In Messina, the walk to public transport is the strong point: 2 minutes for the typical building, much better than most of Europe. The walk to culture is the weak point: most buildings have none within 20 minutes. Walking is easiest in Torre Vittoria (score 66) and hardest in Mortelle (score 30): a gap of 36 points.
The walk to eight daily needs
The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Messina 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.
| Need | Typical walk | Compared with Europe | Buildings with one within 20 min |
|---|---|---|---|
| Groceries | 9 min | About typical | 73% |
| Food and drink | 8 min | About typical | 78% |
| Shops | 7 min | About typical | 79% |
| Health | 8 min | Better than most | 79% |
| School | 10 min | About typical | 64% |
| Parks | 9 min | Worse than most | 74% |
| Culture | over 20 min | Nothing within 20 minutes for most buildings | 42% |
| Public transport | 2 min | Much better than most | 99% |
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 13,208,252 street cells in Italy from hardest to easiest to walk, then cut the list into five equal groups, called fifths. In Messina, 30% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.
| Fifth of the street cells in Italy | Bar | Messina |
|---|---|---|
| Most walkable fifth | 30% | |
| Second fifth | 21% | |
| Middle fifth | 20% | |
| Fourth fifth | 16% | |
| Least walkable fifth | 13% |
The city at a glance
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 7 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 Messina as a whole, so ports, hill parks and farmland drop out. Click a name to open it on the map.
Most walkable
| Area | Typical score | In the top fifth |
|---|---|---|
| 66 | 85% | |
| 60 | 96% | |
| 41 | 60% |
Cities like Messina
These three cities come closest to Messina in number of people and typical score, from any of the 20 countries. Messina scores higher than 2 of them and lower than 1.
| City | Country | People | Typical score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Västerås | Sweden | 161,000 | 42 |
| Uppsala | Sweden | 248,000 | 44 |
| Jyväskylä | Finland | 149,000 | 42 |
What this page covers
This page uses the boundary of Messina as Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, draws it. About 217,000 people live there (2025 figure). Inside it we scored 11,791 street cells with 19,354 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.