Walk Score
If you haven’t been to Walkscore.com you should check it out: They have done a pretty interesting spatial analysis based upon distance from an address to local resources (restaurants, shopping, etc). Check it out here: http://www.walkscore.com/apartments/search/90071.
What is interesting to me about this is that if you flip the analysis, and add our service locations from our location management system (aka Points of interest – click to download) – you can do a service GAP analysis – basically the red areas would be places that don’t have enough services.
As a government agency this would be a powerful rendering of where we as a County need to add providers or sign contracts.
I’d be interested in this – when I get the change I’ll start taking a look at this – but if someone does it first I would love to see the results!
My WalkingScore at home is 94 out of 100.
Awesome analysis there Mark! I was just thinking about a similar study recently. Maybe dump addresses from a database and hit the Walking Score API to return the score. Then map the results to see areas of poor walkability. Perfect study when doing general, transportation, redevelopment planning, etc.
Walking Score API: http://www.walkscore.com/professional/api.php
To be clear – I didn’t do this analysis, so I cannot take any credit for this. I found this because Zillow reports this as part of a property profile (my house has a walk score of 84). But the concept of a gap analysis has been around for a long time, and using raster rendering as well, but they did a very good job of it.
On a related note – it’s interesting how an entire website can be dedicated to the results of a single spatial analysis. So pick your favorite analysis (how about tree canopy anyone), do it nationally, then monetize it!