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Planning staff unveil Walkable SLC mapping tool to show access to essential amenities
Summary
Planning staff presented 'Walkable SLC,' an interactive mapping tool that overlays 15-minute walking sheds for 15 categories of amenities at parcel and block levels; commissioners discussed data sources, slope and street-network adjustments, and potential next steps.
Planning staff demonstrated Walkable SLC at the March 26 Salt Lake City Planning Commission meeting, presenting an interactive mapping tool that visualizes access to essential amenities across the city.
“Noah Elmore, associate planner, said Walkable SLC is a tool developed by planning staff to visualize walkability to essential amenities, such as grocery stores, parks, schools.” The presentation showed 15 amenity categories, 15-minute walk sheds for each amenity, overlay heat maps that count overlapping amenities, and both block- and parcel-level summaries showing how many amenity types are within a walk shed.
Staff said they used the city’s business license records rather than a third-party open-source dataset to compile amenity locations and then generated walk sheds tied to the city’s sidewalk, trail and on-street bike lane layers. The parcel-level view displays the number of amenity types reachable within 15 minutes and includes zoning and legal descriptions; the team also produced plan-area profiles comparing each plan area to the citywide average.
Presenters demonstrated the Sugar House and Avenues plan-area profiles, noting that Sugar House and the Avenues contained blocks with access to all 15 amenity types. Staff identified amenity “gaps” in parts of downtown (for hospitals) and in the Northwest plan area (healthcare, hospitals, pharmacies and recreation), which they said will inform upcoming plan updates and redevelopment work.
Commissioners and staff discussed technical limitations and possible improvements. One commissioner asked that the team consult Reid Ewing at the University of Utah to compare academic walkability indices with the tool’s outputs. Staff said the tool already accounts for slope when calculating walk sheds, and that city GIS experts are adding additional layers (for example, refined tree-canopy shapes and comfort metrics) over time. The tool’s data are updated periodically: dwelling-unit density is refreshed twice yearly after certificates of occupancy are recorded, and business-license data can lag when businesses fail to notify the city of closures.
Staff said Walkable SLC was initially funded with a $100,000 council appropriation but was produced largely in-house with city GIS staff, which staff characterized as a cost savings. Commissioners encouraged staff to make the methodology transparent and welcomed the possibility of making more layers available publicly while protecting sensitive infrastructure layers.
No action was required; the presentation concluded with staff saying they intend to continue developing the tool and to incorporate it into future project reports and plan updates.
