The Walkability Premium
(cc photo by chego101)
Katharine Worth writes up a new study that used regression analysis to assess the relationship been home prices and the Walk Score of the neighborhood in which they’re located. The conclusion was that “[a]fter controlling for all of these other factors that are known to influence housing value, our study showed a positive correlation between walkability and housing prices in 13 of the 15 housing markets we studied.” In other words “there is a real and measurable pent up demand for homes in walkable neighborhoods.”
Some additional thoughts. One is that though Walk Score is a fun tool, the methodology is far from perfect, and you would almost certainly see a stronger walkability/value correlation if you had a better metric for walkability. Another is that car use is associated with a lot of currently underpriced negative externalities and obviously this would look different if those were priced properly. In a more speculative vein, it also strikes me that American history has left us with a weird situation in which our cities tend to be walkable in inverse proportion to the quality of their weather. Boston or Chicago in the winter are terrible places to walk a quarter of a mile and then wait for a bus. In a city with the climate of San Diego or Los Angeles, things would look different.
26 Responses to “The Walkability Premium”
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August 19th, 2009 at 9:42 am
You’ve made the argument before about walkability and climate, but I think you continue to underestimate the negatives of walking in a warm climate.
As a Floridian who went to college in New Jersey, I can assure you its preferable to walk in NYC in January than Orlando in August. This is particularly true if one is in work clothes.
There is a reason the South and West’s population exploded after the invention on Air Conditioning.
August 19th, 2009 at 9:45 am
But walking is unamerican!!
August 19th, 2009 at 9:47 am
In a more speculative vein, it also strikes me that American history has left us with a weird situation in which our cities tend to be walkable in inverse proportion to the quality of their weather.
I think this is better explained by saying that cities tend to be walkable in direct proportion to their age. Cities that are old enough to have been vibrant population centers before the advent of the automobile are almost always very walkable.
August 19th, 2009 at 9:52 am
“Boston or Chicago in the winter are terrible places to walk a quarter of a mile and then wait for a bus. In a city with the climate of San Diego or Los Angeles, things would look different.”
I’m not so sure about that. Hot climates really suck. When it’s cold, you can always put on more clothes. When it’s hot, naked isn’t enough, and you’ll get arrested for that anyway. The best you can do in a hot climate is to dress like an Arab, and that will get you arrested too. Even if you do manage to stay out of jail, it’s still hot and there’s nothing you can do about it. Cold whether is much easier to deal with. A nice yak wool sweater will do you fine. The Tibetans know that. And so should you.
August 19th, 2009 at 9:57 am
“Cold whether”
Man, I can’t spell anymore. And I blame you, Matt.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Good post and interesting website, though it does have flaws. I checked out our place on the coast in Maine and was surprised to find a movie theater only a few miles away – it is under four miles only by water, or as the crow flies maybe, and more like 40 miles walking or, more likely, driving.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Like others have said, hot climates (actually, humid moreso, as drier places tend to obviously be not as bad for ruining clothes and appearances) are worse for walking around than cold.
Also, maybe it is just me, but typical big, dense cities that are walkable like SF, Boston, New York etc are extremely enjoyable when the temperature is cool and the weather crisp. Once it starts to heat up a little bit, they get very, very miserable and having a more spread out place is more desirable.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:10 am
As a Floridian who went to college in New Jersey, I can assure you its preferable to walk in NYC in January than Orlando in August. This is particularly true if one is in work clothes.
If the tanker truck doesn’t show up, You. Are. Walking. It sucks to walk in Orlando in August. It sucks a whole lot more to walk MILES in Orlando in August.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:14 am
I’m not so sure about that. Hot climates really suck. When it’s cold, you can always put on more clothes. When it’s hot, naked isn’t enough, and you’ll get arrested for that anyway. The best you can do in a hot climate is to dress like an Arab, and that will get you arrested too. Even if you do manage to stay out of jail, it’s still hot and there’s nothing you can do about it.
That did not seem the case in Mazatlan when I was there. They walked. They just refrained from walking from 12 to 2.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:25 am
LA and San Diego are both highly walkable. Look at the their walkscore maps. Their highly walkable cores are both larger than manhattan. Where they stink is public transport for longer distances. This isn’t even an issue if you live near your work.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Seems like some one is confused about cause and effect, which is a bit more complicated than this would indicate. Walkability score measures the number of retail outlets in walking distance, but retailers tend to cluster around wealthy people and wealthy neighborhoods. I can point to a number of neighborhoods with similar street grids and residential density but very different ‘walkability scores’ because one is wealthy and has retail while the other is predominately poor and, consequently, has little retail.
This isn’t to say there isn’t some reinforcement effect, people do like living in neighborhoods with better services and restaurants, but this study doesn’t prove a great deal.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:27 am
The weird thing about hot climates is that if you do anything that’s sensible, people think your crazy. Bangkok is hot as hell, but when it rains, everyone takes cover. Except for me. I’m dancing in the streets because the rain cools you. And they say I’m khunba (crazy). And I think they are crazy for not taking advantage of the cool rain. But it seems that everyone thinks I’m crazy. I know the word for ‘crazy’ in a few dozen languages. They always call me that. But I guess dancing in the rain will always get you that label. Unless you’re Gene Kelly, of course.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Further since we have both mild summers and winters, our walk scores are underrated. A half mile walk to the grocery store doesn’t require getting bundled up in the winter or taking a shower afterward in the summer.
There’s a good reason why SoCal real estate remains expensive, even with recent declines. Besides the good weather, having a car isn’t necessary, yet at the same time it is an affordable luxery given our great highway system.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:39 am
“That did not seem the case in Mazatlan when I was there. They walked. They just refrained from walking from 12 to 2.”
As climates go, Mazatlan isn’t very hot. But as you said, they still won’t walk during the peak hours. Bangkok is much hotter, and they don’t take a break. Which is actually unusual for Southeast Asia. The rest of the region is sensible enough to take a siesta. But nobody ever said Bangkok was a sane place.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:50 am
“The rest of the region is sensible enough to take a siesta.”
Well, except for Vietnam, those people can barely stop working just to sleep. If they put in a fourteen hour day, they think they’re being lazy. Their neighbors in Laos are quite different. You are lucky if you can wake them up. The Lao take a siesta from 10AM to 3PM. After that, they might work. But probably not.
August 19th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Agreeing with fostert and Hank Porter about walking in hot climates. I’ve walked in Atlanta in August, and regretted it. And I’m familiar enough with the climate of central FL that I wouldn’t dream of walking in Orlando, Tampa, or St. Pete during the summer. I’m sure the same’s true of Dallas, Houston, and many other Sun Belt metropoli.
I’d rather walk in NYC or Boston in January than in any of the above in July.
August 19th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Cities in hot climates can be very walkable, if they are designed properly. Take a look at downtown Savannah, with its many lovely squares with shade trees and fountains. Similarly, there are some pretty nice walkable areas in the old part of Charleston and St. Augustine. Same with San Juan, PR or Cartagena, Colombia. Old cities, built before cars were king, are often very walkable.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
There are parts of Austin, TX that are actually nice in the summer. And Barton Springs really rocks. Constant 68 degrees. And it’s home to the Barton Springs Salamander, which is a species that only exists in that spring. And it can’t live anywhere else because it requires a constant 68 degrees. They’ll die in 70 degree water. But the coolest wildlife is the bat colony under the Congress Street Bridge. It’s the largest urban bat community in the world. And when they fly out at sunset, it’s incredible. It’s a river of bats. You will never see anything like it.
August 19th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
As my wife and I hunt for a house to buy in the Boston area, we’ve very much seen this played out. The two key determinants for whether a house will sell quickly or stay a long time on the market seem to be price and walkability (particularly walkability to public transportation). There are some beautiful houses in the southern part of the very nice suburb of Newton that take forever to sell, even though they are in quiet leafy neighborhoods with access to great schools. What’s wrong? There’s nothing you can walk to from there, but the sellers see what similar houses (or even worse ones) are selling for a mile or two north of them in Newton Centre (where you can walk to everything and houses sell quickly) and can’t see why their houses aren’t worth the same (or more) down there. Once the sellers “get it” and they price their houses accordingly, they sell, but not for what they thought their houses were worth.
And, as I lifelong resident of the Boston area, walking around in winter isn’t great, but walking around in an area that’s reasonably pedestrian-friendly is way better than trying to walk around in a hot city that’s designed only for cars. Plus, in winter, driving is no prize either.
August 19th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
My problem with walk score is the age of the information. I do not even recognize some of the businesses shown. It seems that the amenities it lists are from one period (circa 2006) and the website does not update.
August 19th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
I live in a relatively walkable neighborhood in Dallas. One problem with walkable zones in otherwise car-dependent cities is that cars are completely unused to pedestrians; they drive around in my neighborhood the same way they would on Harry Hines. In two months of living here I’ve been almost-hit by cars (and one bus) more times than I had in over 20 years living in NYC.
August 20th, 2009 at 1:47 am
In a more speculative vein, it also strikes me that American history has left us with a weird situation in which our cities tend to be walkable in inverse proportion to the quality of their weather. Boston or Chicago in the winter are terrible places to walk a quarter of a mile and then wait for a bus. In a city with the climate of San Diego or Los Angeles, things would look different.
This would help explain how expensive San Francisco is. You have very mild weather and a city where you can walk anywhere.
August 20th, 2009 at 1:51 am
Incidentally Chicago is not really that walkable. Its a big spread out city. If you’re just trying to walk around your own neighborhood its fine for walking, but trying to go to a different neighborhood takes a lot of time. What is a pity is that its an easy city to bike in since its completely flat, but the weather makes it difficult to bike 8 months of the year.
August 20th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Paul J.
Walking from neighborhood to neighborhood in just about any big city anywhere — Florence, for example, is tough. Maybe tougher some places than others.
***
The walkability determinant is not weather so much as the spatial layout. Yes of course it’s no fun to drive in Orlando in the summer because Orlando was not built to enable/encourage walking, in any season.
It makes no sense to say that a building (consider Disney Hall for example) doesn’t need to be pedestrian-oriented because no one walks along the adjoining streets when the very design of the building guaranatees that people won’t want to walk beside it.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
[...] interesting corollary to the last post is that there is now evidence that homes with a greater range of services in walking distance fetch higher prices. Filed under: all syndicated, nature & environment, progressive politics Tags: Land [...]
August 24th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Anyone who thinks that “shade” makes for lovely walking in the south in the summer has never experienced humidity. When it’s so hot & humid that just walking out the front door feels like walking into a hot wad of wet cotton, then no amount of shade will make walking bearable, no matter how close the store/work/school is. Shade works in places where the sun is what makes it hot, it is not very effective in moist places like St. Louis or Florida.