Amid Seattle growth debate, map shows walkable neighborhoods in King County

Nat Henry made a walkability map of Seattle last year because he loved living on Capitol Hill, near coffee shops, parks, transit stops and other amenities. He said he wanted to know where else he could thrive without driving.

Turns out a lot of other people were wondering the same, and not just in Seattle.

They flooded Henry with so many compliments and questions after he posted the map on social media that he left his spatial analysis job at a University of Washington-based research institute to start his own data geography consulting firm.

That decision yielded results last week when Henry launched “Close,” an interactive tool that strives to illustrate walking, biking and transit travel times from every block in the U.S. to destinations such as supermarkets and libraries.

Like Henry’s Seattle map, the new map nods at an urban planning concept called the “15-minute city,” which says everyone should be able to meet their basic needs by walking or biking no more than 15 minutes from home.

“When I released the Seattle map, the response was just overwhelming,” said Henry, who heard about homebuyers and city planners using his work. “I got the sense there was something there, beyond the scope of a personal project.”

Henry’s national map uses public data to include 3.2 million destinations across 7.9 million blocks. Whereas his Seattle map measured walkability only, the new map measures walking, biking and transit travel. The new version also has more destination types, including schools, playgrounds, bars, restaurants, bookstores, gyms and even dentists, Henry noted.

It’s attracting eyeballs. An April 5 post about the tool has been viewed more than 750,000 times on the social platform X.

“There’s this enormous pent-up demand for walkable neighborhoods,” said Henry, 31, who hopes Close will enhance conversations in communities such as Seattle, where officials are working on an updated 20-year growth plan.

The city’s revised plan will likely bring more apartments and businesses to some areas, though the details are under debate. Proponents of 15-minute neighborhoods say they can promote healthy living, social cohesion and equitable access to resources while cutting down on car traffic and pollution.

“Having a visual way to talk about that helps us realize we can create these neighborhoods,” Henry said, calling his work “a jumping off point.”

When using Henry’s new map, blocks close to amenities show up as blue or green, while blocks far away are red or gray. You can search for or move to a particular community, zoom in and out, and toggle between amenities to see how a particular neighborhood is served. The map stretches past Seattle to the Eastside, Eastern Washington and beyond, so you can check out walkable pockets in suburbs like Redmond and small towns like Walla Walla.

“Sometimes there’s this idea that you have to be in a big city to live in a walkable neighborhood,” but that’s not quite true, Henry said.

The map is free to use, though Henry thinks he may at some point add paid features. It isn’t perfect. Once Henry published it, he almost immediately started getting messages about missing parks and stores. He couldn’t double-check every single destination, like he did for Seattle. But he’s still happy with the national version, considering how much more ground it covers.

“Building this kind of map would not have been possible even a year ago,” because more data has become available and accessible, said Henry, who moved here in 2016 and is focused on health and urban geography.

The map’s travel times use conservative speed estimates and account for hills. They don’t account for whether a route has sidewalks, because that data is lacking, Henry said. Deciding what should count as a supermarket versus a convenience store was a challenge.

Henry wants to use the map’s data to explore issues such as economic and community health, imagining that could lead to consulting work. He also plans to add destinations and make fixes as he collects input from users.

“I’m hoping it can be a collaborative exercise,” he said.