Enter your address, and it gives you a walkability score for your neighborhood from 0 (can't walk to jack squat) to 100 ("walker's paradise"). There are also listings of the top 143 walker's paradise neighborhoods from the largest 40 US cities, and walkability rankings for the largest 40 US cities.
They admit to imperfections in their scoring algorithm: it doesn't take hills, barriers, or bad sidewalk conditions into consideration. Also, it can't really tell if a "grocery store" is a crappy little bodega with no produce or a huge food emporium. Grocery stores should, in my opinion, count for about almost half the score, but it's hard to tell if that one a block a way is awesome or useless.
Plus, any ranking that puts LA above Baltimore & Portland--or hilly SF above NYC--is a little suspect to me. (Maybe a city-wide average is not so useful-- few urbanists in NYC would care whether Staten Island is walkable or not.) But, these shortcomings aside, it's a really useful tool to get a rough sense of the walkability of an area.
While the rankings and other content focus on larger cities, the address lookup works anywhere in the US. I would love to see the neighborhood rankings and heat maps (pictured above) extended to small cities. Do check out the Walking Oases articles, which discuss very walkable enclaves in otherwise unwalkable cities (which are also smaller ones on the list).
Post your walkscore in the comments.
Mine is a pretty generous 72 "Very Walkable"
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