1km in order to get groceries, several coffee shops and pubs exist in the area, and several other commercial shopping outlets exist nearby. In addition, the area supports other everyday necessities such as school, banks and entertainment facilities. Unfortunately, there are not any parks or public spaces in the immediate vicinity, something interesting to note in an area that has recently been subjected to extensive urban sprawl. In fact, the neighbourhood I am currently renting in did not exist ten years ago. The nearest park is shown to be almost 2km away, and is not accessible without highway travel. The map shown below reveals some of the various amenities found near my house, as detected by the walkscore website.
It is important to note that there are some problems with this walkscore model. For one, the results that appear will depend on the resources used to find and list local businesses. In this case they are located using google maps, and this may not accurately capture all the businesses found in the area. Another problem that seems to occur frequently is businesses being categorized incorrectly. For example, the West Coast Tap House is listed as a restaurant, just a few blocks from my house. I would personally categorize the Tap House as a pub and generally don’t go there for meals, although they do serve food. In addition, while it is true that there are no major parks nearby, there are a few walking trails and lakes in the area which provide the opportunity for recreational activities.
Ironically, I find that it is somewhat difficult to walk around in my neighbourhood, because while there are amenities nearby, they are not necessarily ones I personally use very often, and they are almost all clustered together in a big strip mall located down the road. It is too bad that these newer developments didn’t use a more integrated approach while planning construction, where businesses are actually integrated into the local area. My residential neighbourhood has one main road leaving it, as you can see on the map (above), providing terrible integration with the amenities that are so nearby, as the crow flies. The walkscore also doesn’t consider the topography of the land, and that needs to be considered in cities such as Victoria where steep roads exist in abundance. This is especially true when considering others, such as senior citizens, or those with physical disabilities.
Overall, while my walkscore indicates that my neighbourhood is a fairly connected and walkable, and thus perhaps sustainable, I feel like this is an overestimation. While there are several convenient amenities located within a short distance of my house, (resulting in a high walkscore rating), they are not integrated into my neighbourhood. In addition, the solitary road network leading to and from my neighbourhood is frequently congested with traffic, with little or no sidewalk existing to connect the residential neighbourhoods to the commercial centres.
To end this post, I’ll leave you with a couple pictures I have taken over the years, spending time in Dawson City, Yukon. Dawson was once a bustling boom town during the gold rush days, and the town core has largely been preserved with true Klondike style and charm. With hardly any changes occurring there regarding development over the past several decades, Dawson is probably the best example of a walkable community I can think of. The streets are mostly unpaved, and they are all lined with wooden boardwalks. The local grocers, pubs, restaurants and other shops are all integrated with residential buildings, and the need to drive anywhere is essentially eliminated. The entire town is about 8 streets long by eight streets wide, in a highly connected network, making it easy to choose the most efficient route to walk to your destination.
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