WalkablyIs Manchester walkable?
This page covers Manchester: 547,000 people, including Wythenshawe.
In Manchester, the walk to culture is the strong point: 6 minutes for the typical building, much better than most of Europe. Its weakest point against Europe is the walk to a park, and even that is 4 minutes for the typical building, better than most of Europe. Walking is easiest in City Centre (score 85) and hardest in Woodhouse Park (score 47): a gap of 38 points.
The walk to eight daily needs
The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Manchester 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.
| Need | Typical walk | Compared with Europe | Buildings with one within 20 min |
|---|---|---|---|
| Groceries | 4 min | Better than most | 100% |
| Food and drink | 4 min | Better than most | 100% |
| Shops | 4 min | Better than most | 100% |
| Health | 6 min | Better than most | 99% |
| School | 5 min | Better than most | 100% |
| Parks | 4 min | Better than most | 100% |
| Culture | 6 min | Much better than most | 99% |
| Public transport | 2 min | Better than most | 100% |
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 Manchester, 92% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.
| Fifth of the street cells in Great Britain | Bar | Manchester |
|---|---|---|
| Most walkable fifth | 92% | |
| Second fifth | 6% | |
| Middle fifth | 1% | |
| Fourth fifth | under 1% | |
| Least walkable fifth | under 1% |
The city at a glance
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 29 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 Manchester as a whole, so ports, hill parks and farmland drop out. Click a name to open it on the map.
Even Woodhouse Park, the least walkable area here, has 74% of its street cells in the most walkable fifth in Great Britain. Manchester walks far better than most of the country, so even its weakest areas beat most other places.
Most walkable
| Area | Typical score | In the top fifth |
|---|---|---|
| 85 | 100% | |
| 77 | 100% | |
| 77 | 100% | |
| 76 | 100% | |
| 76 | 100% |
Least walkable
| Area | Typical score | In the top fifth |
|---|---|---|
| 47 | 74% | |
| 49 | 93% | |
| 55 | 84% | |
| 55 | 94% | |
| 56 | 87% |
Cities like Manchester
These three cities come closest to Manchester in number of people and typical score, from any of the 20 countries. Manchester scores higher than 2 of them and lower than 1.
| City | Country | People | Typical score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hanover | Germany | 522,000 | 70 |
| Antwerp | Belgium | 554,000 | 69 |
| Nantes | France | 479,000 | 70 |
What this page covers
This page uses the boundary of Manchester as Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, draws it. Besides Manchester itself, it takes in Wythenshawe. About 547,000 people live there (2018 figure). Inside it we scored 13,082 street cells with 84,497 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.