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:
