Is Issaquah Highlands Very Walkable?

Written by: rebecca and filed Under Blog, Issaquah, Issaquah Highlands, Real Estate, Retail Development |

One of the aspects of living in Issaquah Highlands I love is the Urban Village concept. The community is geared toward pedestrians and is within walking distance to alternative transportation. With a network of sidewalks and trails woven throughout the neighborhood, it is easy to walk or bike from place-to-place. As mentioned in a previous post, the streets are definitely scaled for walking and biking rather than cars and trucks. And last but not least, many of the homes throughout the community trade their front load garages for front porches which encourages social interaction with neighbors and the passersby.

That’s where this great new tool comes in to play. WalkScore is a tool that helps helps people find “walkable” places to live. The tool has location data on stores, schools, restaurants, parks,ect. which it uses to calculate the “walkability ” of an address. Why is this important? Well, for one thing, walking is just good for you and the environment. It also helps build stronger relationships within the community you live by getting you outside and physically interacting with the real world. Plus it’s just convenient; at least will be when we get more retail in the Issaquah Highlands.

So what is the WalkScore of Issaquah Highlands? Great question. And to be honest, the answer was quite disappointing. WalkScore give Issaquah Highlands a WalkScore of 25 out of 100 (Not Walkable). This will change over time as our retail are gets built out, but at least for now, downtown Issaquah is right down the hill and it has a WalkScore of 80 (Very Walkable).

What’s the WalkScore from your house? Check it out!

Comments

3 Responses to “Is Issaquah Highlands Very Walkable?”

Tom on November 12th, 2007 1:32 pm

I can’t argue that walk score is convinient, but nowadays more and more people drive cars and they are interested also in drive score - by using it buyers can see how close difeerent establishments are by car. Drive Score is a servise that shows a map of what establishments are in a property’s neighborhood and calculates a Drive Score based on the number of places within a convenient driving distance. Homes are often located in an area where restaurants, libraries, grocery stores, hospitals and other businesses are easier to get to by car than on foot. his unique service is situated on http://www.fizber.com.
Barmadilka on December 3rd, 2007 2:54 am

Thanks for the article. That’s really cool.
And thanks to Tom for one more link. I’ve spent about an hour entering different home addresses and estimating their walkscore and Drivescore.
BTW one may find one more score there - a
Bikescore
rebecca on December 5th, 2007 11:09 pm

Tom,

I agree that the majority of people use their cars to live their everyday life.

Issaquah Highlands was planned and is being built to break that habit. We are a community that is built to promote people getting out and walking. Coffee shops, restaurants, salons, movie theater, grocery store and many other retail outfits are already or will soon be within walking distance.

I don’t know where you are from, but we here in the Highlands welcome the ability to leave the cars in the garage and get out and explore on foot.