Is Sunderland walkable?

This page covers Sunderland: 277,000 people, including Hetton-le-Hole and Houghton-le-Spring.

53/100Typical walking score where people live. It mixes the walk to eight daily needs with how pleasant the streets are.
59%Sunderland is better than this share of places where people live, across the 20 countries on the map.
79thBy typical score, of the 105 cities in the United Kingdom on this site.

In Sunderland, the walk to public transport is the strong point: 2 minutes for the typical building, better than most of Europe. The walk to a park is the weak point: 6 minutes for the typical building, about typical for Europe. Walking is easiest in Concord (score 71) and hardest in Hall Farm (score 38): a gap of 33 points.

The walk to eight daily needs

The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Sunderland 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
Groceries7 minBetter than most98%
Food and drink6 minBetter than most99%
Shops6 minBetter than most98%
Health10 minAbout typical91%
School7 minBetter than most99%
Parks6 minAbout typical98%
Culture14 minAbout typical78%
Public transport2 minBetter 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 Sunderland, 61% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.

Share of the street cells in Sunderland in each fifth. The dashed line marks 20%, the share every fifth has in Great Britain.
Fifth of the street cells in Great BritainBarSunderland
Most walkable fifth
61%
Second fifth
27%
Middle fifth
6%
Fourth fifth
5%
Least walkable fifth
1%

The city at a glance

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Each of the 2,331 hexagons groups the street cells within about 145 m of its centre and takes the shade of their middle fifth. The line is the boundary this page uses.
See Sunderland 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 Sunderland as a whole, so ports, hill parks and farmland drop out. Click a name to open it on the map.

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
7186%
6670%
6593%
6066%
5559%

Least walkable

Letters A to E on the map.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
3818%
4318%
5165%
5445%
5571%

Cities like Sunderland

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

CityCountryPeopleTypical score
WalsallUnited Kingdom282,00054
Milton KeynesUnited Kingdom268,00054
TrondheimNorway287,00054

What this page covers

This page uses the boundary of Sunderland as Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, draws it. Besides Sunderland itself, it takes in Hetton-le-Hole, Houghton-le-Spring and Washington. About 277,000 people live there (2018 figure). Inside it we scored 12,396 street cells with 44,957 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.