Is Marseille walkable?

This page covers greater Marseille: 973,000 people, including Aubagne and Allauch.

68/100Typical walking score where people live. It mixes the walk to eight daily needs with how pleasant the streets are.
81%Marseille is better than this share of places where people live, across the 20 countries on the map.
20thBy typical score, of the 45 cities in France on this site.

In Marseille, the walk to health care is the strong point: 4 minutes for the typical building, much better than most of Europe. The walk to a park is the weak point: 5 minutes for the typical building, about typical for Europe. Walking is easiest in Sainte-Marguerite (score 78) and hardest in La Treille (score 28): a gap of 50 points.

The walk to eight daily needs

The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Marseille 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
Groceries4 minMuch better than most98%
Food and drink4 minBetter than most98%
Shops4 minBetter than most98%
Health4 minMuch better than most97%
School4 minMuch better than most98%
Parks5 minAbout typical97%
Culture7 minBetter than most93%
Public transport2 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 25,659,091 street cells in France from hardest to easiest to walk, then cut the list into five equal groups, called fifths. In Marseille, 60% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.

Share of the street cells in Marseille in each fifth. The dashed line marks 20%, the share every fifth has in France.
Fifth of the street cells in FranceBarMarseille
Most walkable fifth
60%
Second fifth
5%
Middle fifth
5%
Fourth fifth
6%
Least walkable fifth
23%

The city at a glance

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Each of the 2,150 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 Marseille 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 48 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 Marseille 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 France.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
78100%
7848%
7569%
7574%
73100%

Least walkable

Letters A to E on the map.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
2813%
3010%
3633%
4260%
4261%

Cities like Marseille

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

CityCountryPeopleTypical score
BordeauxFrance746,00068
CologneGermany1.0 million70
RotterdamNetherlands1.3 million66

What this page covers

This page uses the area Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, calls greater Marseille: the city and the towns that have grown into it. Besides Marseille itself, it takes in Aubagne, Allauch and Plan-de-Cuques. About 973,000 people live there (2023 figure). Inside it we scored 30,497 street cells with 315,002 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.