New York. San Francisco. Boston. Philadelphia. Miami.

Not Spokane.

The list above shows the city's with the nation's best "walk scores," according to Redfin, a residential real estate company that provides the walk ranking through its Walk Score company. There are two reasons Spokane isn't on the list. First, we don't have a big enough population. But even if we did, we would be far, far below the standard set by these big, walkable metropolises. 

New York has a score of 85 out of 100. Miami, at fifth place, has a ranking of 75. Spokane? Just 45.

For regional comparison, Seattle's score is 71, putting it in the nation's top ten. Portland's is 63 and Boise scored a paltry 37. Minneapolis got a 65.

According to the page detailing Spokane's rank, the average person in Spokane has two restaurants, coffee shops or bars within a five-minute walk of the home. That number's eight in New York. The Riverside neighborhood, otherwise known as downtown, is the best for walking (not a surprise) with a score of 90. But it's followed by Browne's Addition (70), Emerson-Garfield (68), Logan (66) and Cliff-Cannon (63).

If you're curious about how far a walk can take you in your neighborhood, check out this handy map at LetsWalkTo.com, which the Spokane Regional Transportation Council shared recently. It's a bit strange how entertaining it is to see how far a five minute walk will take you. Or a 20 minute walk.

Here's a screenshot of what one of their maps looks like:

Why are we so low on the scale? Well, it's no mystery that the Lilac City is a car town. The elevated highway running through the city core and the comments on our stories about road diets illustrate that. 

More to the point, however, is how the ranking is determined. Walk Score's methodolgy is explained on Redfin's blog:

To calculate the rankings, Walk Score analyzed over 10 million locations and computed more than 2 billion walking routes for 2,500 U.S. cities. For the second year in a row, the Walk Score ranking uses the Street Smart Walk Score algorithm that incorporates walking routes, depth of choice, pedestrian friendliness, population  and neighborhood data.

Spokane City Councilwoman Candace Mumm has talked about the city's walk score before, and even has a map in her office showing the various levels of walkability in Spokane. As we reported earlier this week, Mumm recently received a Walkable Washington Innovation Award for her work on a crosswalk ordinance the council adopted last year.

The law should make Spokane a more walkable city. Who knows, maybe we'll be on a top ten list someday.

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