finding a walkable neighborhood

its starting to get really hot here, rising mercury doesn't sit well with my already weak resolve for going out for a run around the neighborhood, the gym still seems like a much nicer place to sweat out, fuel at more them $4 a gallon is still not prohibitive for the trip to the gym, at least for those of us who have been crying wolf for sometime and have prepared for this carnage by sticking with fuel efficient vehicle like toyota prius.

Though its uncomfortably hot for a walk out in the sun, one can still enjoy a late evening stroll, but then even that might pose a few problems for those who live in the suburbs.

With memories of San Francisco still fresh in my mind, wouldn't it be great to have more safe and affordable walkable neighborhoods here in northern Virginia, the ones I know off (old Town Alexandria, Reston Town center) are still too expensive for anything even half decent, but then thats just me, there may be many hidden gems scattered around this area which are just that, but since they are more designed to be walkable (one of the things that make a neighborhood more walkable is less traffic) so I might have not come across them during my regular commute (which is often in a vehicle).

Now to address this issue of finding walkable neighborhoods somebody came up with a nice idea for a website (at least the idea is quite appealing), what it does is it gives every neighborhood a score on a scale of 1 to 100, if the area you punch in has a score less then 25 then its not a walkable neighborhood, the 'walkability' rises with the score.

you can check it out here.