Is Málaga walkable?

This page covers Málaga: 592,000 people.

66/100Typical walking score where people live. It mixes the walk to eight daily needs with how pleasant the streets are.
78%Málaga is better than this share of places where people live, across the 20 countries on the map.
24thBy typical score, of the 36 cities in Spain on this site.

In Málaga, the walk to a park 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 a place to eat, and even that is 5 minutes for the typical building, better than most of Europe. Walking is easiest in Soho (score 87) and hardest in Cortijo de Maza-El Olivar (score 38): a gap of 49 points.

The walk to eight daily needs

The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Málaga 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 most85%
Food and drink5 minBetter than most89%
Shops4 minBetter than most87%
Health4 minMuch better than most86%
School4 minMuch better than most88%
Parks2 minMuch better than most92%
Culture6 minMuch better than most84%
Public transport3 minBetter than most94%

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 16,714,737 street cells in Spain from hardest to easiest to walk, then cut the list into five equal groups, called fifths. In Málaga, 38% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.

Share of the street cells in Málaga in each fifth. The dashed line marks 20%, the share every fifth has in Spain.
Fifth of the street cells in SpainBarMálaga
Most walkable fifth
38%
Second fifth
11%
Middle fifth
10%
Fourth fifth
5%
Least walkable fifth
36%

The city at a glance

1234ABCD
Each of the 2,395 hexagons groups the street cells within about 254 m of its centre and takes the shade of their middle fifth. The line is the boundary this page uses.
See Málaga 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 8 areas where people live: each has at least 200 street cells and 160 buildings, and at least a quarter as many buildings per street cell as Málaga as a whole, so ports, hill parks and farmland drop out. Click a name to open it on the map.

Even Cortijo de Maza-El Olivar, the least walkable area here, has 82% of its street cells in the most walkable fifth in Spain. Málaga 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 Spain.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
87100%
8299%
77100%
6588%

Least walkable

Letters A to E on the map.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
3882%
4611%
5676%
5966%

Cities like Málaga

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

CityCountryPeopleTypical score
GenoaItaly564,00066
LeipzigGermany612,00065
NurembergGermany530,00067

What this page covers

This page uses the boundary of Málaga as Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, draws it. About 592,000 people live there (2024 figure). Inside it we scored 28,518 street cells with 64,987 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.