Seattle Named Most Walkable City in the U.S.
A new study puts Seattle at the top for car-free exploring
By Sarah Stackhouse July 31, 2025
A new study from flip-flop brand FitFlop just named Seattle the most walkable city in the country — and Travel + Leisure backed it up with a full write-up.
Using a matrix that compared the top five attractions in 30 U.S. cities, FitFlop measured walking distance, time, elevation gain, and total step count. It combined those results with each city’s Walk Score and declared Seattle the winner.
The study focused on five key stops — Pike Place Market, the Space Needle, Chihuly Garden and Glass, MoPOP, and the Washington State Ferries terminal — and found they were all within a 1.4-mile loop. You can see them all in about 32 minutes, covering roughly 3,360 steps.
Downtown, in particular, has seen a big bump in foot traffic this year. According to June data from the Downtown Seattle Association, more than 3.1 million unique visitors came through last month — 94% of the volume seen in June 2019. Worker foot traffic is up too, averaging 152,000 weekday visits, or about 66% of pre-pandemic levels. That’s the highest it’s been since early 2020. “The energy feels familiar, like what summers in downtown Seattle are supposed to feel like,” Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the DSA, recently told Axios Seattle.
June 2025 also saw the largest number of visitors to First & Pike since 2019 — 18,892 in total — as more people take advantage of the new pedestrian-only half-block stretch of Pike Street. That’s an 85% increase over June of last year.
The city’s walkable core is increasingly part of Seattle’s draw for tourists. Along with the study’s five landmarks, there’s the Overlook Walk, Olympic Sculpture Park, the newly reopened Pier 58, Seattle Aquarium’s new Ocean Pavilion, Seattle Art Museum, and Pioneer Square. Once you start walking, the options are endless. Add in the Burke-Gilman Trail and neighborhoods like Fremont, Wallingford, the U District, and more, open up.
As Travel + Leisure put it: “This walkable destination is ideal for first-time visitors.” For longtime residents, it’s just one more thing to love about our beautiful city.
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