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How Walkable Is Your Neighborhood?

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Green LA Girl is walking every street in Santa Monica and she just discovered this Web 2.0 gem: Walk Score. It calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. to help people find walkable places to live. Pretty awesome, right?

I've always prided myself on my part of Sherman Oaks and it's walkability. Within a 10-minute walk radius I can walk to two bars, four restaurant bars (including Casa Vega!), Starbucks and two other coffee shops, plenty of restaurants (Thai, Lebanese, Mexican, pizza, Chicago hot dogs, Italian, etc), a Metro Rapid stop (plus two other Ventura Blvd. bus lines and the Van Nuys/Studio City DASH), a theatre, a comedy theatre, dry cleaners, a yoga studio and random amenities such as the Psychic Eye Book Store.

So what is my walk score? 66.

66!!!?! I started feeling so jealous of Green LA Girl -- she has a 91 which translates to "Walkers' Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car." A score of 66 gets me the ranking of "Some Walkable Locations: Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a car."

Which I guess can be true. Two major deficits in walkability for me is a grocery store and a movie theatre. A Ralphs is relatively close but I have never walked there to shop. At that distance, I bike it.

So how what is your Walk Score? (Put it in the comments, let's see the collection of neighborhoods) Keep in mind, as one Green LA Girl commenter pointed out, that some places marked on the map do not exist anymore and others are missing.

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Happy Walking at www.walkscore.com!

Photo by newrafael via Flickr

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