Walkscore is a pretty nifty website that calculates how “walkable” your neighborhood is. On a scale of 0 to 100, I come out as an 88 – not really a surprise, given that we are in the middle of New York City (my office gets a 100, but most of the places I could walk to from there aren’t worth the trip). The 88 means that just about everything I need is within 7/10 of a mile of my house. Six or seven years ago, this would not have been the case – there was not a restaurant next door, a bar two blocks away, a bookstore within four blocks or a pharmacy within 10 blocks. It was still a walkable neighborhood, you just had to be a little more ambitious.

There are a few idiosyncrasies about the site (which is intended as a real estate marketing tool). For instance, the nearest movie theater to my house is the Riverside Dance Festival in East River Park, Manhattan. In fact, all of the “nearby” theaters are in Manhattan. Fair enough, but the site lists the walking distance for Riverside as 6/10 of a mile, which I’m pretty sure would require walking on water to be true. I took the bridge, it would be easily twice that distance. Also, some of the locations are just plain wrong – the site tells me that the nearest pharmacy is a Rite Aid on Metropolitan and Kent. (Its really referring to a Rite Aid on Metropolitan in Ridgewood, but for some reason.)

Strangest of all, though, is that the “walkability” score takes no account of public transportation. There are two bus lines within three blocks of me, and two subway lines within about 10 blocks, giving me walking access to all of New York City. Yet nowhere is public transit mentioned.

People in Williamsburg and Bushwick are, on average, more overweight and more obese than the citywide population. This has resulted in much snark on the interweb about skinny hipsters, but the problem is real, and likely tied in to the socioeconomic realities of our neighborhoods.

The report, “Keeping Track of New York City’s Children”, was prepared by the Citizen’s Committee for Children (an executive summary (pdf) is here). The picture it paints for north Brooklyn is not pretty – in just about every measure, our community districts come out in the bottom quartile. This is particularly true of the districts that comprise Bushwick and Bed-Stuy; Williamsurg and Greenpoint proper fare slightly better.

At least some of the blame lies with economics. According to City-Data.com, the median income the five north Brooklyn zip codes is barely half that of the comparable New York City figure. In order from low to high, the median household incomes (2005) are:

• 11206 (East Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy): $21,679
• 11221 (Bushwick and Bed-Stuy): $25,912
• 11237 (Bushwick): $26,840
• 11211 (Northside and Southside, some areas east of the BQE): $27,378
• 11222 (Greenpoint): $39,0081
• Kings County: $37,332
• NYC (all boroughs): $43,434

Those bottom three zip codes roughly correspond to the Bed-Stuy and Bushwick community districts tracked by CCC (its not a direct correlation, though). In the CCC study, these districts consistently fall in the lowest quartile for all measures of children’s health. Overall, the children in these districts are at the highest risk to their well being.

• 44% to 58% of children live below the poverty line
• 13% to 16% of adults have diabetes
• 22% to 26% of adults had no fruits or vegetables in the previous day
• 26% to 30% of adults are obese

As noted, Williamsburg (north) and Greenpoint fare slightly better. In terms of obesity, these northern community districts fall into the third quartile, at 22% to 26%. In the other measures noted above, these districts also generally fall into the third quartile.

All of north Brooklyn (all five zip codes) fall into the fourth quartile in terms of number of grocery stores and supermarkets per square mile.

Given all this, its no wonder that north Brooklyn has such high levels of obesity.

1. The difference between Greenpoint’s median income and the rest of north Brooklyn is striking.↩