Miami Ranked 8th Most "Walkable" City in America

Nevermind the heat or your safety, Miami is apparently America's 8th most "walkable" city in all of America. That's according to Walk Score. Though, the high ranking is a bit deceiving. It only applies to the City of Miami, and is only in relation to America's 50 largest cities by population...

By Kyle Munzenrieder

July 20, 2011

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Nevermind the heat or your safety, Miami is apparently America's 8th most "walkable" city in all of America. That's according to Walk Score. Though, the high ranking is a bit deceiving. It only applies to the City of Miami, and is only in relation to America's 50 largest cities by population (Miami Beach, for example, is actually more "walkable" than Miami). Plus, the methodology leaves out important factors such as weather, crime and street conditions.

"The 'Street Smart' Walk Score algorithm is based on walking distances from an address to a diverse set of nearby amenities," explains the group's website. "Certain categories are weighted more heavily than others to reflect destinations associated with more walking trips. In addition, road connectivity metrics such as intersection density and average block length are factored into the score"

Which means that, yes, technically, Miamians can walk to a lot of places. Whether or not its actually preferable to walk to those places ins't considered. For example, Miami was ranked the 3rd most dangerous city for pedestrians in another study released earlier this year.

Regardless, based on the methodology Miami got a "walk score" of 73, putting it only behind NYC, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

The following map highlights the most walkable areas of the city.

Yeah, there's a bit more green in Miami Beach, because it is actually more walkable than Miami proper. It got a walk score of 75, but wasn't figured into the final rankings of major cities.

Here's all the Miami-Dade cities that received Walk Scores:

Miami Beach: 75
Miami: 73
North Miami Beach: 66
Hialeah: 64
Aventura: 61
North Miami: 60
Coral Gables: 58
Sunny Isles Beach: 58
Fountainebleau: 54
Westchester: 54
Kendall West: 53
Kendall: 50
Hialeah Gardens: 49
Miami Lakes: 49
Kendale Lakes: 46
Doral: 44
Miami Gardens: 41
South Miami Heights: 40
Homestead: 38
Cutler Bay: 37
Palmetto Bay: 35
Pinecrest: 33

Miami Beach was actually the most walkable city in Florida, and Miami and the Beach were the only two cities in Florida to crack the 70s.

Kyle Munzenrieder

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