Is Charleroi walkable?

This page covers greater Charleroi: 243,000 people, including Châtelet and Farciennes.

54/100Typical walking score where people live. It mixes the walk to eight daily needs with how pleasant the streets are.
60%Charleroi is better than this share of places where people live, across the 20 countries on the map.
9thBy typical score, of the 10 cities in Belgium on this site.

In Charleroi, 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 Ville-Basse (score 75) and hardest in Goutroux (score 37): a gap of 38 points.

The walk to eight daily needs

The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Charleroi 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
Groceries8 minBetter than most95%
Food and drink8 minAbout typical95%
Shops8 minAbout typical92%
Health9 minBetter than most92%
School6 minBetter than most98%
Parks6 minAbout typical94%
Culture14 minAbout typical70%
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 1,833,331 street cells in Belgium from hardest to easiest to walk, then cut the list into five equal groups, called fifths. In Charleroi, 53% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.

Share of the street cells in Charleroi in each fifth. The dashed line marks 20%, the share every fifth has in Belgium.
Fifth of the street cells in BelgiumBarCharleroi
Most walkable fifth
53%
Second fifth
30%
Middle fifth
9%
Fourth fifth
6%
Least walkable fifth
3%

The city at a glance

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Each of the 2,457 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 Charleroi 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 25 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 Charleroi 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 Belgium.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
7597%
7193%
6783%
6268%
6172%

Least walkable

Letters A to E on the map.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
370%
3716%
392%
4217%
4433%

Cities like Charleroi

These three cities come closest to Charleroi in number of people and typical score, from any of the 20 countries. Charleroi scores higher than 1 of them and lower than 2.

CityCountryPeopleTypical score
Milton KeynesUnited Kingdom268,00054
BarnsleyUnited Kingdom244,00053
ErfurtGermany219,00054

What this page covers

This page uses the area Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, calls greater Charleroi: the city and the towns that have grown into it. Besides Charleroi itself, it takes in Châtelet, Farciennes, Couillet, Gilly, Gosselies, Marcinelle and smaller places. About 243,000 people live there (2025 figure). Inside it we scored 12,248 street cells with 220,291 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.