Coverage analysis
What 15 minutes on foot covers in New York.
New York is the only US market where drive-time analysis is often the wrong tool — but where it's used, the bridge-and-tunnel geometry creates the most extreme isochrone distortions in the country. Reachable area can vary by 5x depending on time of day and which crossing you route through.
At 15 minutes on foot, the New York walk-time isochrone captures the standard walk shed — the standard walk shed used in transit planning and urban design — where trips are intentional but still comfortably on foot. Unlike a simple ≈ 1.2 km radius circle, the real pedestrian-network polygon follows New York's actual street grid, accounts for crossings, parks, and dedicated walk paths, and contracts sharply around freeways, rail corridors, and waterways that break pedestrian continuity.
Walk-shed area at 15 minutes: ≈ 1.0–3.0 km² — larger in grid cities, compressed by barriers and dead-ends. The 15-minute isochrone is the standard input for transit-oriented development studies, 15-minute city planning, and urban retail site selection.
The city-level population of 8,336,817 and a median household income of $70,663 give a sense of New York's density, but the figure that matters for walkable-retail siting is the population inside the pedestrian polygon — not the city as a whole. That number shifts dramatically depending on whether you're anchored in a high-density urban core or a lower-density neighbourhood where blocks are long and crossings are scarce. Use the tool above to set your actual candidate address, then generate the isochrone to see the real walk shed.