The Healthy Streets Index

University College London (UCL) has released a new interactive map which rates London's streets based on how 'healthy' they are. The Healthy Streets Index ranks every single street in Central London based on ten different indicators. 

The map reveals that some London boroughs have a much higher proportion of healthy streets than other boroughs. According to the index Camden has some of London's healthiest streets. One in five of the borough's streets are in the top 5% of London's Healthy Streets Index. The borough of Hillingdon, on the other hand, has a lot of unhealthy streets. One in 14 of the borough's streets are in the bottom 5% of London streets.

The ten key indicators which have been used to determine the health of individual streets are designed to measure the appeal of streets for walking, cycling and spending time in. They measure environmental factors such as noise, air quality, the volume of road traffic, tree cover, accessibility to public transit and land use. The Healthy Streets Index interactive map visualizes the score given to each street using different colors. The roads colored red have a low index rank and green roads have a high index rank (there are alternate blue-yellow maps available as static downloads).

At the moment the Healthy Streets Index only has available an interactive map showing the health of London's streets. However UCL are currently working on adding maps of other UK and international cities to the Healthy Streets Index.