👉 Your next practice location can be your quiet growth engine. Choose a walkable site and you boost access, attendance, and long-term value—without adding a single new service.
🪧 Over a decade advising medical owners on site selection taught me this: the ground beneath your clinic matters as much as the gear inside it.
What is your walk score?
Walk Score rates how easy it is to do daily errands on foot from any address, awarding more points for closer essentials across categories. It’s a patented widely used system with a simple 0–100 scale—handy for apples-to-apples comparisons of potential sites. (Walk Score)
Australia also has a robust, local lens: the Australian Urban Observatory (AUO) Walkability Index. It combines street connectivity, dwelling density, and access to daily-living services to map walkability across our major cities. Pairing Walk Score with AUO gives you both an address-level and neighbourhood-structure view. (Australian Urban Observatory)
The business case: walkability pays
The link between walkability and commercial real estate value is not just urbanist folklore. A large US study of 4,200+ office, retail and apartment properties found that every 10-point lift in walkability was associated with 1–9% higher values, plus lower cap rates and higher incomes. Translation: the market rewards foot-friendly locations. (James Taylor Chair)
If you treat that relationship linearly (illustrative, not a promise), an 80-score site could command a materially higher value than a 20-score site. Even if you land at the conservative end of the range, that’s real money over a 5–10-year lease horizon—and it shows up in rental expectations, incentives, and exit options.
Australia-specific tools like the AUO don’t publish price premiums, but their methodology helps you judge whether patients can and will walk—an input your bank manager will quietly appreciate. (Australian Urban Observatory)
Patient access with an economic upside
Walkable locations don’t just make it easier for patients to show up—they make your asset more resilient. Australian research has linked higher walkability with stronger property values, especially where everyday amenities cluster around homes and services. Translation: clinics people can easily get to easily tend to hold their value better through market cycles. (University of Canberra Research Portal)
That preference shows up in consumer demand, not just models. The Heart Foundation’s national research reports Australians want to live locally in walkable neighbourhoods, with easy access to services—exactly the lifestyle drivers that draw young professionals, small families and downsizers to amenity-rich areas with clinics embedded in them. When you site a practice in that mix, you’re riding a demographic tailwind rather than fighting it. (Heart Foundation)
Put simply: a walkable address broadens your catchment to people who choose convenience (professionals), people who need it (families, older adults) and people who value amenity even when budgets tighten (downsizers). That diversified demand helps stabilise bookings and sustain desirability—the essence of long-term ROI in a jittery market. If you can only optimise one location variable, make it walkability. (victoriawalks.org.au)
Recent experiences: two sites, one better ROI
A client of ours recently client short-listed two northern-suburb properties:
- Site A: Walk Score 35 (errands spread out, car-first street pattern).
- Site B: Walk Score 78 (shops, services, crossings, frequent buses).
We analyzed traffic data and modelled travel modes, recall cadence, and parking capacity. Our projection showed a ~7% drop in no-show rates at Site B, driven by easier on-foot and public-transport access and a more resilient catchment less dependent on car ownership. That 7% wasn’t just “nice”—it steadied weekly billings, reduced rebooking churn, and justified the modest rent premium.
Strategic advantages you actually feel
💡 Fewer DNAs → smoother cashflow.
When clinics are easy to reach by foot or bus, attendance improves and your days run on time. (Transport access ↔ missed appointments is well-documented.) (Urban Institute)
💡 Lower parking overheads.
Smaller carparks, fewer staff stipends, less “I circled for 10 minutes” grief.
💡 A broader, steadier patient mix.
Walkable, transit-served clinics are easier for seniors, students and lower-income households—priority populations highlighted in Australia’s oral-health policy work. (AIHW)
💡 Planning harmony.
Foot-friendly proposals align with contemporary urban and public-health goals—often a calmer path to permits.
💡 Asset resilience.
Walkable sites have historically held value better across cycles. You’ll feel that when renegotiating, expanding, or selling. (James Taylor Chair)
The bottom line
Walkability isn’t a feel-good extra. It’s a practical lever for attendance, equity, and asset value—and it compounds. In a market where cost keeps too many Australians from timely dental care, removing the other frictions (distance, parking, awkward crossings) is one of the kindest, most profitable choices you can make. (AIHW)
If you’d like support, I can deliver a Walkability ROI Report for your shortlist:
Side-by-side Walk Score & AUO with a one-page verdict for partners.
Patient-mix forecast keyed to priority groups from national oral-health policy tracking.
No-show risk model grounded in transport-access evidence (not wishful thinking).
👉 No hype, just numbers and maps—served with a smile and the occasional cheeky graph.
References:
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2023). Patient Experiences Survey 2022-23
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2024, July 2). Built environment and health.
Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI). (2014). Downsizing amongst older Australians (Final Report No. 214).
Australian Urban Observatory (2022). Walkability Indicators and City Scorecards
City of Melbourne. (2014). Walking plan 2014–17 (pp. 1–10).
Cole, R., Dunn, P., Hunter, I., Owen, N., & Sugiyama, T. (2015). Walk Score and Australian adults’ home-based walking for transport. Health & Place, 35, 60-65
Crocombe, L.A., et al. (2023). Access to dental care barriers and poor clinical oral health in Australian regional populations. PMC
Grace, R., & Saberi, M. (2018). The value of accessibility in residential property. Proceedings of the Australasian Transport Research Forum.
Heart Foundation. (2020). What Australia wants: Living locally in walkable neighbourhoods.
Mazumdar, S., et al. (2016). Is Walk Score associated with hospital admissions from chronic diseases? Evidence from a cross-sectional study in a high socioeconomic status Australian city-state. BMJ Open, 6(12)
Pivo, G., & Fisher, J. D. (2011). The walkability premium in commercial real estate investments. Real Estate Economics, 39(2), 185–219.
Propertyology (2023). Will “walkable” suburbs outperform in the future? Property market analysis
SGS Economics & Planning. (n.d.). CBD pedestrian analysis (report).
University of Melbourne (2024). Australian cities failing on walkability. Pursuit
Victoria State Government—Department of Transport and Planning. (2025). 20-minute neighbourhoods (Plan Melbourne).
Walk Score. (n.d.). How Walk Score works.
