DC Ranked #1 Most Walkable Metro Area in Nation by BCS-like Formula

Somehow New York lost to Pittsburgh in an upset, Denver beat out Portland with a last-minute sidewalk pouring and Boston ran the table on San Fran, Seattle and Chicago to make Washington, DC the surprise number one walkable metro area in the country!!! National Champs, baby! We're number one!!!

But seriously, here's the report by Christopher B. Leinberger of The Brookings Institution that lays it all out. The methodology appears sound, the terms are well-defined and the author openly admits one weakness of the study is that the size of walkable areas included in the study are not taken into account (i.e. Manhattan is given the same weight as Reston Town Center). Hence the BCS-like formula used to reach the conclusion of the report. The study counts "walkable" areas and evaluates them based on population, links to mass transit, etc. So essentially, the DC area gets high marks for Metro connectivity among various neighborhoods, "town centers" and suburbs that are, in themselves, designed to be walkable.

Whereas NYC is essentially one giant contiguous walkable area, the DC region is (as I see it) a collection of "walkable islands" linked by Metro. And since we have a lower population than the NY area, the ratio of people to walking space is lower, giving us the "W." Although I do question the walking behavior within these various town center-type areas. I lived in the Kentlands in Montgomery Co., MD for a time and, while it is technically "walkable" (you can walk to all the shops and restaurants if you wanted to), it still had vast parking lots - most people would make the 2 minute drive rather than take the 10 minute walk. I'm not sure if the author included Kentlands in this survey and I'm not familiar with, say, Reston Town Center - it may be a much more walking-oriented place. But I still suspect that a lot of people drive there in order to walk, which I think will continue to be the case even as Metro comes in.

I also take issue with the inclusion of Frederick, MD as "Suburban Town Center" of the DC area (see the chart on page 7 of the report). Frederick is the second largest city in Maryland and is about as far away from DC as is Baltimore (which is included as a separate metropolitan area in the report). So I don't know that DC should take credit for Frederick as part of its metro region when you're talking about walkable areas. (Although Frederick may be the last-second field goal that won us the championship)...

There are also the questions of pedestrian safety which, ironically, have again come to the forefront just in last few days. But for now, I'll take the victory and take this line in the report as our trophy:

"Washington, DC, Could be the National Model of Walkable Urban Growth"