A report released on Tuesday by the Brookings institution ranks the country's 30 largest metropolitan areas in terms of their "walkability" per capita. The Washington D.C. metro area came in at number one, thanks to many improvements over the past 15 years. Cleveland took the 29th spot, better only than Tampa, Florida.

Christopher B. Leinberger, a real estate developer and visiting fellow at Brookings, set out to quantify walkability by counting the number of "regional-serving walkabout urban places" in each of the 30 biggest metropolitan areas in the country. "Regional-serving" meant that the place was not just a bedroom community, but has jobs, retail or cultural institutions that bring in people who don't live there.

Leinberger counted 157 "walkable places", including the Houston, Texas area's Sugar Land Town Square; Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts; and Coconut Grove in Miami, Florida. Tampa, Florida was the only metro area that didn't get a single "walkable place" added to his list.

The New York area had by far the highest number of walkable urban places, and most of the 21 places Leinberger listed are neighborhoods in Manhattan. The Washington DC region, however, had 20 walkable places, but outranked NYC on a per-capita basis. It has one walkable place for every 264,000 people, and Leinberger believes it could serve as a national model.

WALKABILITY RANKINGS

1. Washington
2. Boston, Massachusetts
3. San Francisco, California
4. Denver, Colorado
5. Portland, Oregon
6. Seattle, Washington
7. Chicago, Illinois
8. Miami, Florida
9. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
10. New York
11. San Diego, California
12. Los Angeles, California
13. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
14. Atlanta, Georgia
15. Baltimore, Maryland
16. St. Louis, Missouri
17. Minneapolis, Minnesota
18. Detroit, Michigan
19. Columbus, Ohio
20. Las Vegas, Nevada
21. Houston, Texas
22. San Antonio, Texas
23. Kansas City, Missouri
24. Orlando, Florida
25. Dallas, Texas
26. Phoenix, Arizona
27. Sacramento, California
28. Cincinnati, Ohio
29. Cleveland, Ohio
30. Tampa, Florida