<p>Ours is 63, nearly all the shops and restaurants are 1/4 to 1/2 a mile away. Far enough that we rarely walk, though we know we could. It was missing all the Mexican restaurants in one adjacent neighborhood, though it had a couple of the grocery stores in that neighborhood. I wish the local gas station had a convenience market so we could buy milk and eggs, the grocery store is on the 1/2 mile end of things, but otherwise I really like our neighborhood. We’re also less than a half mile from the train station to NYC, an easy walk. </p>
<p>Son’s apartment at Carnegie Mellon rates an 86.</p>
<p>Ours is 62, and sounds like yours, mathmom. A small shopping center with a supermarket, Borders, bank, dry cleaner, etc. is about 1/3 of a mile away, and that’s right across the street from the commuter rail station that my husband uses to go into the city for work every day. On a nice day he’ll often walk there, although I’m less inclined to make the walk with lots of grocery bags to shlep back!</p>
<p>Our’s is a 3. Which is probably accurate. We really can’t walk anywhere except for exercise. We also live in an area that has small hills and larger lot sizes. No sidewalks. We do have great walking for pleasure and horse trails for equestrians and little traffic. It is a great place to live but with the gas prices over 4 dollars a gallon I am feeling it.
Our office which is a 10 minute drive from our house got a 94. The office is on the edge of the downtown so you could walk just about anywhere.</p>
<p>My score is a 68, and I think that’s low. I can walk or ride my town bike to absolutely anything, including grocery shopping. The children have always walked or biked to school. We walk downtown to restaurants for dinner, or just ice cream after dinner. I think the reason the score is low is there are no sidewalks on the streets, as the town has a rural character. And the houses are on realitively good size lots, they aren’t condos. Interestingly enough, if I move the address to one a third a mile away the score goes up to 91.</p>
<p>When I was carless in Pasadena I’d walk the half mile or so to the grocery store with a back pack. Now that I’m 50 I don’t need to do that. But I could if our cars broke down. Booklady, I envy you your Borders. We don’t have a decent bookstore in town - the site counted the college bookstores, but I don’t think they’ve got much. Luckily we have lots of good libraries nearby.</p>
<p>Everyone on this forum is experienced in questioning their grades. ;)</p>
<p>If I find anyone suburban getting in the two-digits, I’m going to protest that they’re messing up my curve (I only got a 9 and took preparation courses, y’know…no fair)</p>
<p>I wrote to my NYC son about the miserable 9, and he wrote back beaming about his 97. I said, “97 is good, but what happened to those other 3 points? And don’t tell me it’s because of the Hudson River. Would you do whatever the Hudson River told you to?” </p>
<p>The family’s coast house got a 63. Odd in that the grocery, library, restuarants, video store, artsy things, thrift store, hardware store, river are 0.2. No BestBuy or Nordstroms or Walmart within 50 miles.</p>
<p>We’re a 92, but the “grocery store(s)” are overpriced corner markets that we only go to if we’re out of milk or desperate for ice cream. Supermarkets require a drive. S is moving to a 63, but big college campuses should all be 100s, because you really can meet all your needs by walking! </p>
<p>This is a humbling exercise, because for a city dweller, I drive too much to the stores of my choice. Interesting: the independent coffee place I go to is closer and better than Starbucks, but guess which one is on the list?</p>
<p>Mine is a 3. I think it is rather generous as they list a gas station as a grocery store - it is a very little gas station with one pump and a very few groceries. </p>
<p>Interesting site though - thanks for posting it. I did not think our address would even work on it.</p>
<p>My house got a 20, my college an 85. The home is definitely not accurate - it doesn’t list half the stuff on the major roads that are within walking distance to my house - and there are a lot of stores. Ah well, never expected something solely based on Google Maps to be completely accurate.</p>
<p>A 17 here, and they reversed 2 locations- .1 mile separates the two (a parking lot). You could walk but could you carry the groceries or other goods? Especially in winter with icy roads- mostly no sidewalks to take away green space and many hills. Quality of life is often better away from commercial zones, we’re an easy walk from a middle school and HS- no busses for this area’s students. I would much rather live outside the high number, big city zones. I wonder what the scores would be if they rated the ease of getting to the stores et al needed to get quality and cost effective goods? My circular route to discount stores, banks, library, grocery store is probably better than someone confined to urban areas without those places, and we get plenty of flora and fauna (could do without the city deer eating everything, though). </p>
<p>An interesting site. Reminds me of the planning that emphasizes the old corner grocery store et al. That only works if the businesses carry the goods you want- how can a small store within walking distance cater to the diverse needs/wants of the nonuniform ethnic populations desireable in any neighborhood? Do they stock the shelves with my goods or my neighbor’s? The Starbucks factor is useless to me, different stores matter to different groups…</p>
<p>we lucked out.
Many of the businesses we currently frequent within 1/2 mile of us, weren’t there when we moved in.
We chose our neighborhood, because a wonderful family type brunch place was a couple blocks away. ( and the elementary school where neither child attended is a block farther)
However in a couple months after we moved, it closed and what replaced it is one of the top French restaurants in the region.
Lovely but not where you go for Sunday coffee.
While we moved into our area because it was affordable- it isn’t so any longer, but we benefit from the local amenities demanded by the local software industry workers even while we complain about the price we now pay for our lattes</p>
A lot do, I think. I had a client who sold her summer house on a Maine island pretty much immediately after her husband died. He loved it, but for her… it was too quiet… The silence kept her awake. Her primary home was on Park Avenue in Manhatan. :D</p>
<p>Mine is a 38. Listed places including someone’s in home t-shirt ordering business and a fruit place on a nearby residential street - strange. In any case, if you walk anywhere here from now until the end of September you’d drop dead from the sun, heat, humidity, etc.</p>
<p>28 and overrated. They must be measuring distances by the way the crow flies, but we are on a hill and most everything else is waaaaay downhill. And the streets don’t exactly run straight, and the crow can fly over highways, railroads and the like whereas we humans can’t (at least not till we evolve more)</p>
<p>They definitely used the ‘crow files’ method. It lists my kid’s school as .66 miles, when in fact we’re right on the border for busing (1.5 miles). And they show businesses here that are really a couple of miles down the road - they apparently got towns mixed up. My score: 57, but it’s not accurate IMO. But it is useful to give you some idea of closeness of at least some businesses.</p>
Guess I really am rural!</p>