SAN ANTONIO, Texas — The AARP Livability Index tool looks at, quite literally, how livable a city is.
It breaks down seven categories that impact peoples' lives the most and make life the easiest in each community, including housing, transportation, the environment, neighborhood, engagement, health and opportunity. Each community gets a score out of 100.
San Antonio ranks almost in the middle, with a score of 49. That means San Antonio has some really great characteristics.
“You’ve got subsidized housing and multi-family housing options across the community,” said Rodney Harrell, the vice president of family, home and community for AARP. “So the idea that there’s a range of housing choices within the city and parts of the city are very compact, which allows people to do errands by foot and get to jobs faster.”
Yet, the score also shows there is room for these improvements in the city.
“For example, we’ve got lower air quality and pollution, which really is a measure of environmental quality that we track in the index and lower voter turnout rates,” Harrell said.
The newest feature includes tracking accessory dwelling units, which are backyard cottages, guest suites and in-law suites.
“It’s a way to bring in more housing options that could be more affordable,” Harrell said.
The Livability Index uses 50 national data sources such as the U.S. Census.
“The information we look at, it’s been out there, but it’s been hiding all over the internet and it would take hours to scour for it,” Harrell said. “What we’ve done is we’ve created this tool that puts it all in one place that you can get it with just a couple of clicks.”
You can look at San Antonio as a whole or really get detailed and look specifically at your neighborhood.
The hope is this information will help communities see where changes that have the most impact can be made.