VIDEO - Walkable neighborhoods

We had some fun with Walkscore.com, typing in various addresses and coming up with a rating on walkability.

For example, Colin Mattiace's condo in Printer's Row earned a 95/100 score that rated the neighborhood a "walker's paradise." My own neighborhood in Naperville (a little over a mile from downtown) earned a puny 34/100, but the mapping software didn't seem to know about the grocery store, restaurant, bank, shops and church only three blocks away. And it gave me no credit for having a bus stop a block away to get to the train station.

The apartments at the Glen Town Center, a new community on the old Glenview Naval Air Station, ranked 72/100, "very walkable," which is pretty good, but developers of the new, master-planned community, who worked hard to make the community traditional and walkable, may think it deserves a higher score.

As with any Web-based software, Walkscore.com has its limits. If you live two blocks from a grocery store, Walkscore thinks it is walkable, even if there is a lake or a superhighway in between you and your destination.

And it is limited to what it knows about your neighborhood from various Web sources. Since it is based in Seattle, it has the Northwest down pretty well, and seems to have a good handle on Printer's Row. But other areas are less filled in. Users can add missing destinations to try to beef up their own neighborhood's score.

Perhaps one of the site's biggest drawbacks right now is that it does not take into account access to public transportation. For "green" folk and those who push for walkability, public transportation is key.

A note from one of the site's spokespeople said they are working on fixing that.