Is Dublin walkable?

This page covers greater Dublin: 1.3 million people, including Tallaght and Blanchardstown.

61/100Typical walking score where people live. It mixes the walk to eight daily needs with how pleasant the streets are.
71%Dublin is better than this share of places where people live, across the 20 countries on the map.
2ndBy typical score, of the 2 cities in Ireland on this site.

In Dublin, the walk to health care is the strong point: 7 minutes for the typical building, better than most of Europe. Its weakest point against Europe is the walk to a place to eat, and even that is 6 minutes for the typical building, better than most of Europe. Walking is easiest in Temple Bar (score 84) and hardest in Kinsealey (score 35): a gap of 49 points.

The walk to eight daily needs

The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Dublin 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
Groceries6 minBetter than most97%
Food and drink6 minBetter than most98%
Shops6 minBetter than most98%
Health7 minBetter than most96%
School6 minBetter than most98%
Parks4 minBetter than most99%
Culture9 minBetter than most91%
Public transport3 minBetter than most99%

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 2,495,474 street cells on the island of Ireland (Ireland and Northern Ireland, which the map scores together) from hardest to easiest to walk, then cut the list into five equal groups, called fifths. In Dublin, 84% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.

Share of the street cells in Dublin in each fifth. The dashed line marks 20%, the share every fifth has on the island of Ireland.
Fifth of the street cells on the island of IrelandBarDublin
Most walkable fifth
84%
Second fifth
6%
Middle fifth
3%
Fourth fifth
3%
Least walkable fifth
3%

The city at a glance

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Each of the 2,307 hexagons groups the street cells within about 336 m of its centre and takes the shade of their middle fifth. The line is the boundary this page uses.
See Dublin 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 94 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 Dublin as a whole, so ports, hill parks and farmland drop out. Click a name to open it on the map.

Even Kinsealey, the least walkable area here, has 83% of its street cells in the most walkable fifth on the island of Ireland. Dublin 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 on the island of Ireland.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
84100%
80100%
80100%
76100%
74100%

Least walkable

Letters A to E on the map.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
3583%
3977%
4197%
4298%
4596%

Cities like Dublin

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

CityCountryPeopleTypical score
BirminghamUnited Kingdom1.1 million63
PortoPortugal1.0 million62
LeedsUnited Kingdom787,00063

What this page covers

This page uses the area Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, calls greater Dublin: the city and the towns that have grown into it. Besides Dublin itself, it takes in Tallaght, Blanchardstown, Clondalkin, Swords, Dún Laoghaire, Malahide and smaller places. About 1.3 million people live there (2016 figure). Inside it we scored 52,193 street cells with 507,151 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.