Is Exeter walkable?

This page covers Exeter: 130,000 people, including Topsham.

62/100Typical walking score where people live. It mixes the walk to eight daily needs with how pleasant the streets are.
73%Exeter is better than this share of places where people live, across the 20 countries on the map.
33rdBy typical score, of the 105 cities in the United Kingdom on this site.

In Exeter, the walk to public transport is the strong point: 2 minutes for the typical building, much better than most of Europe. Its weakest point against Europe is the walk to culture, and even that is 10 minutes for the typical building, better than most of Europe. Walking is easiest in Newtown (score 78) and hardest in Pennsylvania (score 46): a gap of 32 points.

The walk to eight daily needs

The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Exeter have a shorter walk, and half have a longer one. The words compare it with every place where people live in the 20 countries on the map, so the same minutes get the same word everywhere.

NeedTypical walkCompared with EuropeBuildings with one within 20 min
Groceries5 minBetter than most100%
Food and drink5 minBetter than most99%
Shops5 minBetter than most99%
Health7 minBetter than most98%
School6 minBetter than most100%
Parks3 minBetter than most100%
Culture10 minBetter than most91%
Public transport2 minMuch better than most100%

Compared with the rest of the country

The map is cut into six-sided cells 55 m across, and every cell that a street passes through gets a score: we call these street cells. We sort all 8,553,993 street cells in Great Britain (the United Kingdom without Northern Ireland, which the map scores together with Ireland) from hardest to easiest to walk, then cut the list into five equal groups, called fifths. In Exeter, 82% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.

Share of the street cells in Exeter in each fifth. The dashed line marks 20%, the share every fifth has in Great Britain.
Fifth of the street cells in Great BritainBarExeter
Most walkable fifth
82%
Second fifth
13%
Middle fifth
3%
Fourth fifth
2%
Least walkable fifth
1%

The city at a glance

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Each of the 1,362 hexagons groups the street cells within about 110 m of its centre and takes the shade of their middle fifth. The line is the boundary this page uses.
See Exeter on the map

On the map, click any street to see its score and the walk to each need.

The most and least walkable areas

Each street cell takes the name of the nearest neighbourhood, village or town on OpenStreetMap, up to 1.5 km away. We rank the 10 areas where people live: each has at least 200 street cells and 500 buildings, and at least a quarter as many buildings per street cell as Exeter as a whole, so ports, hill parks and farmland drop out. Click a name to open it on the map.

Even Pennsylvania, the least walkable area here, has 57% of its street cells in the most walkable fifth in Great Britain. Exeter walks far better than most of the country, so even its weakest areas beat most other places.

Most walkable

Numbers 1 to 5 on the map. In the top fifth: share of the area’s street cells in the most walkable fifth in Great Britain.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
78100%
7799%
65100%
6596%
5681%

Least walkable

Letters A to E on the map.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
4657%
5096%
5156%
5156%
5281%

Cities like Exeter

These three cities come closest to Exeter in number of people and typical score, from any of the 20 countries. All three score higher than Exeter.

CityCountryPeopleTypical score
LeeuwardenNetherlands129,00063
PforzheimGermany135,00063
WürzburgGermany133,00063

What this page covers

This page uses the boundary of Exeter as Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, draws it. Besides Exeter itself, it takes in Topsham. About 130,000 people live there (2018 figure). Inside it we scored 4,693 street cells with 40,996 buildings in them.

Every number here comes from the same scores as the map. The score runs from 0 to 100. The walk to eight daily needs on real streets makes up 60% of it, and how pleasant the streets are makes up 40%. The comparison with Europe counts every place by its buildings, 163,668,724 buildings in all. How the score works.