Moving to a new city or a new neighborhood can involve a lot more than just finding the right house or apartment. What you do away from your living space and how those activities impact your well being are the focus of new maps from Trulia, the online real estate company.
The Live Well maps are comprised of three categories:
- Quiet Streets: A visual capture of low to high traffic volumes.
- Great Places to Play: An overview of parks, trails, indoor bounce houses and other similar facilities.
- Care & Essentials: A collection of data points on urgent care facilities, hospitals, etc.
According to a Trulia blog post, the company’s “geospatial and economics teams worked together to show home seekers where they can find amenities that will help them stay active and healthy.”
The Live Well maps coincides with Trulia’s Live Well index, which ranks neighborhoods in small, midsize and large cities across the United States. A score is derived from calculating which amenities from the categories above are most prevalent.
The best neighborhoods for living well in small metros (population less than 1 million people) are in Charlottesville, Va., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. San Francisco and New Orleans ranked best in midsized metros (population between 1 and 2 million people). San Diego and Los Angeles scored best in large metro areas.
The Sunset Hill section of Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood managed to make the top five neighborhoods for living well in large cities. The neighborhood situated above Golden Gardens Park and Shilshole Bay Marina was bested by Ocean Beach in San Diego and three Los Angeles neighborhoods: Plaza, Sunpark and Beverly Center.
Trulia points out that great neighborhoods all over the U.S. don’t make the Live Well list because they may perform really well in one category, like Quiet Streets, but fall short in available parks or medical facilities.
Read more on the Trulia blog for details about the cities/neighborhoods which scored best on the index as well as the methodology behind creating it.
