In urban design, walkability is the measure of the overall walking conditions in an area.Online TDM Encyclopedia chapter on pedestrian improvements The definition for walkability is: "The extent to which the built environment is friendly to the presence of people living, shopping, visiting, enjoying or spending time in an area". Factors affecting walkability include, but are not limited to: land use mix; street connectivity; residential density (residential units per area of residential use); "transparency" which includes amount of glass in windows and doors, as well as orientation and proximity of homes and buildings to watch over the street; plenty of places to go to near the majority of homes; placemaking, street designs that work for people, not just cars and retail floor area ratio. Major infrastructural factors include access to mass transit, presence and quality walkways, buffers to moving traffic (planter strips, on-street parking or bike lanes) and pedestrian crossings, aesthetics, nearby local destinations, air quality, shade or sun in appropriate seasons, street furniture, traffic volume and speed. . and wind conditions. One of the best ways to quickly determine how walkable a block, corridor or neighborhood is is to count the number of people walking, lingering and enjoying a space. The diversity of people, and especially the presence of children, seniors and people with disabilities, denotes the quality, competeness and wholesomeness of a walkable space.

Walkability indices

Technological advances such as data mashups have led to the first large-scale, public-access walkability index, walkscore.com. "When you enter an address at walkscore.com," according to the Washington Post, "a Google map appears, studded with blue icons representing nearby restaurants, stores, schools and parks. A list at the left identifies the mapped destinations and their distance from your starting point." In addition to the map, the website provides a "walk score," or walkability index, between 0 and 100. Scores above 90 indicate excellent walkability, whereas isolated addresses with no destination in walking range receive scores 25 and lower. At present, the index represents chiefly U.S. locations, but is developing global capability.

The New Zealand government agency for Land based Transport, Transport New Zealand, has commissioned research and developed its own methodology and tools for assessing walkability. The method is based on the concept of level of service, which is commonly used by transport planners. The walkability tools that have been developed in New Zealand store information collected during a community street review and produce level of service values for a study area usually consisting of a series of road path lengths and road crossings within a small area. According to the website levelofservice.com, "A Community Street Review is a new survey technique where a Community Street Audit is combined with a numerical rating system." The website also provides a simplified level of service calculator for anyone to undertake a community street review and produce level of service calculations from it.