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We measured how much walking it takes to reach 1,000 front doors in 1,000 residential neighborhoods across America’s 50 largest metro areas, and in 248 areas our customers asked us to cover. The answer ranges from a few miles to well over a hundred, and the reasons are spacing, dead ends and hills.
The short answer: reaching 1,000 front doors takes about 24 miles of walking in a typical residential neighborhood in a major U.S. metro, or about 8.0 hours at a steady 3 mph. The tightest tenth of neighborhoods need about 9.3 miles; the most spread-out tenth need about 83 miles. The same number of doors can be a short walk or a long day, and the difference is the neighborhood, not the walker.
The Doorstep Terrain Index is a measurement of how much walking a neighborhood demands for every door it contains. Randy Etheridge created it at Direct to Door Marketing, the door hanger and flyer distribution company he founded in 1995, to answer a question every route planner faces: why does one neighborhood of 1,000 homes take an afternoon while another takes two days?
The index looks at six things, all measured from public maps rather than from anyone’s stopwatch: how tightly homes are packed, how far apart front doors sit along the street, how many streets dead-end, how much climbing the streets involve, how rural the area is, and how much of the street network is private access. This study publishes the physical measurements behind the index so anyone can see the pattern.
The unit: miles of equivalent flat walking needed to reach 1,000 occupied homes.
No delivery records, job times or customer information were used to compute any measurement on this page.
Neighborhood type explains most of the difference. In dense urban neighborhoods, front doors sit about 52 feet apart and 1,000 doors take about 10.5 miles of walking. In older suburbs it is about 107 feet and 22 miles; in newer cul-de-sac suburbs about 106 feet and 21 miles. Exurban areas need about 44 miles.
| Neighborhood type | Areas measured | Miles per 1,000 doors (low / typical / high) | Modeled walking hours (typical) | Feet between doors (typical) | Dead ends per mile | Climb per 1,000 doors (ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dense urban | 234 | 3.8 / 10.5 / 21 | 3.5 | 52 | 6.4 | 309 |
| Older suburb | 263 | 14.1 / 22 / 34 | 7.2 | 107 | 6.2 | 772 |
| Newer cul-de-sac suburb | 166 | 15.1 / 21 / 31 | 7.1 | 106 | 6.9 | 740 |
| Exurban | 246 | 28 / 44 / 81 | 14.7 | 217 | 5.3 | 1,528 |
| Rural edge | 86 | 82 / 137 / 230 | 45.8 | 684 | 2.9 | 3,608 |
Neighborhood types are assigned from area-level traits only (household density, rural share, apartment share and the age of the housing), never from the walking measurements, so the pattern is a finding and not a definition.
Every dead-end street forces a route to walk out and back. Newer cul-de-sac suburbs have the most, about 6.9 dead ends per mile of street in the typical area, against 2.9 in rural-edge areas, where long rural roads rarely end in a court. Routes through courts and cul-de-sacs need careful planning so that no street is skipped and none is walked twice.
A flat map makes every mile look the same. In Pittsburgh, climbing accounts for about 11.9% of the walking effort in a typical neighborhood; in Miami it is about 0.9%. The hilliest metros in the sample:
We sampled 20 residential Census tracts at random in each of the 50 largest U.S. metro areas and ranked the metros by the typical walk per 1,000 doors.
| Rank (easiest first) | Metro | Miles per 1,000 doors (typical) | Modeled walking hours | Feet between doors | Climb share of the walk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 5.6 | 1.9 | 28 | 6.6% |
| 2 | Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 12.7 | 4.2 | 63 | 3.4% |
| 3 | Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 13.5 | 4.5 | 67 | 5.7% |
| 4 | San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | 13.6 | 4.5 | 62 | 11.3% |
| 5 | Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 14.4 | 4.8 | 69 | 11.8% |
| 6 | San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 15.1 | 5.0 | 71 | 8.7% |
| 7 | Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA | 16.5 | 5.5 | 85 | 2.3% |
| 8 | Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 16.6 | 5.5 | 86 | 1.5% |
| 9 | San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 17.1 | 5.7 | 87 | 2.9% |
| 10 | Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 17.3 | 5.8 | 90 | 0.9% |
| 11 | Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 18.6 | 6.2 | 96 | 1.6% |
| 12 | Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 19.3 | 6.4 | 96 | 5.1% |
| 13 | Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk, VA-NC | 19.5 | 6.5 | 102 | 1.5% |
| 14 | Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL | 19.6 | 6.5 | 102 | 2.0% |
| 15 | Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD | 19.7 | 6.6 | 94 | 8.1% |
| 16 | Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 21 | 7.0 | 107 | 3.5% |
| 17 | Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 21 | 7.1 | 104 | 7.5% |
| 18 | Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI | 22 | 7.3 | 114 | 1.8% |
| 19 | Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA | 22 | 7.5 | 105 | 7.8% |
| 20 | Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV | 22 | 7.5 | 111 | 5.2% |
| 21 | Cleveland, OH | 22 | 7.5 | 111 | 3.9% |
| 22 | Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN | 23 | 7.5 | 112 | 7.8% |
| 23 | Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 23 | 7.7 | 115 | 4.7% |
| 24 | Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 23 | 7.7 | 119 | 2.2% |
| 25 | Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX | 24 | 7.8 | 118 | 6.4% |
| 26 | Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 25 | 8.4 | 125 | 5.0% |
| 27 | Columbus, OH | 26 | 8.5 | 127 | 2.8% |
| 28 | Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT | 26 | 8.5 | 122 | 9.5% |
| 29 | Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 26 | 8.6 | 129 | 7.4% |
| 30 | Milwaukee-Waukesha, WI | 26 | 8.7 | 131 | 5.3% |
| 31 | San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX | 26 | 8.8 | 129 | 4.3% |
| 32 | Providence-Warwick, RI-MA | 26 | 8.8 | 135 | 5.7% |
| 33 | Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 27 | 9.0 | 136 | 5.4% |
| 34 | Salt Lake City-Murray, UT | 28 | 9.5 | 139 | 5.7% |
| 35 | St. Louis, MO-IL | 29 | 9.6 | 146 | 7.2% |
| 36 | Richmond, VA | 30 | 9.9 | 151 | 4.0% |
| 37 | Jacksonville, FL | 30 | 10.0 | 156 | 2.2% |
| 38 | Fresno, CA | 30 | 10.0 | 155 | 1.5% |
| 39 | Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, IN | 30 | 10.0 | 152 | 3.3% |
| 40 | Kansas City, MO-KS | 31 | 10.3 | 149 | 9.9% |
| 41 | Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN | 31 | 10.3 | 155 | 6.7% |
| 42 | Memphis, TN-MS-AR | 32 | 10.6 | 162 | 4.0% |
| 43 | Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC | 32 | 10.8 | 160 | 6.9% |
| 44 | Raleigh-Cary, NC | 33 | 10.9 | 159 | 8.5% |
| 45 | Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 33 | 11.1 | 152 | 9.9% |
| 46 | Oklahoma City, OK | 35 | 11.7 | 176 | 4.0% |
| 47 | Pittsburgh, PA | 38 | 12.6 | 172 | 11.9% |
| 48 | Grand Rapids-Wyoming-Kentwood, MI | 46 | 15.2 | 224 | 4.1% |
| 49 | Birmingham, AL | 60 | 19.9 | 274 | 8.0% |
| 50 | Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN | 65 | 21.8 | 321 | 5.7% |
Every quote is built around the exact neighborhoods you want to reach, and printing is included in the price. Draw your area in our free house count tool or talk to a campaign advisor.
We also measured 248 areas that businesses asked Direct to Door Marketing to cover. These are places owners actually chose to reach, so they lean toward suburbs and away from the very densest and most rural tracts. In the typical customer-chosen area, 1,000 doors take about 24 miles of walking (7.9 modeled hours), with front doors about 120 feet apart. The hardest tenth of those areas average about 130 miles per 1,000 doors, 5.3 times the typical area.
| Neighborhood type | Areas measured | Miles per 1,000 doors (low / typical / high) | Modeled walking hours (typical) | Feet between doors (typical) | Dead ends per mile | Climb per 1,000 doors (ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dense urban | 36 | 5.2 / 11.0 / 19.0 | 3.6 | 55 | 4.8 | 150 |
| Older suburb | 68 | 14.0 / 21 / 27 | 6.8 | 105 | 5.7 | 210 |
| Newer cul-de-sac suburb | 67 | 16.0 / 24 / 30 | 7.9 | 120 | 6 | 470 |
| Exurban | 68 | 28 / 39 / 81 | 13.0 | 195 | 5.2 | 520 |
| Rural edge | 7 | n/a / 200 / n/a | 65.0 | 1,000 | 3 | 3,600 |
The number of doors in an area tells you how many pieces to print. It does not tell you how much ground has to be covered to deliver them. Two campaigns of the same size can differ several times over in the walking they require, which is why the route, the people who walk it and the proof that every street was covered matter more in spread-out neighborhoods than in dense ones.
At Direct to Door Marketing, our distributors live in the communities they deliver to, every campaign is managed through our AI Management Platform with Proof of Delivery photos, and every quote is based on the real area you draw. Learn more about our door hanger distribution service and flyer distribution service, see what a campaign costs in our door hanger distribution cost guide, read our case studies, or plan a small neighborhood effort yourself with our guide to handing out flyers.
In a typical residential neighborhood in America's 50 largest metro areas, reaching 1,000 front doors takes about 24 miles of walking. The tightest tenth of neighborhoods need about 9.3 miles and the most spread-out tenth need about 83 miles, a 9-fold spread, according to the Doorstep Terrain Index study by Direct to Door Marketing.
At a steady 3 mph, the typical neighborhood in the study takes about 8.0 hours of walking per 1,000 doors. That is a modeled walking time only: it does not include time at each door, breaks or travel to the area, and it is not an observed delivery rate.
The Doorstep Terrain Index is a measurement of how much walking a neighborhood demands per door. It combines household density, the spacing between front doors, dead-end streets, hills, rural character and access, all measured from public map data. Direct to Door Marketing created it to plan door-to-door distribution routes.
Randy Etheridge, founder of Direct to Door Marketing, created the Doorstep Terrain Index. Direct to Door Marketing has run door hanger and flyer distribution campaigns since 1995.
Spacing between front doors matters most. Homes in dense urban neighborhoods sit about 52 feet apart, while homes in exurban areas sit about 217 feet apart. Dead-end streets add walking because a route has to double back, and hills add effort on top of distance.
New York is the easiest of the 50 largest metros in the study, at about 5.6 miles of walking per 1,000 doors in a typical sampled neighborhood.
Louisville takes the most walking of the 50 largest metros in the study, at about 65 miles per 1,000 doors in a typical sampled neighborhood.
Yes, and the study measures how much. In Pittsburgh, climbing accounts for about 11.9% of the walking effort in a typical neighborhood. In Miami it is about 0.9%. Climb is converted to equivalent flat walking with Naismith's rule.
Every Direct to Door Marketing quote is based on the actual area you choose to cover. Our door hanger distribution cost guide explains what goes into a campaign price, and our free house count tool shows how many homes are in any area.
Yes. The national sample is built only from public data and is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Please cite it as: Direct to Door Marketing, The 1,000-Door Walk Study (Doorstep Terrain Index), 2026.
The national sample is free to use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Please credit Direct to Door Marketing and the Doorstep Terrain Index.
National sample. The 50 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas by 2024 Census population estimates. A tract counts as residential when it has at least 500 housing units, at least 80% of them occupied, and between 0.05 and 100 square miles of area. In each metro, 20 tracts were drawn at random with a fixed, published seed, so anyone can reproduce the list. A tract that could not be fully measured stays in the data, flagged, rather than being replaced.
Customer-chosen areas. Every area in our quoting system with a complete measurement, duplicates removed (248 areas). Only aggregates are published: every group holds at least 5 areas, nothing finer than a metro or neighborhood type is shown, and miles are rounded to two significant figures.
Data sources. 2020 Census blocks and occupancy (TIGER/Line and PL 94-171); Census TIGERweb local roads, January 2026; American Community Survey 2023 5-year estimates for apartment share and housing age; USGS 3D Elevation Program 1-meter elevation.
Limitations. Gated communities are not modeled separately. Streets with homes on one side only read longer than they walk. The walk inside apartment buildings is not modeled, so dense areas read slightly easy. New subdivisions built after 2020 have streets but no counted households, which reads as loose spacing. Census tracts include parks and commercial land that a drawn delivery area usually avoids. Modeled time is walking only.
Engine version. dti-engine@19ebe3ed+naismith-1892-both-sides+roads-tigerweb-L8-2026. Neighborhood classifier nbhd-type-v1-2026-10-25.
License and citation. The national sample is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Cite as: Direct to Door Marketing, The 1,000-Door Walk Study (Doorstep Terrain Index), 2026.
Direct to Door Marketing has delivered door hangers and flyers since 1995, with local distributors and Proof of Delivery photos on every campaign.
