With people being not only more health conscious, but environmentally aware these days, it stands to reason that people want to locate themselves in neighbourhoods that are walkable. By walkable, I mean that everything you could possibly need is right there within a reasonable walking distance from you. Neil and I were reading BlogTO this morning and discovered the website, Walk Score. It's a site that will calculate the walk-ability of your address.

I'll admit, that growing up in the east end of Regina did not familiarize me with the concept of walking for necessities. Even now, after living in two major centres for the last 5 years -- in both cases within an easy walking distance of shopping, I still find it hard to resist the call of the big box stores, large parking lots and the get-it-all-in-one-stop mentality. As a matter of fact, when I enter my childhood address in Regina, I get a walkable score of 15/100 --- 100 being the most walkable. Pretty bad when compared to our old Vancouver address which got a score of 69/100. As it turns out, our Vancouver address was marginally more 'walk friendly' than our Toronto address which scores 62/100.

If you want more information on exactly what the scores mean, click here.

While I still find walking to shop a pain in the ass, (and it really is -- who wants to lug 32 double rolls of TP home -- and no, I don't want to buy a smaller quantity and then have to shop for TP every other day...) I have learned to appreciate being within walking distance of restaurants/pubs/bars, a drug store, a movie rental store, a theatre, a post office, a liquor store, a doctor's office, a bakery, hell - even the grocery store next door comes in handy for forgotten items, etc, etc....

So check the site out. How does your address rank?