Comment by jjav
17 days ago
Two trains of thought; I was reacting to the OP line of "People would rather stay marooned in the middle of an endless desert of houses with essentials being a 30-45m drive away", which I maintain is a nearly impossible scenario.
(Because everyone needs food and other essentials, so if you have "an endless desert of houses" somewhere, that's a lot of people, so inevitably very soon there will be stores nearby.)
The other point is whether you can walk to them in 10min (or 15min as lotsoweiners above said). I don't claim you can always walk to shops in 10min from suburban houses, it is easy to find cases where it's further away (but far far far closer than "30-45m drive away").
But, you can also easily find suburban places where you can do it, and those places are all over, there is nothing rare about them. The idea (which often comes up in these topics on HN) that it is impossible to walk to stores/restaurants in the US outside of Manhattan & SF, is nonsense. If you like to walk (I do) just pick a suitable spot.
A few examples where I've lived: next to Pruneyard in Campbell, a bit further south in San Jose around Cambrian, and in Cupertino not far from DeAnza College. In all of these it was easy to walk to a supermarket in 10min. All of these are in Silicon Valley, where the story goes you can't walk anywhere but I was easily walking to stores.
I agree, I totally missed your comment was related to the 30+min concept.
> But, you can also easily find suburban places where you can do it, and those places are all over, there is nothing rare about them
I agree, you can find some housing stock like that in most housing markets. It's less rare than finding a unicorn, I agree. But they're also often not a large chunk of the overall housing market.
It sounds like all those experiences are in Southern California. That's pretty dense compared to a lot of the places I've lived, even though I wouldn't call it extremely dense. It's also a place that while still having a lot of notable NIMBY stuff going on it tends to be way more amenable to pedestrian and bike infrastructure and city design. Weather also leads to more and more people willing to be outside. You should expand your study to other areas, not every place in the US is Southern California.
Look around the rest of North Texas for a good example. You can find pockets where it's decently walkable. Plano and Richardson and some parts of Dallas can be pretty bikeable. But Frisco? Little Elm? Arlington (outside the college campus)? Aledo? You can live at the edge of a large neighborhood and still have it be walkable/bikeable. But then there's still the rest of the neighborhood where it's going to take a while to walk to the edge.
Look at Kansas City, KS [0]. You'll find tons of neighborhoods like this. Not exactly walkable, like much of the metro area. Once again, sure, pick a house at the edge of this neighborhood and it's okay, but that's not the majority of the housing stock. Once again, sure, you'll find some neighborhood around that is relatively bikeable, but percentage of hosing stock it's pretty rare. Not unicorn rare, but still pretty limiting on the housing market. Can you find houses that are walkable? Sure. Is it in your budget? Does it meet your other needs? Is it close to your work? Are the schools still pretty OK?
[0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/L7vRMc4v4ouS9uuh9
Go to St Louis [1]. See it's pretty much the same story? Most of this suburban housing stock isn't walkable and is not very bikeable.
[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/CLZDVKjdVkwj92sq6
Can you find some place walkable and bikeable in practically any decently sized metro area in the US? Sure. It's it even a quarter of the overall suburban housing stock in that metro? Probably not!
> You should expand your study to other areas, not every place in the US is Southern California.
(Silicon Valley is NorCal but still)
I've also lived in Pittsburgh, did not own a car or a bike just walked everywhere. And northern New Jersey, was also walking distance to shops and restaurants.
The one and only place I've lived in the US where walking to shops was not practical was out in the countryside in northwestern NJ. That's a pretty rural area so needed the car, closest supermarket was a 5 minute drive.
Also have family in Phoenix, have lived there for decades and never had a drivers license. Supermarket is 1.5 blocks away. The heat can be rough, but in distance it is very near.
Sure, it's easy to find places where you can't pragmatically walk to a supermarket, but it's just as easy to find places where you can, if it is something you find valuable.
> I've also lived in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh (especially the actual city proper) is well above average in walkabiliy compared to the rest of the country. Also a good bit of New England, especially the older towns.
> Sure, it's easy to find places where you can't pragmatically walk to a supermarket, but it's just as easy to find places where you can, if it is something you find valuable.
I mean yeah, that goes along with what I'm saying. If you just ignore 85+% of the housing stock in a lot of metros it's all walkable! Just limit yourself to just the most walkable places in the country and you'll only find it walkable. Look up the walk scores of the areas I'm talking about.
You even acknowledged a lot of the areas I shared earlier would be a 10 minute drive to get to a grocery store. How fast do you walk? 40+mph?
It shouldn't be so hard to find affordable homes without massive tradeoffs that are walkable/bikeable. And by find I don't mean see it on Google Maps, I mean actually afford it and have it be available when you're ready to move and not have other massive tradeoffs.
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