Is Leeuwarden walkable?

This page covers Leeuwarden: 129,000 people, including Stiens.

Deze pagina in het Nederlands

63/100Typical walking score where people live. It mixes the walk to eight daily needs with how pleasant the streets are.
74%Leeuwarden is better than this share of places where people live, across the 20 countries on the map.
24thBy typical score, of the 31 cities in the Netherlands on this site.

In Leeuwarden, 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 public transport, and even that is 4 minutes for the typical building, better than most of Europe. Walking is easiest in Bilgaard (score 74) and hardest in De Hemrik (score 35): a gap of 39 points.

The walk to eight daily needs

The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Leeuwarden 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
Groceries6 minBetter than most86%
Food and drink6 minBetter than most93%
Shops5 minBetter than most88%
Health9 minBetter than most80%
School5 minBetter than most93%
Parks2 minMuch better than most98%
Culture6 minMuch better than most89%
Public transport4 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 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 Leeuwarden, 22% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, close to the 20% of an average place.

Share of the street cells in Leeuwarden in each fifth. The dashed line marks 20%, the share every fifth has in the Netherlands.
Fifth of the street cells in the NetherlandsBarLeeuwarden
Most walkable fifth
22%
Second fifth
23%
Middle fifth
13%
Fourth fifth
17%
Least walkable fifth
26%

The city at a glance

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Each of the 2,497 hexagons groups the street cells within about 167 m of its centre and takes the shade of their middle fifth. The line is the boundary this page uses.
See Leeuwarden 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 Leeuwarden 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.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
7473%
6437%
6235%
6247%
5947%

Least walkable

Letters A to E on the map.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
353%
350%
4410%
440%
440%

Cities like Leeuwarden

These three cities come closest to Leeuwarden in number of people and typical score, from any of the 20 countries. Leeuwarden scores higher than all three.

CityCountryPeopleTypical score
WürzburgGermany133,00063
PforzheimGermany135,00063
ExeterUnited Kingdom130,00062

What this page covers

This page uses the boundary of Leeuwarden as Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, draws it. Besides Leeuwarden itself, it takes in Stiens. About 129,000 people live there (2024 figure). Inside it we scored 11,986 street cells with 85,423 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.