In this quick SimplyMap report, we use Census data to help us identify which city in the United States has the highest percentage of residents who reported walking to work as their mode of transportation. Have any cities in mind? Let’s find out!

First, click New Ranking from the top of your SimplyMap screen.

For the variable, follow this path: Census Data » People and Households » Employment » Travel to Work » Mode.

The variable we are looking for is, “% Employment, Walked to Work, 2014”. Picture below for reference.

Click on the Locations panel and select USA as your geography. By default, your report will generate with the Analyze Data By dropdown set to USA. As a good reference point, the USA shows a total of 2.78% of residents who walk to work. Before we analyze the US by city, let’s take a quick look at the US analyzed by top 10 states:

DC coming in with the highest percentage of residents who walk to work, at 12.27%, does not seem too surprising given the relative small land area and highly dense population (over 10,000 people per square mile!). Ranked second, Alaska was surprising to us, and we would be interested in researching more about that - if you know why, feel free to leave a comment below.

Now let’s look at large cities. Switch the Analyze Data By dropdown to Cities and apply a filter to only show cities with a population greater than 100,000. Results are shown below:

At 26.37%, more than a quarter of Cambridge, MA residents walk to work! We think this might be due to Harvard and MIT being the top employers in the city and within such close proximity to each other.

Honorable mention, and rounding out the top 5:

Berkeley - 17.97%
Boston - 15.45%
Ann Arbor - 14.93%
Provo - 13.66%

That’s it for this week’s SimplyMap report. If there is a particular variable or data package you want to see more of, let us know in the comments below or send us an email or tweet.