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
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars One thing you can get within a 15 minute walk of some US homes is arrested!
(My grandma went for a walk in a Miami suburb. The locals thought that someone walking (rather than driving) was obviously suspicious so they called the cops. Because my grandma was white and female and elderly, rather than black and male and young, they stopped to talk to her rather than just shooting her. They then spent several minutes trying to get her to admit that she was walking because her car had broken down - they just couldn’t get it through their heads that she was walking because she wanted to walk.)
I used to live in South Carolina and recently moved to Chicago. Despite there being many more police in Chicago, I’ve actually had less of a feeling of police anxiety because I don’t drive here. The cops are on the roads pulling cars over. They aren’t in alleys and side streets following pedestrians (at the same rates, anyways). If walking and cycling are normal and built for, police are less of a problem, imo.
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
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.
@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.
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.
I wonder what the meaning of “should not” is in this survey. A restaurant “should not” be withing 15 minutes of my home, as in “I don’t want any restaurants near me” or is it “It’s not important enough to be in the local government’s target list”?
I don’t understand the red bars the way the question is phrased now. Why wouldn’t you want a park near you?
If they used the phrase “15 minute neighborhood” during polling then a portion of the no’s are probably from people who have had it turned into a trigger word for them by conservative talk media.
Yeah that’s what I’m assuming the 16% who don’t even want a grocery store near them is. That sets your baseline.
“If your local government did adopt…”
I bet 16% don’t want “the government” to anything.
That said, people in my neighborhood are strongly against sidewalks. Something about bringing the problems of the big city to us. (I presume crime, but it could be anything.)
“It’s not important enough to be in the local government’s target list”
I think this is the correct interpretation given the exact wording of the question.
Who needs a gas station within walking distance? One need a gas station within 15-minutes driving.
They double as 24/7 corner stores, at least here in Europe, so it makes sense.
Sure, but “grocery store” is already on the list - so I feel that’s covered.
Grocery stores aren’t open at night. Also, it’s usually a lot faster to get stuff from a convenience store than a grocery store. If all you need is some snacks or toilet paper, it’s nice to have a way to quickly get that done.
I’m in Europe as well and I have gas stations that double as corner stores but also standalone corner stores so it doesn’t make so much sense to me.
Gas station beer runs after the liquor store are closed would like to have a word
I walk to the petrol station to fill up my lawnmower can. Other people might to buy overpriced snack food
I didn’t think of that. But anyway I’m anticar and antilawn so…
But are you anti-overpriced-snack-food?
Actually, I’m am ! because those are often overwrapped in useless plastic packaging and I try to do zero waste. I should try to by a bit more pro-thing rather than anti-. Would make my life happier.
There are lawn alternatives that still need some forms of mowing. I have clover but mow it back a couple times a season.
Mow your lawn with biofuel. Behold, the GOAT of Lawncare!
Actually I hear contrary to popular opinion goats are fussy eaters, they just sample everything. Maybe go with the Sheep of Lawncare.
I have an electric mower, personally, just an old (relatively) hand me down.
You should upgrade to a sheep. You get free fertiliser, and when you’re done with it, you can eat it.
Unless you’re vegan. Then you have to pay it a wage.
This literally made me laugh out loud, that was a good one. ❤️
Oh I fully agree. It’s a job, I don’t have a lawn.
Electric lawn mowers are better, imho. Fewer parts to break/maintain. Granted, the cable isn’t ideal, but it’s really not a big deal, you just mow out front where you plug is in two sections.
That’s fine for a bland, flat, empty US suburban section. For complex weedeating jobs it’s not very practical.
Do the 32 percent not know what a bus stop is?? Why would you want a bus stop farther than 15 minutes away???
I bet the mentality is: “why would i want to have a bus stop when I always use my car”.
As opposed to “it would have beed nice to have a bus stop so that I don’t need to use my car”
It keeps the kind of people who use a bus far away from you.
I guess, I’m not American, buses are fine here.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I’m kind of sad that “cafe”, “bookstore”, and “library” aren’t even on this list at all. 😢
I would honestly have to do a web search to find out where the nearest elementary school, day care, and gas station are, but I’d be stunned if I didn’t have those within 15 minutes. As it is, I do have everything else, including a university and a sports arena, and *two* malls. (I’m in between the Barclays Center and Long Island University in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NYC.)
Bar counts as cafe I guess.
and *two* malls.
Lucky. I have not one, not two, but fucking 8 malls! Anthough one of them specializes in construction, second in electronics and furniture and third only in furniture. Who need so much furniture I have no idea.
As you can guess there were no major improvements for last 30 years and a lot of stuff fell in disrepair.
@uis Holy cow! Where are you that there are *eight* malls within a 15-minute walk? (If you don’t mind my asking?)
Moscow. There is cluster of 6 malls in one place and 3 malls in another. Last mall I did not count in 15-minutes walk distance, but 20 is well enough.
Oh, also I forgot about new mall in place where market was until it mysteriously combusted. Maps say it is 16 minutes walk, but I never walked there. 10 minutes on bike or public transport.
@kagan @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
Back when I attended library science conferences regularly I would do Web searches for bookshops before I got on the plane and then my first act after waking up from my jetlag would be to go and visit one. Over time this got more and more difficult. In my last trip to Atlanta the only bookshops even vaguely in walking distance seemed, according to Google, to be the small bookshop at the uni/conf venue, and the national park shop at the MLK museum.
@ajsadauskas @urlyman @fuck_cars Why on earth would anyone answer ‘should not’ to a bus stop being within 15 mins? How are they thinking you get to the bus stop, by driving?!
Also, as a Dutchie, the amount of ‘should nots’ for a bar within 15 mins is killing me. I understand it, but it points to such a lack of imagination about what a city can look like. I have at least 20 bars within 15 mins walk of home and I’m not in the city centre 😄
@Brendanjones @ajsadauskas @urlyman @fuck_cars Indeed. Bars should *only* be in a 15 minute walk. You should never need to drive to a bar!
@CurtAdams what about sailing? ;)
https://www.hampshire-history.com/point-portsmouth/Bus bar
@Brendanjones @urlyman @fuck_cars You need to keep in mind we are talking about a country here where a not insignificant proportion of the population thinks walkable neighbourhoods are a deep state conspiracy…
@ajsadauskas
I am reminded of Bill Bryson, writing in a different century (just), on why no-one walks https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/bryson-s-america-why-would-you-walk-1079183.htmlThat article is worthy of its own post.
The average American walks less than 75 miles a year - about 1.4 miles a week, barely 350 yards a day.
Edit: Be the change and all that… I created a post and thanked you. Cheers
Good read.
Bill Bryson is British though, so he grew up with a generation accustomed to not seeing public transport as a dirty word.~ Edit: Nope, he just has a good british accent. nvm,When I visited LA, I was amazed at how good the public transit system there is. A bus driver would literally wave people through if they didn’t have the right fare, and would literally wrangle wheelchair users into their seat at the cost of their own backs. Yet, there was always this feeling that the people who used the bus were less than scum…
… no other country has this stigma when it comes to using public services.
I lived in LA for a few years…without a car!
The transit system was great for me because I worked at a Uni and got direct service door-to-door. It worked just all right for my wife. It was convenient for her, but she worked downtown in a professional office. The kind where people wore suits and the senior people still wore ties (in LA!).
Buses were clean in the morning and full of people headed to work, but on her return trip they would be be…fragrant with a different clientele. This isn’t meant to be classist, but she didn’t feel safe and was worried about cleanliness. Our drycleaning bills were high.
We were told we could manage for a couple years because we didn’t know anyone and so we didn’t get invited anywhere. It was true. All of our trips were to popular, well serviced destinations.
That was prescient advice because eventually we did meet people and started getting invited to dinner parties etc. where buses simply didn’t run. And a car was purchased.
I think safety is a huge thing. As a woman, I can imagine feeling less than secure in such a setting. As a man, it seems okay though
I had no idea, I assumed men used transit more, but you’re right:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/715212/public-transit-use-gender-transit-mode-united-states/
Getting soceity to be less misogynistic seems like it might be the right way forward indeed (or in any case)
No, it’s an insignificant portion.
Prolly ~30%
Not the majority, buy enough to e significant
You pulled that number straight outta your ass.
30% is pretty consistently the number of right-wing fascists in the US (people who actually want Trump in office)
Honestly 15 minutes is way too much for a bus stop. If it’s more than 10 minutes walk away it might as well not exist, and the target should always be under 5 minutes.
@Zagorath @Brendanjones In the UK one of the magic numbers planners used for bus stops (or did a few years ago when I was in the loop) was 400m
Yeah 400 m is the goal here in my city of Brisbane, Australia, too. That’s where I was aiming when I said 5 minutes, since a walking pace of about 10 minutes/kilometre is pretty reasonable and 5 minutes gives you a little bit of buffer on that.
Some people think the “wrong sort of people” will come to a neighborhood if there’s a bus stop. Like they’re going to get on the bus, break into your house, and get back on the bus holding your tv.
Yes, an architect in NYC intentionally designed bridges to be too low for busses to pass under them to keep busses out of some neighborhoods.
Because fuck the poor.
You’re probably talking about Robert Moses? Park commissioner, city planner, huge asshole. There’s a huge book called The Power Broker that’s a fascinating history of him and the city.
It also mentions a part where one of his lead engineers came to him and was like “if we build it like this, it’ll cost basically the same and if we want to put train tracks in the future it will be easy. If we build it your way , it’ll be impossible to put a train here without a ton of expensive work”.
Moses went the anti-train way on purpose.
Yes thats him
@Brendanjones I miss passing Dutchies (as in Dutch people), on Dutch streets or in Dutch bars, on the left or the right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pass_the_Dutchie
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I wonder why they included gas stations unless it’s for their use as convenience store. Buying gas as a pedestrian is a very marginal use case…
How else will you burn the cars?
I don’t think lawn mowers, snow blowers, and other ICE landscaping tools, are “very marginal use cases”. Sure they might not use a lot of gas, but most everyone with a lawn/driveway has them (at least mower and blower).
But also, yes, it’s a convenience store. Other than maybe in cities, we often don’t have any convenience stores at all, just gas stations with shops inside.
Why would you carry a lawn mower to the gas station?
You would carry a gas can
I would love this being contrasted with what they get on average, it would probably really depressing.
It’s interesting, walking 15 minutes to the next bus stop sounds like a nightmare in a city but pretty good in the country …
Im confused about (from the poll)
- bar… if this is not walkable you are promoting drunk driving. (even if its not your thing)
- what do you need to walk to the gas station for? or is this being used also as a corner store?
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars There’s a couple of weird things missing there I would definitely include, like a doctor’s office, a library and a gym.
I’m in a city in the UK and a lot of those are in 15 minutes walk from me. Some, like a hospital, university, cinema, shopping mall and sports arena and I think a bank I’d have to go into the city centre for, but that’s only about 30 minutes walk, 10 minutes on the bike, or a short bus or metro ride. I’m generally pretty lucky in my location.
a library
Bookhorse aporoves
A bankimg institution of some sort is reasonable in a 15-minute city design. It doesn’t have to be a big selection but at least one credit union or bank should be accessible. That said, retail banks are all over in Canada, so this isn’t really a stretch, for us. No idea how it is in other countries, but I’ve been within a ~25 minute walk of a bank everywhere I’ve lived in urban/suburban Canada.
In the UK, the majority of banking is online.
I can order new cards, pay bills/people, open a new account, take out a loan, even deposit cheques from my phone/computer.
I imagine there are occasionally things that need in-person banking. But i havent been into a branch in 5+ years.
So, id expect a bank to be commutable via public transport.@blindsight In the UK a lot of bank branches have closed over the last couple of decades. The post office can do some basic banking services for some of the banks, but hardly a comprehensive service. It’s especially a problem for more isolated rural communities some of which don’t even have a post office either.
Mid-sized village (around 10k inhabitants) in Germany:
-
4 grocery stores
-
2 pharmacies
-
Bus stop (and train station)
-
5 or so restaurants
-
Post office
-
Bank
-
Gas station
-
Elementary school
-
2 Kindergartens
-
2 barber shops
-
Bar
-
Sports field (calling it an arena would be a bit much)
Alas, no university or hospital, but I think for a village it’s pretty good.
This feels like the type of thing open street maps could provide a service for where you put in your postcode and it returns the services within a 15 mins walk.
Osmand does that, search or tap a PoI and it lists similiar in the area, nearest first.
I assume you mean point of interest?
I don’t see this option in the web based version, also, “similar in the area” != within 15 mins walk.
From where I live in my small Swedish town (about 8k inhabitants), so pretty much the whole town
2 grocery stores
2 convenience stores
2 bus stops (5 lines)
At least 10 resturants including a burger joint, a thai and a chinese. Most pizza places though
1 hardware/home appliance store
1 hardware/gardening store
2 home appliance stores
3 clothing stores, of which one for babies and one for sports
4 (?) Hairdresser
2 pharmacies
3 second hand stores
3 gyms, one of which at the sport centre
A sport centre with swimming hall, general sport hall, bowling alleys, gym and fields for outdoor sports
Two large schools and a couple of daycares
Church
2 graveyards
Police station
Municipal services
2 Opticians
1 library
Think that may be it
To be fair, 10k is a small city here.
-
I have everything but pharmacy, post office, cinema, and university. The pharmacy is within a 15-minute bike or bus, though.
What I feel is lacking is a hardware store. I really wish I had even a small hardware store close by. There used to be one.
Also missing from the list, but I have: a bakery, a swimming pool, and a coffeeshop.
- intensely_human ( @intensely_human@lemm.ee ) 8•1 year ago
This poll shows a population not really taking the question seriously.
Why should a gas station be more accessible on foot than a local pub?
@intensely_human It was a weird option to include in the survey anyway, along with giant sports arena.
- intensely_human ( @intensely_human@lemm.ee ) 3•1 year ago
Maybe they were thinking of it as a convenience store. A place you walk to, to get cigarettes late a night.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I can walk to all except university (1hr walk, or 15min bike ride) and sports center (1+ hr walk, 18min bike ride).
I don’t get the gas station though. Why so many "should"s? Why would you need to walk to a gas station?
Unless ppl are considering “gas station” to mean “convenience store”, which in a lot of America that’s what they are.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Ok, so the university one depends on what you call a university. If it’s a 4 year liberal arts college (teaches many things) then yeah, 1hr walk, 15min bike.
If it’s any undergraduate or graduate program, then my answer switches to yet. There’s a Keller Graduate School of Management across the street from me.
of Management
No. Nope. Neigh. Don’t want that.
