The tool at walkscore.com has been touted by hipsters, realtors, and advocates alike for its usefulness in calculating how “walkable” a neighborhood is. The basic premise is that a high walk score indicates a good neighborhood because of its proximity (in walking distance) to grocery stores, restaurants, shops and other amenities. I agree wholly with the site that “buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.”

However, there’s a significant challenge with this tool.

The walk score tabulation does not distinguish between grocery stores and liquor stores, nor does it recognize a full-service restaurant separate from a fast-food joint.

Yes, my North Oakland (Calif.) community gets a promising score of 75 out of 100–technically “very walkable.” But let me tell you, my neighborhood is rife with liquor stores—six in a half mile radius–and a KFC, Carl’s Jr. and McDonald’s are within blocks of each other and me. In fact, I’d have to walk at least 20 minutes to a full-service grocery store or produce market.

Using the Retail Food Environment Index (RFEI) recently highlighted in the PolicyLink “Designed for Disease” report, I fall into the 28 percent of California adults who can’t even calculate how bad their food environment is because my home falls into the dismal category of having absolutely no access to produce or fresh food in walking distance.

The people at WalkScore do recognize the and highlight the positive health effects of living in a walkable neighborhood– and the limitations their data sets put on the score accuracy of a particular neighborhood. Most of the problems do seem to come from the way Google Maps organizes its data, rather than anything that WalkScore is doing.

The potential of this tool to highlight inequities is quite high. While no doubt cool, this tool needs a bit of a redesign to get to a neighborhood’s true “walkability.”

Check it out yourself (this is the map around our PolicyLink headquarters in downtown Oakland–apparently a “walker’s paradise”) :

The timing could not be better for the launch of the landmark PBS documentary
Unnatural Causes – Is Inequality Making us Sick?, a four-part series that sheds light on the critical importance of economics, race and class on health outcomes.

The documentary (which I helped advise) skillfully portrays the vast disparities in health and overall quality of life between families with wealth and those clinging to the middle and lower rungs of the economic ladder.

The more money you have, the better your health. This powerful and vital message is at the heart of the series and helped spur the creation of the PolicyLink Center for Health and Place, which I direct.

More resources and insights below the fold….

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The Delaware News-Journal has an interesting op-ed today about the impact of the built environment on our health. Written by two leaders at Nemours Health and Prevention Services, the piece looks at how better community planning, more park space, and easier access to healthy food stores can help families craft a truly healthy lifestyle.

Remember a time when you walked to school? Or played with friends outside for hours after dinner?

Maybe you even stayed outside for awhile after it got dark just to squeeze in a few more minutes of shooting hoops, playing catch or riding your bike.

Today, many of our kids do not have this experience.

Many factors in our communities prevent them from being active outside. Traffic, neighborhood safety concerns, and the lack of nearby parks or playgrounds are just a few.

For more information and resources on how to make your community more healthy, please visit the PolicyLink Center for Health and Place.