Now and again one of my more urban friends, especially the ones who moved here from back East, will complain that Seattle is “too suburban.” You can’t walk places. You’re too dependent on a car.

As with a lot of things, it mostly seems to depend on where you live.

Walk Score ^[1] wants to help you find out just how walkable your neighborhood is. They use a Google map mash-up to pinpoint an address, find all of the Stuff surrounding that address, and give you a “walkability” score of 1 to 100. In other words: just how easy is it to walk to stores, restaurants, bars, libraries etc. from where you live?

My house scores a 48. My old apartment in downtown Bellevue scored an 80. Someone who lives just off of Broadway on Capitol Hill will score a 94. On the other hand, my parents’ house on San Juan Island scores a whole 2 points, and that’s only because Walk Score’s algorithm doesn’t understand the problem of swimming to a store.

The Walk Score people freely admit that their algorithm is imperfect: they don’t account for safety, public transit, or “pedestrian-friendly design.” It’s an interesting idea, anyway.