Here’s a neat little web app - the Walk Score - that generates a “walkability” score for an address. It calculates as-the-crow-flies distances to services, then uses the proximity and number of services to generate a score. The scores range from zero to 100, with higher scores being walkable, and lower score being automobile dependent.

How are we doing on creating walkable environments in Monroe County?
Very poorly.

For houses built in the past few years, the walkability scores are almost always in the single digits.

142 Fiddlers Hollow, Penfield, 14526

604 Wild Mallard Trail, Webster, 14580 Walkability: 0
4 Harvest Glen, Pittsford, 14534 Walkability: 5
35 Turning Leaf Drive, Pittsford, 14534 Walkability: 5
18 Cheshire Ridge, Victor, 14564 Walkability: 0
1 Travis Grove, Pittsford, 14534 Walkability: 6
38 Rollins Crossing, Pittsford, 14534 Walkability: 5
142 Fiddlers Hollow, Penfield, 14526 Walkability: 9
31 Settler’s Green, Pittsford, 14534 Walkability: 9
7955 Bramwell Park, Victor, 14564 Walkability: 0
46 Tellidora Trail, Ogden, 14559 Walkability: 2
103 High Stone Cir, Henrietta, 14534 Walkability: 9
302 Cherry Creek, Greece, 14626 Walkability: 8
12 Canton Meadow, Perinton, 14450 Walkability: 5

We continue to sprawl like crazy. The vast majority of new construction is being built waaaaay out in the boondocks, out past the sidewalks, out past the sewers, out past the electrical lines, out past anything to which residents can walk or ride bikes. Every single trip will be done by car, there’s zero transportation choice.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to suburbs. They’re mostly pretty darn good places to live. But this isn’t suburban development: it’s madness. We’ve spent the past 50 years building further and further away from the center, and we’re locking ourselves into a drive-everywhere future.

How did this happen? After WWII, we started working as hard as we could to make it possible for people to live the American Dream. And we succeeded. We succeeded beyond or wildest expectations, to the point that our cities are hollowed-out shells of their former selves. It’s particularly painful in a slow-growth area like Monroe County.

Conservatives and Libertarians would have you believe that this type of development is the result of a free market - the invisible hand of Adam Smith and all that. Don’t you believe it. Sprawl is the result of hundreds of government subsidies that work together to create an environment in which it’s very easy, and very profitable, for developers to build on green fields far away from the County’s center. Read the Sierra Club report How Your Taxes Fuel Suburban Sprawl.

The game is rigged.

It’s time to turn it around, time to eliminate government sprawl-subsidies and create smart-growth subsidies. Time to restore our cities and inner-ring suburbs. Time to revitalize Monroe County, and the City of Rochester, too. This isn’t rocket science. There are numerous communities that have successfully limited sprawl with outstanding results. The problem is not that we’re lacking knowledge; the problem is that our leaders are lacking political willpower.

I have a question for Ms. Brooks: What’s the County’s smart growth policy? What do the employees in the County’s Planning Department do all day, besides rubberstamp developments and draw pretty little Empire Zone boundaries?

This is the question that I emailed to dceditpage@DemocratandChronicle.com, on the off chance that Maggie Brooks will actually meet with the Editors, and the even more remote chance that they’ll ask her tough, reader-submitted questions.

You should mail your questions in, too. They asked nicely.

(Before you hammer me on method, I know full well that my little address lookup project isn’t scientifically valid. For one thing, it’s not a random sample. If you’re interested in disproving the null hypothesis, I encourage you to have at it yourself…)

Walk Score hat tip: ConkeyCliffordAlive Blog