2013 was another exciting year for Walk Score. We expanded our network to over 30,000 real estate sites across which we're now delivering over 13 million scores per day for addresses throughout the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

As a team, we continue to be committed to helping renters and home buyers find great places to live because we believe walkable neighborhoods with access to public transit, shorter commutes, and proximity to the people and places you love are the key to a happier, healthier, more sustainable lifestyle.

More Data for More Markets

In 2013, we advanced the breadth, depth and accuracy of our data that is available for any address in the U.S., Canada and Australia as well as at the the neighborhood, zip code and city level. Key milestones include:

• 2014 ranking of Most Walkable Cities and Neighborhoods and updated Street Smart algorithm.
• First Walk Score neighborhood and city rankings in Canada and Australia.
• Transit Score and Bike Score are now available for any address in hundreds of the largest U.S. cities.
• New Travel Time API including rush hour drive times and map visualizations for web and mobile apps.
• New ChoiceMaps that make it easier to understand the difference, for example, between very walkable neighborhoods such as our own Capitol Hill where the average resident can walk to 21 restaurants, bars and coffee shops in 5 minutes and Mid-Town Manhattan where it's 142!
• New Neighborhood Crime Reports that provide a more accurate view of crime and safety by weighting crimes by severity and normalizing the data by how many people live and work in a neighborhood.

And I'd be remiss if I forgot to thank the thousands of people who help to keep our data up to date every day and who add photos and descriptions of the neighborhood places they love to help others make smart and informed decisions about where to live.

Independent Validation

Having walkability ratings available for any address across the U.S., Canada and Australia is not only great for real estate, it's great for research and, in 2013, we're proud to have once again had the opportunity to partner with leading academic researchers studying the financial and health outcomes associated with walkability. A couple recent examples:

• Just last month, Fannie Mae published a study by University of Arizona Professor, Gary Pivo, showing that "where Walk Score is 80 or more the relative risk of default is 60% lower than where Walk Score is less than 80."
• The August edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine included two peer reviewed articles using Walk Score data. We love this video summarizing one of these studies and showcasing how Walk Score data helps make research more efficient.
• See more research using Walk Score data.

Kudos!

Finally, it's always nice to be recognized for your work and contributions. So, thank you to GeekWire for nominating Walk Score for App of the Year, to Inman News for once again recognizing our co-founder Matt Lerner as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Real Estate, and to Transportation Choices for naming Walk Score to their Hall of Fame.

Over the past half dozen years we've helped to lead the way in educating consumers and the real estate market about the benefits of walkable neighborhoods and, in 2013, we were excited to see demand for walkable places continue to grow and increasing investment from key stakeholders including real estate developers, city governments and the health care community.

Here's to helping more people find great, walkable places to live in 2014!

To view the original post, visit the Walk Score blog.