The way to your own places
Add your office, a school or your parents' home. You will see how long each takes on foot, by metro, by car and by bicycle.
Where to live in Moscow and beyond: check the address before you sign
Where to live in Moscow often comes down to the walk to a grocery, a school, a clinic and the metro. Living Score times it and scores it from 0 to 100.
Free, no sign-up. Sample report
Most errands on foot 13 Tverskaya Street, Moscow
- Magnoliya4 min
- Chekhovskaya6 min
- Park or garden6 min
How it works
What lies within a walk of a real address, place by place.
You type an address, we find it on the map.
13 Tverskaya Street, Moscow
Found on the map55.7612, 37.6081
- Score Each part of daily life gets 0 to 100, and together they make one score.
- Nearby The markers are real places, the nearest of each kind. The tint shows how far you get on foot.
- List Tap a place and the map shows the way there.
Most errands on foot
What lowers it here Air −5.5
Strongest: Public transport and Services nearby. Weakest: Pets.
The markers are real places, the nearest of each kind. The tint shows how far you get on foot.
- 5 minutes on foot78 places
- 10 minutes on foot464 places
- 15 minutes on foot1,175 places
Tap a place and the map shows the way there.
No place is selected.
13 Tverskaya Street, Moscow
Nearest places 85
Groceries
Services nearby
Public transport
Education and children
Health
Parks and sport
Cafes and culture
Bikes and shared cars
Remote work
Pets
What a map alone will not tell you
A map shows what is nearby. The report tells you whether it works for you.
What matters to you weighs more
Give more weight to what matters and mark what you cannot do without. The score changes at once, and the link keeps your settings.
94.7what is in reach−5.5what lowers it=89.2score
What takes points away
A main road under the window or dirty air costs points. The report names each cause and shows it on the map.
How minutes turn into points
We count minutes along real streets. A hill, a long wait at a crossing and a walk beside a highway make the way longer.
How far the door really reaches
The areas you can walk to from 13 Tverskaya Street, Moscow in 5, 10 and 15 minutes, along its streets. The dashed circle is what a ruler on the map would promise.
- 5 minutes on foot
- 10 minutes on foot
- 15 minutes on foot
- 15 minutes as the crow flies
Five minutes is full value
A grocery within 5 minutes of the door counts in full. Further out its value falls, slowly at first, and at 20 minutes it counts for nothing.
A railway doubles a short walk
Around 13 Tverskaya Street, Moscow a walk is on average 1.36 times the straight line. Where tracks or a six-lane road lie between you and the shop, you walk to the crossing first.
- 4.1 km of major roads
- 2.6 km of stairs
- 449 closed passages
What the score is made of
Each part has its own 0 to 100: the fewer minutes on foot, the higher. The percentages are its weight in the General profile.
Public transport
The lines you can reach on foot. A metro line counts for three bus lines, a frequent line for more than a rare one.
18% of the score
Parks and sport
A park, a forest, a sports ground, benches. A beach or the sea within a walk counts like a park; a lake or a river bank adds points.
14% of the score
Street network
How direct the streets are, and what the walks lose to slopes, waits at wide roads and traffic alongside.
14% of the score
Services nearby
A pharmacy, a bank or a cash machine, the post and parcel lockers, a hairdresser or a repair shop, a shopping centre.
13% of the score
Education and children
Kindergartens, schools, playgrounds, classes. With a child it is a walk made twice a day.
10% of the score
Groceries
A supermarket or a grocery shop, a bakery, a greengrocer, a market. What you buy every few days.
9% of the score
Health
A clinic, a dentist, a hospital. Rarely needed, badly missed when far.
9% of the score
Cafes and culture
Cafes, restaurants, a cinema, a museum, a library. Places you go to for no errand at all.
8% of the score
Bikes and shared cars
Cycle lanes and tracks nearby, the ride to the city centre, bike share and parking, chargers and shared cars.
3% of the score
Remote work
A coworking space, or a cafe and a library where you can sit with a laptop.
1% of the score
Pets
A dog park, a vet, a pet shop.
1% of the score
What lowers the score
Noise, dirty air and industry nearby take up to 20 points
Shown, but kept out of the score
These are mapped unevenly from country to country, or modelled too coarsely for one street. So the report states them as facts.
- Greenery
- The share of the surroundings covered by parks, forest and grass.
- Step-free access
- Step-free places, lowered kerbs, tactile paving and stairs on the way.
- Lighting and night
- Lit streets and places open through the night.
- Climate
- Hot days, frost and rain over the last full year.
- Relief
- Height above sea level and how steep the streets are.
What lowers the score
Noise, dirty air and industry next door take up to 20 points. Here is what they cost 13 Tverskaya Street, Moscow.
94.7what is in reach−5.5what lowers it=89.2score
The yearly average of fine particles and nitrogen dioxide against the WHO guideline, up to 8 points. The worse of the two counts.
Takes 5.5 of at most 20.
One address, six ways of living at it
A family needs a school, life without a car needs the metro. Choose who it is for and the weights change.
What you get for an address
The report for 13 Tverskaya Street, Moscow. Behind every number are the places it came from.
13 Tverskaya Street, Moscow
Most errands on foot
What is missing
- Bike share−0.7
- Kindergarten−0.7
- Forest and open nature−0.6
- Hospital−0.5
Cities
One address in each city, scored the same way.
Moscow
53 Arbat Street, Moscow · Arbat
Most errands on foot
Saint Petersburg
26-28 Kamennoostrovsky Avenue, Saint Petersburg · Petrogradskaya Storona
Most errands on foot
Kazan
18 Kremlyovskaya Street, Kazan · Vakhitovsky
Most errands on foot
Yekaterinburg
51 Lenin Avenue, Yekaterinburg · Centre
Everything on foot
Novosibirsk
36 Krasny Avenue, Novosibirsk · Tsentralny
Most errands on foot
Sochi
9 Navaginskaya Street, Sochi · Tsentralny
Most errands on foot
Questions
Is Moscow a good place to live?
For daily life it is a convenient city: the metro is dense and frequent, shops and pharmacies stay open late, and most residential districts have schools and clinics among the apartment buildings. The drawbacks are scale, traffic noise and long winters. How well it works depends heavily on the building, so score the address you were sent.
Is Moscow walkable?
Inside the Garden Ring, yes, and many residential districts are walkable for errands close to home. Between them lie wide avenues, underpasses and railway lines, so two addresses a few hundred meters apart can have very different walks. The score follows walking routes along real streets and counts those barriers in minutes.
Is Moscow safe at night?
Crime is outside the score, so Living Score cannot answer this for an address. Central streets stay busy and lit late into the evening, and the metro runs until about one in the morning. What the report does show is the walk home from the station: its length, the underpasses and the stretches along a main road.
Is St Petersburg, Russia, a good place to live?
It suits people who want a smaller city than Moscow with a level, walkable center full of culture. The costs are a damp, windy climate, dark winters, few parks in the old center and a metro with stations far apart. Check the walk to the station and to a green space for each address.
How do you rent an apartment in Russia?
Most apartments are advertised on Russian-language listing sites, by owners or through agents, who commonly charge a commission. Expect a written contract and a deposit along with the first month. A foreign tenant also has to be registered at the address, which needs the owner's cooperation, so raise it before you agree. Score the address before the viewing so you know what the listing leaves out.
Is Russia a good place to live for Americans?
That depends on visas, work and personal circumstances this service does not cover. On the everyday side, life in the large cities is apartment living with public transport, and many people manage without a car. Having shops, a clinic and transport within a short walk matters more than it might at home, because English is rare outside central Moscow and St Petersburg.
More on choosing a place to live
Choosing between listings from a distance
Living in Moscow as a foreigner usually starts with choosing from another country, from listings in Russian and with little feel for the street. Two apartments near Belorusskaya can have very different walks: one reaches the station through a courtyard, the other has to go round the railway. If you plan to rent an apartment in Moscow long term, check each address before the viewing.
Add up to three places of your own, such as an office in Moscow City or a school in Khamovniki, and the report shows the walk to each and, where it is too far to walk, whether one metro or bus line connects the two ends. Then pick a profile: general, family with a child, without a car, older person, remote worker or pet owner. You can move the weights yourself and mark what you will not live without. The settings travel in the link, so a partner sees the same view.
When the shortlist is down to a few, put two to five addresses side by side. At that stage a Moscow walk score for each building tells them apart better than any district average.
How Russian cities work on foot
Most people in Russian cities live in apartment buildings, and districts built from the 1960s onwards were laid out as microdistricts: a group of buildings with its own school, kindergarten, clinic and shops. A plain outer district can be easier for errands than a grand central street.
The barriers are what a newcomer misses. Leninsky Prospekt and Kutuzovsky Prospekt are eight to ten lanes wide and crossed by underpass, so a shop facing your building may be a longer walk than it looks. Railway lines run from the central terminals out to the suburbs and split districts in two. Winter is long, and a route that is fine in June is slower on ice and in the dark.
Living in Russia as a foreigner adds one more thing. Little English is spoken outside the centers of the two largest cities, so having the food shop, the pharmacy and the clinic close to home counts for more than it would where you can ask your way around.
Reading Moscow by its rings
Moscow is built in rings, and they are the quickest way to get your bearings in the city. Inside the Garden Ring you get old streets, theaters and short walks, along with traffic noise and few large food shops. Between the Garden Ring and the Third Ring the housing is mixed and metro stations are close together. Beyond that the buildings are bigger, the parks larger and the distances between things grow, until the MKAD ring road closes the city off.
What the number is built from
We count minutes, not meters. Each walk follows real streets and paths and is priced the way it feels: your pace, the hill, the wait at a wide road, a stretch beside heavy traffic. Anything within about five minutes counts in full, and the value fades to nothing by fifteen to twenty minutes.
Ten categories go in: daily shopping and services, public transport, schools and childcare, health, parks and sport, the street network itself, cafes and culture, bikes and shared cars, places to work with a laptop, and pets. The nearest grocery earns the most; a tenth cafe earns nothing. An embankment on the Moskva or the Neva within a walk adds to the parks category, and an address with no water nearby loses nothing for it.
Noise and air take points away. A highway, a railway or an industrial zone close to the building, and air worse than the World Health Organization guideline, can lower the score by up to twenty points. The report names the road and the distance.
Where the data comes from
Streets and places come from OpenStreetMap, which volunteers keep up to date, so a shop that opened last month may be missing. The report says how detailed the map is around the address, and where it is thin the score is shown as an at-least figure.
The full report opens at once and needs no account.