Is Alkmaar walkable?

This page covers greater Alkmaar: 227,000 people, including Heerhugowaard.

60/100Typical walking score where people live. It mixes the walk to eight daily needs with how pleasant the streets are.

69%Alkmaar is better than this share of places where people live, across the 20 countries on the map.

27thBy typical score, of the 31 cities in the Netherlands on this site.

In Alkmaar, the walk to a park is the strong point: 2 minutes for the typical building, much better than most of Europe. The walk to a place to eat is the weak point: 8 minutes for the typical building, about typical for Europe. Walking is easiest in Centrum (score 80) and hardest in Schermerhorn (score 33): a gap of 47 points.

The walk to eight daily needs

The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Alkmaar 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	7 min	Better than most	94%
Food and drink	8 min	About typical	94%
Shops	6 min	About typical	96%
Health	8 min	Better than most	91%
School	6 min	Better than most	94%
Parks	2 min	Much better than most	98%
Culture	8 min	Better than most	93%
Public transport	4 min	Better than most	98%

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 1,931,104 street cells in the Netherlands from hardest to easiest to walk, then cut the list into five equal groups, called fifths. In Alkmaar, 35% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.

Share of the street cells in Alkmaar in each fifth. The dashed line marks 20%, the share every fifth has in the Netherlands.
Fifth of the street cells in the Netherlands	Bar	Alkmaar
Most walkable fifth		35%
Second fifth		22%
Middle fifth		12%
Fourth fifth		13%
Least walkable fifth		18%

The city at a glance

Each of the 2,504 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 Alkmaar 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 21 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 Alkmaar 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 the Netherlands.
Area	Typical score	In the top fifth
Centrum	80	100%
De Mare	70	68%
Zuid	69	92%
Oudorp	69	62%
Overdie	68	52%

Least walkable

Letters A to E on the map.
Area	Typical score	In the top fifth
Schermerhorn	33	0%
West-Graftdijk	33	0%
Rijk der duizend eilanden (Dijk en Waard)	34	13%
De Noord (Dijk en Waard)	42	0%
Broekhorn (Dijk en Waard)	43	20%

Cities like Alkmaar

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

City	Country	People	Typical score
Aberdeen	United Kingdom	228,000	60
Cannes-Antibes	France	245,000	60
Bergamo	Italy	253,000	60

What this page covers

This page uses the area Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, calls greater Alkmaar: the city and the towns that have grown into it. Besides Alkmaar itself, it takes in Heerhugowaard. About 227,000 people live there (2024 figure). Inside it we scored 11,228 street cells with 123,100 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.