It’s no secret that walking is good for your health and wellbeing. According to the BetterHealth channel, walking offers the following physical benefits:

increased cardiovascular and pulmonary (heart and lung) fitness

reduced risk of heart disease and stroke

improved management of conditions such as hypertension (high blood pressure), high cholesterol, joint and muscular pain or stiffness, and diabetes

stronger bones and improved balance

increased muscle strength and endurance

reduced body fat

In addition to physical health benefits, walking also provides several psychological benefits. According to one study, the more people walk each day, the more energetic they feel and the better their mood.

Perhaps the easiest way to incorporate more walking into your everyday life is to start walking to places, as opposed to driving. For example, if you live in an area where you can walk to the grocery store, library, park, coffee shop, and other places, it’s much easier to get your steps in without going out of your way.

Within Cincinnati, some neighborhoods are far more walkable than others. To measure just how walkable different neighborhoods are, we can turn to Walk Score, a site that ranks the walkability of neighborhoods on a scale of 0 to 100 based on how feasible it is to walk to nearby amenities.

Here is how Walk Score describes their scores:

Using this data, let’s check out how walkable different neighborhoods are in Cincinnati.

How Walkable are Cincinnati Neighborhoods?

A quick search for “Cincinnati” provides us with the following map that displays how walkable various neighborhoods are throughout the city:

The areas shaded in green indicate places where walk scores are high, while areas shaded in red indicate areas where walk scores are low.

It’s not too surprising to see that the places with the highest walk scores are located in downtown Cincinnati while areas on the outskirts of the city tend to have lower walk scores where it’s much less feasible to walk to places like grocery stores, libraries, and other amenities.

It’s interesting to see that there are pockets of highly walkable neighborhoods outside of downtown though, like Hyde Park, Oakley, and Madisonville.

To quantify just how walkable different parts of Cincy are, we can check out the Walk Score for 47 different neighborhoods throughout the city:

Rank Name Walk Score Population 1 Over-The-Rhine 93 6,262 2 Central Business District 93 5,586 3 West End 81 6,521 4 Mount Auburn 80 4,994 5 CUF 80 6,078 6 Corryville 80 3,370 7 The Heights 72 9,845 8 Walnut Hills 71 6,663 9 Northside 62 6,775 10 Oakley 61 10,063 11 Mount Adams 61 1,703 12 Clifton 58 9,286 13 Camp Washington 57 1,367 14 East Walnut HIlls 57 3,594 15 Hyde Park 56 12,457 16 East Price Hill 55 12,648 17 Avondale 53 7,863 18 Madisonville 52 10,630 19 Evanston 52 8,966 20 Pleasant Ridge 52 9,012 21 Carthage 52 3,470 22 Bond Hill 52 8,028 23 Roselawn 50 5,983 24 West Price Hill 45 19,504 25 Columbia-Tusculum 43 2,164 26 South Cumminsville 42 1,288 27 Lower Price Hill 42 618 28 Mount Lookout 41 6,082 29 Kennedy Heights 41 5,361 30 College Hill 40 14,237 31 Westwood 39 30,387 32 Winton Place 39 2,185 33 Hartwell 38 5,395 34 Mount Washington 36 11,559 35 North Avondale 35 6,811 36 East End 35 712 37 Paddock Hills 32 1,814 38 South Fairmont 31 3,335 39 Millvale 29 929 40 Linwood 27 963 41 English Woods 27 604 42 Mount Airy 23 8,951 43 North Fairmount 23 1,209 44 East Westwood 22 4,816 45 Sayler Park 21 3,170 46 Winton Hills 21 5,322 47 Riverside 9 1,888

The following chart displays these Walk Scores visually:

Next, the following chart shows the walk score relative to the population size of each neighborhood:

It’s interesting to see that there isn’t much of a relationship between population size and walk score. Just because a neighborhood is large or small doesn’t indicate whether or not it’s highly walkable.

Zooming in on the Highly Walkable Neighborhoods

Among the 47 neighborhoods, there are only eight that qualify as either a “Walker’s Paradise” or “Very Walkable” according to Walk Score.

Walker’s Paradise

According to Walk Score, a neighborhood that receives a score between 90 and 100 is considered to be a “Walker’s Paradise.”

There are only two neighborhoods in Cincinnati that meet this criteria:

Over-The-Rhine (93)

Central Business District (93)

Very Walkable

According to Walk Score, a neighborhood that receives a score between 70 and 89 is considered to be a “Walker’s Paradise.”

There are a total of six neighborhoods in Cincinnati that meet this criteria:

West End (81)

Mount Auburn (80)

CUF (80)

Corryville (80)

The Heights (72)

Walnut Hills (71) .

Locating the Highly Walkable Neighborhoods

The following map shows the location of the eight neighborhoods that are considered a Walker’s Paradise or Very Walkable:

