Site Ranks 'Walkability' of Del Rey, Playa del Rey

A nationwide survey by online "walkability" tracker Walk Score gave Del Rey a "Very Walkable" score of 74, while Playa del Rey earned a "Somewhat Walkable" score of 62.

The average score for the whole of Los Angeles was 66. The two most walkable areas among the 95 Los Angeles neighborhoods tracked in the survey were downtown and Koreatown. Terminal Island, a neighborhood near San Pedro, earned the lowest score of 11.

Del Rey had the same score as North Hollywood and Westwood, while Playa del Rey had the same rating as South Los Angeles, Cahuenga Pass and Cypress Park.

Cities are ranked on a scale of 0 to 100. The 2011 survey is Walk Score's first since 2008 and is designed to show how easy, or hard, it is to live a "car-lite" lifestyle.

The 372 largest cities in California had an average Walk Score of 50 and the most walkable city in the state was West Hollywood. New York City earned a score of 85 and was ranked as the most walkable place in the nation.

The survey used an algorithm that factors the distance to nearby amenities in various categories and employed neighborhood boundaries from Zillow.com. Walk Score weighted its scores by considering population density based on data from the 2010 Census.

Walk Score, a company that is based in Seattle, says its quantitative walkability-ranking study is the only one of its kind in the United States.