The most walkable cities in the U.S.

One simple way to "do the right thing" when it comes to living a sustainable lifestyle is use your car less, or to avoid having a car at all. As a resident of the great city of New York, I have lived happily for more than 20 years without driving. It's a lifestyle choice, but it works for me and gives me an automatic leg up to the high moral ground when it comes to guilt-free green living.

New York is famously walkable, of course, but so are lots of other cities. The Daily Green is reporting on the newest list of most walkable cities as calculated by Walk Score, a rather fascinating Web site that ranks 2,508 neighborhoods in the largest 40 U.S. cities to help you find a walkable place to live.

Walk Score has a real crush on San Francisco, although many commenters on the site -- as well as me -- consider that city more "hikable" than "walkable." Oy, those hills!

Walk Score has a detailed checklist that it uses to determine an area's walkability, and it creates color-coded maps to prove just how walkable a neighborhood is. The site hates suburbs and car-based urban environments such as Houston and its lowest ranker, Jacksonville, Florida.

On a related real estate note, SustainLane ranks cities by their overall sustainability. San Francisco doesn't win on this list, but it comes in second. Not bad.

Don Willmott's blog posts are provided by LifeWire, a part of The New York Times Company.