Long Beach has been named the 10th-most walkable city in the United States and is the only Southern California city to make the Top 10 this year in a Walk Score study by Redfin, a residential real-estate company that provides web-based real-estate database and brokerage services.
“Recognizing Long Beach as the most walkable city in Southern California, and one of the most walkable in the entire country, is a testament to the hard work we’ve been doing to improve and expand pedestrian infrastructure and support safe and convenient travel for everyone,” said Mayor Robert Garcia. “We intend to continue making Long Beach a great place to walk and to live, work and visit.”
Long Beach is joined by nine other cities. In order, from first to ninth place, they are New York, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, Chicago, Washington, DC, Seattle, and Oakland. All of these cities saw an increase in their respective Walk Score ratings, showing that cities across the nation are becoming more walkable. In previous scoring, Long Beach had a Walk Score of 65.8; it has moved up to 69.0.
“A renaissance has been happening in downtown Long Beach, which now has a Walk Score of 92,” said Redfin agent Michelle Zabukovec. “In addition to some brand-new buildings, developers are rehabilitating structures that were already in place. The City has even created an incentive program for rehabilitation projects and has also focused on improving walkability by adding more pedestrian lighting to create safer sidewalks. One example of this is the Pine Avenue Improvement Project. And of course everyone loves First Fridays in Bixby Knolls as well as 2nd Street in Belmont Shore.”
To calculate the rankings, Walk Score analyzed more than 10 million locations and computed more than 2 billion walking routes for 2,500 U.S. cities. Walk Score ranking uses the Street Smart Walk Score algorithm that incorporates walking routes, the number of nearby amenities (e.g. restaurants, coffee shops and grocery stores), respective distance to those amenities, pedestrian friendliness, population and neighborhood boundary data.
