What can you get to within a 15-minute walk of your house?
A recent YouGov survey asked Americans what they think they should be able to get to within a 15-minute walk of their house.
Of these choices, I can currently walk to all of them from my apartment, aside from a university (no biggie, I’m not currently studying, although there is a Tafe within walking distance), a hospital, and a sports arena.
How many can you get to with a 15 minute walk from your house?
#fuckcars #walkability #urbanism #UrbanPlanning @fuck_cars #walking
16% said “should not” to a grocery store? What?
I feel like there should be a separate question for the “I don’t want anything near me” rural choice, since those might be making the rest of the responses misleading.
They are probably carbarians whose only conception of a grocery store is a supermarket surrounded by a moat of parking. I wouldn’t want one of those next to me either
Not wanting a parking lot moat next to them is one thing, but not even wanting one within a mile and a half just flat-out doesn’t make sense.
Some people don’t want anyone near them. Not even a small mom-and-pop grocery store.
But what if your only experience with grocery/retail/bar s these huge loud noxious monstrosities. We’ve super-sized almost everything, and many people probably have no idea it can be different
Even then, 15 minutes is quite a radius. I wouldn’t want to be a 3-minute walk away, but a 15 minute walk is like ~8 blocks.
Granted, that probably necessitates other homes being a lot closer than 8 blocks, so I suppose this just becomes a micro-scale NIMBY-ism. So I suppose you’re probably right.
That said, there are lots of places where you have massive grocery stores at the ground level or underground in high-density urban environments, so you can get massive scale with high walkability, if you’re willing to move past single-family homes (which we must… I say despite wanting a single-family home for my family.)
Some people might genuinely prefer a humongous superstore, and the parking lot culture that comes with it.
In the UK, you see tons of “corner shops”, which are just overpriced grocery stores where the owner pretends to be serving the community, but is actually putting his daughter through private school.
In contrast, the Sainsbury’s down the road hires actual suffering locals who you know from high school, the parking lot is full of teens blasting music and worried parents teaching their children how to drive – i.e. there is an actual community happening there.
Yeah, the actual closest one to me, very easy walking, is more properly called an INconvenience store. It has what looks like a surprisingly large assortment of overpriced food, but never again after I saw green bacon. They clearly make their money from the twin scourges of lottery and smoking. Then it comes down to the full sized grocery has much better hours, prices, selection, even if I usually drive there
One of the grocery chains in our region actually tried a real NYC style bodega, and it was a fantastic addition to the community. Unfortunately it never quite caught on and was killed by COViD.
@jeffhykin @ajsadauskas My brother and his neighbors are fighting a grocery store in their neighborhood because of “traffic” (it would be negligible). Instead they drive 10 minutes each way thru - traffic.
Car brain - wanting your neighborhood to be undesirable so people won’t want to come.
Absolutely. I imagine there would be a significant correlation between those who want to live in an urban area vs a rural area and what they want within 15 minutes.
It’s worse: they don’t want anything next to their homes that might be associated with working class because it would lower the price of houses.