One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure. He might want to walk for exercise while she may want to walk from restaurant to shopping to more shopping. Walkscore.com has become a very popular real estate resource. Enter and address and based on its criteria it gives a score between 1-100. According to WalkScore, Portland has an overall walkability of 66. The best area: downtown (96). The worst: Forest Park/Linton (12). He’d probably love walking in Forest Park!
PortlandMaps is another great resource. We’ve cited it many times before but they keep adding new resources so we’ll keep writing about it. We use it to check the status of permits (or whether one was issued for a project) and to look for evidence of oil tanks (under the historic permits heading). From the zoning map you can click on the zoning map you can click through to overlay districts (historic, flight, etc. You can even find out who is the local garbage hauler is for a property. Note that the information found on these websites isn’t always 100% accurate.
PortlandMaps has added a walkability heat map which focuses on what they referred to as “20 minute neighborhoods”:
This mapping analysis highlights areas that have relatively good, walkable access to commercial services and amenities. It indicates locations that have concentrations of commercial services that are within relatively short walking distance of homes. Besides taking into account the availability of grocery stores and other commercial services, it takes into account factors that impact pedestrian access, such as sidewalks, street connectivity, and topography.
The resultant “hot spot” map shows the gradient of access in different part of the city. “Hot spots” – orange, yellow, to white (hot) reflect areas with a greater degree of access. Magenta to blue areas have less convenient pedestrian access to services.
Portland’s Climate Action Plan sets an objective for 2030 calling for vibrant neighborhoods in which 90% of Portland residents can easily walk or bicycle to meet all basic daily, non-work needs.
More information and detailed maps are available on the Portland Plan website.
There is a PDF map of the 20-Minute Neighborhood Concept Analysis.
Portland Real Estate | Neighborhoods | Presented by the Turner Realtors Team
3 Comments on “Good Walking Neighborhoods in Portland”
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Walkscore sounds like a great tool to evaluate a city’s public transportation. I wonder how many cities Walkscore has evaluated.
That is a great map, are the grounds suitable for running as well?
I used to live in SW Portland near Multnomah Village. To this day am appalled that there are still no sidewalks on Capital Hwy so people can walk to Multnomah Village without risking life and limb on sloped muddy trails near the ditch with traffic racing past at 45mph.