How NearbyIndex walkability scores are calculated

What the score answers

For any address or coordinate, NearbyIndex answers a single question: how convenient is this location for daily life on foot? We don't score aesthetics, safety, schools' quality, or property values. We score the density and proximity of the everyday amenities that determine whether you need a car for groceries, dinner, the doctor, or a park.

The eight categories

Every score is built from eight category sub-scores. Each category looks at points of interest within a search radius around the location, weights closer amenities more than far ones, and produces a 0–100 sub-score. The categories are:

• Groceries — supermarkets and grocery stores
• Restaurants — restaurants, cafés, bars
• Education — schools, universities, libraries, kindergartens
• Parks — parks, playgrounds, sports and fitness facilities
• Transit — public transport stops and stations
• Healthcare — hospitals, clinics, pharmacies
• Shopping — general retail beyond groceries
• Entertainment — cinemas, museums, theatres, nightlife

The total score is a weighted blend of all eight. We deliberately keep the formula distance-based for the MVP — no travel-time routing yet, which means hilly terrain and one-way streets are not reflected in the score.

Where the data comes from

• Points of interest — Overture Maps Foundation (open data, refreshed quarterly). Categories are normalised into our internal taxonomy so the score is comparable across cities and countries.
• City list and populations — GeoNames (CC BY 4.0).
• Neighborhood boundaries — Overture Maps division_area dataset, used to label areas inside a city page's breakdown table.

How city pages are computed

For each city we publish, we sample a grid of points across the city's bounding box, score each one, and publish the distribution: median, percentile range, and the share of the city above thresholds (60 = walkable enough for daily errands, 80 = car-free realistic). This is why a city page shows a range like “65–82” rather than a single number — a city is rarely uniform.

How fresh the data is

Heatmap and city-stats data refresh on a weekly-to-monthly cadence per the priority cities list. The data source itself (Overture) refreshes quarterly. If you click a specific point on the map, we recompute that score live; if it's been cached recently, you'll get the cached value with the timestamp shown.

What the score does not capture

• Neighborhood safety or crime rates.
• School quality (we count schools, we don't rank them).
• Sidewalk quality, hilliness, weather, or how nice the walk feels.
• Travel time — only straight-line distance is used in the MVP.
• Property values, rents, or commute distance to a workplace.
• Local events, opening hours, or seasonal availability.

For these reasons, we treat the score as a useful starting filter, not a verdict. A 78 in one neighborhood and a 78 in another mean similar amenity density — they don't mean the two places are equivalent to live in.