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 I’m in Toronto’s Danforth area, so basically everything except a professional sports arena is within 5-20 mins walk.
The framing of that poll has such a sinister American conspiracy theorist edge: “if your local government decided…” — like having these things nearby can only be forced upon you and you must fight back.
@c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars The nots are puzzling. Folk don’t want a grocery store within walking distance?
@CStamp @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Bus stop is weirder. Do they want to drive to one?
@seanddotmedotuk @CStamp @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Easy: “the people who use bus stops are not welcome in my neighbourhood.”
@c_9 @CStamp @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Thankfully, I don’t think people here have reached that state of mind. Lots of people would never get on a bus themselves, but I think there’s a general feeling that they are a good thing, just not good enough to actually use.
@seanddotmedotuk A big thing with buses: how long does it take with a bus vs how long by car? If it’s a 2-3Xs diff, well, if you have a car, you’ll use the car. @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
@CStamp @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Yes, I know, for my commute, it is quicker to walk than to take the bus!
However adding bus lanes, banning cars from city centres etc could make the times closer.
@seanddotmedotuk Depends. Some cities are big and sprawling and not everyone works in city centres. @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
@CStamp @seanddotmedotuk @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars measuring travel time should include parking at both ends of the trip when driving. And the level of concentration required to drive is more stressful – I would rather be able to read or knit or something (if the distance is not walkable) than have to pay attention to the road.
@CStamp @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Most charitably, they don’t think food security without a car should be legislated. Less charitably, they want to ensure the car-less never live near them.
@c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars It would be interesting to see a poll like that broken down by income. I don’t think that average folk think that much about it, but remembering that folk in Marin County opposed a Bart train expansion out their way because they didn’t want the riffraff moving in, you are probably onto something with your latter point.
@CStamp @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Also very important to remember that “riffraff” is almost exclusively a racist definition for these situations. It adds more depth to all these situations and the solutions. Every story of bad planning is about keeping Black folk, Indigenous folk, or basically anyone not sufficiently white, out of [insert neighbourhood name here]. Class and income come into play too, but always subservient to race.
@CStamp @c_9 @fuck_cars It would also be interesting to see a regional and a rural/inner urban/suburban breakdown as well.
I suspect the numbers might be very different between, say, someone who lives in the heart of Brooklyn vs a rural town in Idaho (where everything in town is or could be a 15-minute walk) vs a suburb of Dallas or Atlanta.
@ajsadauskas @CStamp @c_9 @fuck_cars I live next door to a single woman who is solidly middle class, lives within 5 walking-minutes of a grocery store and restaurants. She never EVER walks, preferring instead to fire up her oversized, gas guzzling, Cadillac Escalade (to drive 60 seconds).
Why?
Because America. 🤦🏼🤦🏼🤦🏼
@CStamp @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars many people envision grocery shopping as too big to manage without a car. They are buying large quantities to take advantage of sales or bulk discounts.
@ocursedspite @CStamp @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars and then throwing out 40% of the food when it rots before they can eat it
@itsshevee @ocursedspite @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Who throws out 40% of their food? It’s way too expensive these days. The food folk buy in bulk isn’t perishables, it’s stuff for freezers and pantries.
@CStamp @ocursedspite @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars it’s not a hard and fast rule and maybe it doesn’t apply to you personally (I don’t think I throw out that much food either and I try really hard not to), but yes, Americans waste a ton of our food supply by just throwing it in the garbage. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-why-americans-throw-out-165-billion-in-food-every-year-2016-07-22
@itsshevee @ocursedspite @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars No mention of how they are collecting their data. Stores throw out too much, which is a huge problem, but I’d have a hard time believing that 80% of people are throwing out 40% of their food. “Over 80% of Americans may be prematurely tossing food because they misinterpret expiration dates”: MAY is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
Interesting poll. Did you notice ‘gas station’ hiding in there?
That’s irrelevant if you’re walking, and also irrelevant if you’re driving - so, a red herring. The only time you go to a gas station is when you’re driving and your need gas.
@c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars a lot of these polls have a conservative subtext to the question.
I recently moved from the town where I grew up to a much larger city (small city).
I had almost anything I wanted within a 15 minute walk.
Now, the only thing is a relatively crappy convenience store. Adjusting to my new location is proving more difficult than I imagined. It’s certainly nice to be a 2 minute walk to a private beach, but, I miss many of the things that were a very easy walk away.
40% do not think an elementary school should be within a 15 minute walk?!?!? (16 not sure 24 no)
That’s wild.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Several of most, about 6 bakeries, 3 hair salons, 6 restaurants; 3 pharmacies, 2 parks, 4 grocery stores and two supermarkets, 1 gas station we don’t need, 2 shopping malls, a movie theater. No sports arena though, not that I’d ever go.
But all of this depends on what neighborhood you live in.@ajsadauskas
And the amount of grocery stores i can reach within a 15 minutes walk must be at least 80, easily.
This town is still structured around small family businesses.
@fuck_cars@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars When I first moved to #Ottawa, I picked a place wisely and in a 15 minute walk I could get to a grocery store, a park, two pharmacies, a bus stop (main transit station), two restaurants, a post office, two banks, a gas station, an elementary school, a barber shop, a shopping mall, and a bar.
Since then, the gas station and the shopping mall have been torn down, so I also lost a barber shop, a bar, and the better restaurant. Post office also disappeared.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
It’s an easy yes, most of this is more 5-10 minutes.
Sports arena and university takes a bike or public transport, but are still very easy to reach in 20 minutes that way.Location: Dresden, Germany
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Of that list, if you don’t live in a 15m walk of most of them you either live on a rural block/farm or a dystopian hellscape. Okay outer suburbs might need to stretch it to 20m or allow for scooter use to speed up the walking speed.
Why the fuck is “school” so far from the top of the list 🙄?
Also, if the whole point is the place being walkable, gas station shouldn’t even make the list.
I’m only missing 3 here in Philadelphia, a hospital, movie theater, and university. Though there are plenty of urgent care facilities around my location. And if we include a 15 minute bus ride, I can get to all three. I had to think in where the nearest theater was.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I also don’t get A Bar being so low. The bar is exactly the place I WANT people to be walking to instead of driving. Perhaps this is just a limitation of the polling method; these responses are mostly just gut reactions, not carefully considered positions.
Why are bars so low? Do Americans like having to use a car when drinking?
The website has a British version that doesn’t include bar/pub as a choice at all. Does include liquor store, though. Thought that was odd
Some things go without saying.
Why would you need to ask if a pub should be in a 15 minute city. Its like asking should a house be in a 15 minute city? Should electricity be in a 15 minute city?
Probably don’t want to live near drunks, or the piss and vomit that exists after a weekend.
That and the noise, bars can be pretty loud
Tbf we’re talking about within a 15 minute walk, not inside your building. There’s a bar 5 minutes away from me and I can’t hear the noise there unless I’m literally standing next to it.
Same, I have a bar a few lots from mine, and it only gets bad a few weekends a year.
I have neighbors that blast music while having super smoky fires and getting piss drunk, though. They are much much worse than the bar. Hands down. Because I can’t have windows open about half the time without my house smelling like smoke (a smell that gives me migraines).
Living near one, I don’t have these issues
Maybe they want to drink at home
Apparently it’s important that they can walk to a petrol station though.
I live maybe 10 minutes walk from a gas station, it’s the size of a small grocery store, it has lot of staple groceries and a mini restaurant in it that makes pizzas, sub sandwiches, coffees, ice cream, and a full breakfast menu. Plus donuts every morning. Our gas stations often take the place of 2/3 businesses rolled into one.
I live by a QT for those Americans familiar with STL’s favorite gas station
American here, the gas station is our version of the local corner store. Most places you have to drive to get to it but where I live there is one right at the entrance to the neighborhood and lots of adults/kids do walk there. I would sorely miss it if it was gone.
I agree with this, but also want to point out that gas stations are a poor substitute for a corner grocer or bodega. They are simply too large and require too much land for the function they are serving. Zoning rightfully mandates that they can’t be on the bottom floor of a larger building due to the dangers posed by gasoline and they require lots of space for cars to park.
Essentially, we have forfeited a lot of valuable space to dispensing gasoline and significantly diminished the best features of corner stores by making them serve both functions. I would be curious to see what would happen if gas stations were forbidden from serving anything other than gas in high density areas. I would assume there would be much fewer of them, and each one would be optimized for efficiency to take up as little space as possible. We would also likely see the reemergence of neighborhood bodegas and corner grocers to fill the gap.
Gas station is a somewhat colloquial form of bodega/corner store in the US. Often corner stores without gas stations will still be referred to as gas stations. Sometimes they’re also called convenience stores.
Wait really? I’m from a big city and I’ve never heard “gas station” refer to a place that didn’t sell gas at all. Huh, TIL
Yeah I know of a few 7-elevens that are just the store, no gas, but would still be thought of as a “gas station”.
That was the one that stood out to me, too (especially the dichotomy between “bars” and “restaurants”). It maybe explains a lot if NIMBYs are actually just moralizing puritans being dishonest about their motives.
If you ever drive through rural America, you’ll usually at least see one or two crosses, often on telephone poles, on rural roads. People, often teenagers, die pretty regularly in rural America because of drunk driving.
Some people like it. Some people are just numb to it. It’s just insane to expect people not to when bars are the only social space in a lot of these towns, and those bars are not accessible by anything but car. There is no such thing as a taxi for most of the US (space wise, not population wise).
@Vash63 @ajsadauskas they drink piss-weak beer and if you have more than two somebody will accuse you of being an alcoholic
Lol, local breweries have completely saturated the American market. I barely know anyone that drinks traditional retail beers anymore outside of sports and/or music venues where outside drinks aren’t allowed.
This stuck out to me too. This is one of my top items for a 15 min. city, not because I visit bars frequently, but because when I do visit, or when my neighbors visit, I’d like it to be a car-free trip.
I’d wager not a single example of a 15-minute city exists or has ever existed throughout all history without a bar in range.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars ultimately, it’s largely about density. Eg. There are maybe 7000 pubs/night clubs etc in Australia. So if there are about 4000 ppl within walking distance of you, good chance you’ll have a pub within walking distance. Or if there are 4000 ppl within driving distance of you, good chance you’ll have a pub within driving distance. And so on for the rest…
One of the really interesting things about reading this thread is noticing how these places clearly mean different things to different people.
Like one person says how “can somebody not want a pub in their neighborhood?” A pub and a bar might not mean the same thing to everyone. To some people a bar might mean something much closer to a night club and a pub something much closer to a restaurant.
Gas station doesn’t mean convenience store to me AT ALL. To me it’s only a place for buying gas. I would never go to one unless I was buying gas at the same time.
Is what I call a green grocer/fruit market what other people call a grocery store?
The questions abound…
I can get to everything except the hospital, mall, movie theatre, and University in twenty minutes. If I use public transport I can get to those in about half an hour.
