Cul de Sacs: Not good for walkability, but not bad for football.

Here’s the latest study feeding the Smart Growth Will Rule the World mentality. It reports that homes in walkable communities sell for more than their secluded counterparts.

The data was pulled from Walkscore.com (this particular link should lead you to a page showing that Washington City Paper‘s Adams Morgan office possesses a sky high score of 97 out of 100).

Here’s how the paper’s author analyzed Walkscore’s numbers (as described by the New York Times):

It looked at the sales of 90,000 homes in 15 markets to estimate how much value was associated with something called the Walk Score. Using a 100-point scale, this score rates the number of destinations, including libraries, parks and coffee shops, within walking distance of a home.

And here’s what the study found:

The study found that houses with above-average Walk Scores commanded a premium. It was as much as $30,000 in cities like Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Sacramento and San Francisco, wrote Joe Cortright, the study’s author and an economist at Impresa, a consulting firm in Portland, Ore.

But beyond these revelations, I would just enourage you to spend some solid time procrastinating on Walkscore.com. I know I did: Childhood home in Bethesda (Walk Score 75);  College dorm in Houston Texas (Walk Score 72); First home in D.C. in Columbia Heights (Walk Score 95); Second home in D.C. near U Street (Walk Score 91).

Ahhhh backsliding a bit toward the end there.

Image by Birdfreak.com, Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License