Within a 10-minute walk: what you can reach, explained simply
An ATM two streets away is still your ATM. 'Within a 10-minute walk' counts the hexes you can reach on foot within 10 minutes, along streets and paths - full weight under 3.5 min, 70% to 7 min, 40% to 10 min - so the map shows what you can actually reach. ATMs in London, hex by hex and then by walk.
Every MapBees hex - one hexagon on the map, about 350 m across (roughly 0.1 km²) - is small, a few minutes on foot. Count ATMs inside just that hex and 96 in every 100 London hexes read “none”, which is true and useless: nobody minds walking two streets for cash.
Within a 10-minute walk counts what you can actually get to. In London, the hexes you can reach on foot within 10 minutes, along streets and paths, count too - nearer ones counting more: full weight under 3.5 minutes, 70% from 3.5 to 7 minutes, 40% from 7 to 10 minutes. A shop across a river or a railway with no crossing nearby is not counted as close just because it looks close on the map. The field's term is distance decay over the street network: distance measured along the streets, with farther places weighing less.
Within a 10-minute walkthe field's term: Distance decay over the street network
Just this hex: ATMs counted inside each hex alone. A scatter of single hexes, and most of the city reads as none.Within a 10-minute walk: the same ATMs, counted over what each hex can reach on foot. Town centers such as Islington, Brixton, Ilford and Bromley show up as connected bright stretches.
How the walk is counted
The walk follows streets and paths, not a straight line, so its shape is lopsided: long along a high street, short where a railway or the Thames is in the way. Every place it reaches is counted by how many minutes away it is on foot. Places reached in under 3.5 minutes - the hex itself and the streets right around it - count in full. Places between 3.5 and 7 minutes count at 70%, and places between 7 and 10 minutes at 40%. That is the distance decay: an ATM next door matters more than one at the far end of the walk.
Hover the little hexagon picture next to 'Look at' and the app explains the idea in its own words: the hexes you can reach on foot in 10 minutes, along streets and paths, count too - full weight under 3.5 min, 70% to 7 min, 40% to 10 min.
ATMs within a 10-minute walk of one hex (illustrative numbers)
Under 3.5 min on footone ATM, in the hex itself
1 × 1.0 = 1.0
3.5–7 min on foottwo ATMs a few streets away
2 × 0.7 = 1.4
7–10 min on footthree ATMs near the edge of the walk
3 × 0.4 = 1.2
Within a 10-minute walk
1.0 + 1.4 + 1.2 = 3.6
The map colors each hex by this walk total. It is a number of ATMs' worth, nearer ones counting more, not a number of ATMs you could go and count - which is why the hex card further down shows the plain counts instead.
Switching it on
Every count of places has a Look at row - on the Amount, Variety, Fair share and Missing maps, on each factor of a Score, on each axis of Cross two, on the parts of Your formula and on each condition of Only where …. The default is “Just this hex”. Change it to “Within a 10-minute walk” and the map redraws; a Walk guide link appears under the row and opens this post.
Where to click
Map type
Amount
Atm
Look at: Within a 10-minute walk
The default: Just this hex, with the picture beside it grayed out.Within a 10-minute walk: the picture lights up, and the Walk guide link appears under the row.
The sentence under the badge now reads 'Atm, within a 10-minute walk' - the setting is part of the measure's name, so a shared link says it too.
Why it is missing for some measures
A walk counts the places you can reach. People, building volume and averages such as income are not things you walk to, and averages cannot be added up, so the row appears only for counts of places - shops, services, transit stops. Your data does not offer it yet either.
Why the Clusters map has no such row
The cluster test already reads each hex's neighbors. Adding a walk would count them twice, so on that map the row is not shown at all.
Reading the map
Just this hex: this hex has one ATM of its own.Within a 10-minute walk: the same hex reads 2 - its own ATM plus what the walk reaches, nearer ones counting more.
Just this hex: six bands from 0 to 5, and 96 in every 100 hexes have no ATM of their own.Within a 10-minute walk: ten bands from 0 to 7, and the share of hexes with none drops to 63 in every 100.
It changes the answer, not just the picture
Widening a question often fixes it. “ATMs per resident in this hex” is zero almost everywhere, because most hexes have no ATM; “ATMs per resident within a 10-minute walk” is a real number in far more of the city. The division still happens: the ATMs you can reach on foot, divided by the residents of the hex and the hexes around it. The two sides do not cover exactly the same ground - the top follows the streets, the bottom does not - so read it as how well the people around a hex are served, not as an exact count per person.
What a hex says about its walk
On a Score, hover a hex - or click it to open Hex details - and every factor read within a 10-minute walk gets its plain counts: how many are in the hex itself, how many a 10-minute walk reaches, and, when the hex has none of its own, how far on foot the nearest one is, as a band of minutes. Where most hexes have none of a factor, a Rare here line says so. The walk total the map ranks on is never printed there, because 3.6 ATMs' worth is not something anyone can go and count.
Hex details on a London Score. Transit stops: '0 in this hex · 8 within a 10-minute walk · nearest 3.5–7 min on foot', and 'Rare here: 7 in 10 hexes have none within a 10-minute walk.'
Where it does its best work
Most posts in this series lean on the walk without making a fuss of it. The Missing map reads grocery stores within a 10-minute walk so shortfalls become whole stores rather than fractions; the variety indices need a walk's worth of restaurants before “how mixed” means anything; Everyday needs asks how many of six everyday kinds of place a 10-minute walk reaches. The ready-made question Out of reach: pharmacies shows where people live with no pharmacy within a 10-minute walk, and Usually nearby reads what sits within a 10-minute walk of a kind of place. Any time a single hex is too small to hold the thing you are counting, the walk is the honest unit.
Places come from Overture Maps (release 2026-08-19); residents from the ONS Census 2021. A walk total is decision support, not a forecast: it says what is within reach on foot, not who will make the trip.
Within a 10-minute walk counts the hexes you can reach on foot within 10 minutes, along streets and paths - not a circle drawn on the map.
Nearer counts more: full weight under 3.5 min, 70% to 7 min, 40% to 10 min. That is a distance decay.
It is offered for counts of places only - not for people, building volume, averages or Your data - and the Clusters map leaves the row out, because it already reads the neighbors.
The map gets smoother: lone spikes dilute and real town centers show up as connected bright stretches along their streets.
On a Score, the hex card shows the plain counts behind a walk: in this hex, within a 10-minute walk, and the nearest one's minutes on foot.
It is part of the measure's name, so a shared link carries it and the badge says it.
Quick questions
What does 'Within a 10-minute walk' do?
Instead of counting only what is inside one hex, it also counts the hexes you can reach on foot within 10 minutes, along streets and paths, with nearer places counting more than farther ones.
Why do nearer places count more?
Because an ATM next door matters more than one at the far end of the walk. Places under 3.5 minutes away count in full, 3.5 to 7 minutes at 70%, and 7 to 10 minutes at 40% - a simple distance decay.
Why does the map look smoother?
Because every value is now a total over what a walk reaches rather than a single-hex count. Lone spikes are diluted and town centers show up as connected bright stretches - usually the truer picture of what people can reach.
Why is it unavailable for some measures?
A walk counts the places you can reach, so it is offered for counts of places - shops, services, transit stops - and not for people, building volume, averages such as income, or Your data.
Does 'Per 1 000 residents' still work within a 10-minute walk?
Yes. The places you can reach on foot are divided by the residents of the hex and the hexes around it, so read it as how well the people around a hex are served rather than an exact count per person.
See it on a real map
The best way to understand the score is to play with it. The full app is on a Free Tier, with no sales call.
Builds MapBees's location-intelligence pipeline end to end — census and Overture Maps ingestion, H3 hex scoring, and the map interface — and writes the methodology behind every number on the site.
