Walk Score, a relatively new civic-minded Web site, recently ranked 2,508 neighborhoods in the largest 40 U.S. cities to help people find the most walkable places to live.

Walk Score helps you calculate the “walkability” of a certain address. A score of 90 to 100 is considered a Walkers’ Paradise, where many folks can get by without a car and run most errands on foot. A score of zero to 24 is a Driving Only area, which means you’ll need to walk from your front door to your car, because virtually no neighborhood destinations are within walking range.

In many ways, the Walk Score’s rankings were not surprising, seeing that the top five spots were taken by densely populated cities: San Francisco (86), New York (83), Boston (79), Chicago (76) and Philadelphia (74). But I was surprised to see that Los Angeles ranked No. 9 with a score of 67. Walk Score analyzed only the area within city limits, rather than broader metropolitan statistical areas.

L.A. on foot?

The top two neighborhoods in Los Angeles — Mid City West and Downtown — are Walkers’ Paradises with scores above 90. The survey also found that 47 percent of Los Angeles residents have a Walk Score of 70 or above and 16 percent live in car-dependent neighborhoods. While you will see large crowds of people walking around L.A.’s downtown area and mobs of tourist in Hollywood, a good chunk of Angelenos own cars and drive everywhere. When my friend moved out to Hollywood from Chicago a few years back, he thought he could survive without a car. That grand idea lasted for all but three weeks. There is so much to do and see in L.A., and with a not-so-dependable transit system, most people rely on a car to get from one end of the city to the other.

According to Walk Score, cities with low walkability ratings typically have more land dedicated to suburban-style, single-family tracts and less mixed-use development. Trailing Jacksonville with the lowest walkability score of 36 were Nashville (39), Charlotte, N.C. (39), Indianapolis (42) and Oklahoma City (43).

Explore the Most Walkable Neighborhoods:

1. San Francisco, CA 2. New York, NY 3. Boston, MA 4. Chicago, IL 5. Philadelphia, PA 6. Seattle, WA 7. Washington D.C. 8. Long Beach, CA 9. Los Angeles, CA 10. Portland, OR

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