{"doi":"10.1111/jrh.12895","title":"Is Walk Score a useful tool for measuring walkability in rural communities?","abstract":"How often Americans exercise, especially through walking, is strongly connected to the built environments in which they live.1 Numerous studies over two decades report residents walking more when their communities are judged more walkable, either by objective measures or through residents’ own perceptions.2, 3 However, the majority of these studies have focused on urban areas.2, 3 Researchers who wish to investigate the connection between walking and walkability in rural settings can use validated surveys to record subjective perceptions, but a popular objective measure, the Walk Score, appears not to be useful at all. The importance of researching physical activity in rural environments is clear. Rural residents are disproportionately affected by chronic diseases and conditions including obesity, which are strongly associated with inactivity.4 Rural residents are less physically active than urban dwellers and walk less often.5 Despite the assumption that rural communities have easy access to open spaces and trails, research shows this not to be true.6 Walk Score is a commonly used measure of objectively assessing walkability in communities. It is a public, free, web-based tool that is available through most of the world.7 A search in PubMed with the search terms “walkscore” and “walk score” revealed 191 papers that had used the tool, with 160 of these occurring since 2015. While many of these studies are conducted in high-density urban areas, others are done nationally.8 Walk Score measures walkability using a patented system that is not entirely transparent.7 A street address receives a score based on walking routes to nearby amenities, which include grocery stores, shopping destinations, restaurants, schools, parks, movie theaters, pharmacies, libraries, and so on. Shorter routes receive more points than longer ones: a 5-minute walk gets maximum points and a 30-minute walk or greater gets no points. Population density, block length, and intersection density also count toward the score. The drawback of using this methodology in rural settings is that it fails to account for walking without a destination to an amenity. A rural address located more than a 30-minute walk from amenities, for example, may receive a Walk Score of zero, despite being located on a road with low traffic volume and wide sidewalks—characteristics that contribute to ideal walking conditions. This disparity of amenities shows up in a study that found rural residents reported low numbers of destinations within walking distance, such as shopping (19.2%), transit stops (4.6%), or movies, libraries, and churches (17.7%). Relaxing destinations (e.g., parks, water, other green spaces), however, were reported more often.9 One study in rural communities in the southeastern United States found walking trips were frequently to neighbors’ homes and bodies of water rather than typical destinations.10 In Spain, a study found intersections and population density predicted walking to school in urban environments, but it was regulated crossings, positive streetscapes, and crossing quality that predicted the same in rural communities.11 In our current study, we examined perceived walkability and walking behavior with 313 individuals across 18 rural communities in Oregon.12 We found no relationship between Walk Score and self-reported walking in the community. However, we did find significant positive relationships between perceived walkability, social norms for walking, and walking in the community.13 True walkability, or how easy or hard it is to walk in a community, is a multifactorial assessment measured both objectively and subjectively with only moderate concordance between the two.14 Objective measures of walkability have typically been developed in urban areas and focus on utilitarian aspects of walking (ie, intersection density, land use mix, dwelling density, and net retail area). Objective measures typically focus on either active transportation or recreation a","journal":"The Journal of Rural Health","year":2024,"id":469757,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9541,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1112075,"name":"Cynthia K. Perry","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":372244,"name":"Rebecca A. Seguin‐Fowler","orcid":"0000-0002-5115-2341","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1303835,"name":"Nathan F. Diekman","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1114601,"name":"Jessica Currier","orcid":"0000-0002-2683-7912","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1303396,"name":"Jim Winkle","orcid":"0000-0002-4557-2235","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1303397,"name":"Noah Lenstra","orcid":"0000-0001-7613-066X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1065928,"name":"Heather Franklin","orcid":"0000-0002-4256-3579","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":546923,"name":"Jay E. Maddock","orcid":"0000-0002-1119-0300","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":19,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:05:32.241298Z","pmid":"39520249","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}