Is Rennes walkable?

This page covers greater Rennes: 284,000 people, including Cesson-Sévigné and Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande.

74/100Typical walking score where people live. It mixes the walk to eight daily needs with how pleasant the streets are.
90%Rennes is better than this share of places where people live, across the 20 countries on the map.
2ndBy typical score, of the 45 cities in France on this site.

In Rennes, the walk to health care is the strong point: 4 minutes for the typical building, much better than most of Europe. Its weakest point against Europe is the walk to public transport, and even that is 3 minutes for the typical building, better than most of Europe. Walking is easiest in Les Lices (score 86) and hardest in Champs Blancs in Cesson-Sévigné (score 35): a gap of 51 points.

The walk to eight daily needs

The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Rennes 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 most96%
Food and drink4 minBetter than most98%
Shops4 minBetter than most98%
Health4 minMuch better than most96%
School4 minMuch better than most96%
Parks3 minMuch better than most97%
Culture6 minMuch better than most93%
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 25,659,091 street cells in France from hardest to easiest to walk, then cut the list into five equal groups, called fifths. In Rennes, 81% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.

Share of the street cells in Rennes in each fifth. The dashed line marks 20%, the share every fifth has in France.
Fifth of the street cells in FranceBarRennes
Most walkable fifth
81%
Second fifth
6%
Middle fifth
5%
Fourth fifth
5%
Least walkable fifth
3%

The city at a glance

12345ABCDE
Each of the 2,162 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 Rennes 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 15 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 Rennes as a whole, so ports, hill parks and farmland drop out. Click a name to open it on the map.

Even Champs Blancs in Cesson-Sévigné, the least walkable area here, has 60% of its street cells in the most walkable fifth in France. Rennes 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 France.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
86100%
81100%
7899%
7797%
75100%

Least walkable

Letters A to E on the map.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
3560%
4970%
5475%
5997%
6399%

Cities like Rennes

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

CityCountryPeopleTypical score
GhentBelgium273,00075
MannheimGermany318,00074
HaarlemNetherlands288,00073

What this page covers

This page uses the area Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, calls greater Rennes: the city and the towns that have grown into it. Besides Rennes itself, it takes in Cesson-Sévigné, Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande, Chantepie and Saint-Grégoire. About 284,000 people live there (2023 figure). Inside it we scored 10,990 street cells with 61,550 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.