Improve your car-free commute or daily dog-walking experience with mobile apps that help you find the best streets for strolling.

The free Web- and Android-friendly Walkonomics app ostensibly scores streets in eight categories — including how pretty, how steep, how dangerous, and even whether a sidewalk exists — based on open data from governments and ratings by app users.

Essentially, though, Walkonomics’s mobile, crowd-sourced cartography recognizes walking as a means and an end.

The streets between our Point As and Bs make up small stories written as we go, where wearing high heels or holding hands with a toddler, not just distance, can inform the journey. Tourists might look for the easily navigable streets; for joggers, streets with crosswalks; for everyone, streets with restaurants, parks, or stores.

Studying and facilitating walking is Walkonomics founder Adam Davies’s vocation. He blogs about walking’s effect on the environment, society and individuals, and vice versa. He tweets walking stats and stories almost daily.

To Davies, simply walking could solve so much. Purchasing has its power, but getting out the door is among the greenest things we can do.

“Things like rising fuel prices and the growing obesity crisis and Generation Y, my own age group, who long to live in urban areas and not have to own a car because it’s better for the environment … All of these different things feed into getting more people walking,” Davies said. “There’s no downside to making cities and streets more walkable.”

Swelling interest from the streets up could make walkability a high priority for local governments and businesses.

“Places like Los Angeles and Houston, some of those big, sprawling cities — as normal people abandon cars or hire cars like Zipcar, cities like that are going to have to change to attract people to live,” Davies said.

So far, Walkonomics covers every street in San Francisco, New York City, and all of England. Davies used “open data sets” — with info on streets’ cleanliness, for instance — released by governments in the past three years as well as app-users’ ratings. The latter could grow Walkonomics’s coverage exponentially.

“You can add a totally new street onto the system and start rating it yourself,” Davies said. “We’re still building the community. Once the crowd sourcing is working, it will be self-policing.”

Think eBay seller ratings, where mass feedback shapes appeal. With one out of five stars — do want to go down that road?

Davies expects Walkonomics for the iPhone to be available for download in a couple weeks. –Mackenzie Mount

This article appears courtesy of Sierra Magazine

Mackenzie Mount is an editorial intern at Sierra. She’s cleaned toilets at Yellowstone National Park and studied sustainable cooking at The Natural Epicurean Academy of Culinary Arts in Austin, Texas.

Top image: jessleecuizon

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Take Your Trips Outside the Car

I’m starting to think there really is no place like home. In his wonderful book, The Circumference of Home, Kurt Hoelting takes one year off planes, trains and automobiles in order to act on behalf of the planet, curbing his travel emissions and roaming-by foot, bike and kayak-his native turf. He writes: “The more I explore my home ground, the more it comes alive, and I have to put to rest the illusion that I am limiting myself by doing so. Everything we need to be happy really is near at hand.”

With that in mind, we at YDT have been thinking about how to stick close to home in eco-style this summer. Or, if we do trek farther, how to ditch the car once we’re in that new place, to wander without four wheels.

Here’s some inspiration:

Embody summer at home

At Make Grow Gather, Kelly Wilkinson has a “Lazy Summer Project” and attendant to do list. She doesn’t want to miss eating a ripe peach or star gazing this time around. She’s also featuring one post a week from someone describing their perfect summer day. With two so far, there is no mention of far-flung travels or automotives – more like homemade lemonade, hammocks and a morning spent reading in an NYC park (via new urban habitat).

Take a hike, don’t take the car

Escape Hatch at Readymade has clever resources for getting to hiking trails from a few major cities, without driving! Car-free Hiking feels like the perfect solution for enjoying the great outdoors and not smogging them up on your way there. If you’re in L.A. or otherwise not on the list, check metro or Google Maps’ transit option. And TrailLink might help you find a new knoll to trek.

For more car free travel options, check out the full-length article at Your Daily Thread.

Editor’s note: Article by Danielle Davis. Originally published by our friends at Your Daily Thread. Your Daily Thread has simple, everyday updates on living a green, active lifestyle. Be sure to visit them and say hi, and follow Your Daily Thread on Twitter, too!

Image: mikebaird

The post Get Outta Your Car and Into the Outdoors appeared first on EcoSalon.