Comment by jjav
17 days ago
Very much this.
My neighborhood was built in the late 90s. Single family home small town suburbia. I can walk to just about anything I need in daily life. Within 10 minutes walk there are 2 supermarkets, movies, many restaurants, variety of services, library, parks, theaters, doctors, and more.
If we count cycling, I can bike to 99% of what I could need in life. (Problem in practice is lack of safe bike parking but that's not a distance problem.)
Most places I've lived in the US in my adult life have been similar. The exception was once when I lived in a very rural area and had to drive 10 minutes to the nearest supermarket.
I don't understand these threads that talk about suburbs where you have to drive an hour to the nearest convenience store. I'm skeptical that such places exist. Where are they?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/xEkHB8ZQiCUAZH7T6
https://maps.app.goo.gl/KmSjG465pkAGJia19
https://maps.app.goo.gl/DvCv5oMbhfXRDVAR6
https://maps.app.goo.gl/14duytarnCn8UPR37
They're kind of all over the place. It seems to me non-walkable suburbs are the default from the places I've lived and visited. Unless you're either living near the town square of a small town or adjacent to the downtown area of a big city it's probably not really walkable.
An hour to a store is probably hyperbole for most places, but I definitely have friends where it's like 5+ minutes to drive from the middle to the edge of the neighborhood of only single family houses, and then you're just on a street in nearly the middle of nowhere with no shops right outside just other neighborhoods full of houses.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/GB7SPqHZoDeRE7eX6
https://maps.app.goo.gl/zEA7sBQ6Jxccc2fFA
https://maps.app.goo.gl/oZRNZ3Td2NDqH8nw7
The claim at the top of the thread was "essentials being a 30-45m drive away".
I clicked on each of those links and asked for directions to food shops and in every case google maps gave me a route less than 10 minutes drive.
So I remain unconvinced that suburbs with "essentials being a 30-45m drive away" are somehow a common thing. You need to go pretty far off into the boonies for that to be the case but then it is no longer a suburb.
Ah, 30-45m drive, yeah. A lot of these places will still be within 15min or so to a lot of amenities, probably 20min most to most things. There are still some that are pretty way out there, easily 20+ minutes to most real amenities. A couple I can think of close by:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fc2DS3dMQrDJK3na9
https://maps.app.goo.gl/AnygKw17WmFxHkc58
https://maps.app.goo.gl/kppAZYyDJuJZBGtD6
But a 10 minute walk to most of those amenities is also pretty uncommon. You look up walking directions for most of those places? I'll be amazed if there's a real grocery store within a 10 minute walk.
5 replies →
Where in suburbs are you a 10 minute walk of all that? Even living in a major metro city center it's a push to get to all that in 10 minutes. A 10 minute walk is like 1/3 mile at most. An hour drive is unlikely but 20-30 minutes is no exaggeration with traffic. 90% of suburbs in Atlanta are like this, with zero traffic it could be a 5-10 minute drive to the closest shopping center.