[HN Gopher] Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you...
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Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk
Author : sebg
Score : 199 points
Date : 2023-02-10 14:50 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nathenry.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nathenry.com)
| mdorazio wrote:
| >Of the 89 neighborhoods considered, only nine are "15-minute
| neighborhoods" walkable for 90% or more of their residents.
|
| I'd love to see the median rent in those nine compared to
| elsewhere in the city. Can any Seattle residents here provide
| some insight?
| WaxProlix wrote:
| Downtown (CBD): Expensive
|
| International District: Euphemism for Chinatown, not expensive
|
| Pioneer Square: It varies, but fairly expensive despite the
| rampant homelessness
|
| Pike Place Market: Very expensive
|
| Ballard: Expensive new buildings, more affordable older ones
|
| Capitol Hill: Expensive, generally
|
| South Lake Union: Expensive
|
| Madrona: Expensive
| chamanbuga wrote:
| Living in ID is not a choice, but a necessity when other
| options fail.
| balls187 wrote:
| Until it gets gentrified like previous neighborhoods.
|
| Other neighborhoods missing:
|
| Fremont
|
| Wallingford
|
| Georgetown
|
| Columbia City
|
| Rainer Beach
|
| Northgate
|
| W. Seattle
|
| Queen Anne
|
| Belltown
|
| Magnolia
|
| S. Seattle
|
| Ravenna
|
| Beacon Hill
|
| South Park
|
| Leschi
|
| Madison Park
|
| Northlake
|
| Greenwood
|
| And a bunch more places that non-transplants know about...
| simplyluke wrote:
| I'm familiar with all of these neighborhoods as a < 5
| year transplant, and several are not particularly
| walkable neighborhoods, certainly not by the definition
| proposed in the article. This is an odd thing to gatekeep
| on.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Missing from what? Pretty sure they were all listed in
| the article.
| wenc wrote:
| > International District: Euphemism for Chinatown, not
| expensive
|
| It's not a euphemism. Euphemism refers to a word that
| conceals something unpleasant or embarrassing. It is anything
| but. It is working class yes but nothing wrong with that.
|
| The full name (since 1999) is Chinatown-ID. The majority of
| the inhabitants are Chinese but it encompasses Little Saigon
| and the less prominent but still existing Japantown
| (Uwajimaya and several Japanese businesses still have a
| presence).
| WaxProlix wrote:
| You are technically correct, the most socially isolating
| kind of correct.
|
| If you can think of a word with different, or fewer
| connotations I'll gladly swap it in. Mea culpa for the
| hasty pasting, though.
| wenc wrote:
| I appreciate the reply and suggest just stating that it
| is Chinatown-International District with no additional
| adjectives other than expensive (or not) like you did
| with the other neighborhoods listed.
|
| I have a connection with the C-ID and it is a
| neighborhood like any other and is in my opinion one of
| the more vibrant neighborhoods food-wise in Seattle
| despite (or due to it?) being working class.
| Rediscover wrote:
| > Pike Place Market: Very exspensive.
|
| And also extremely on the other side - Market housing can be
| very low-cost. A number of my friends are paying < $300/month
| for some nice/decent apartments with a very long wait-list.
|
| Cf: the apartments under the Market and Stewart House.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| That's income restricted senior housing, isn't it?
| [deleted]
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Madrona probably doesn't have anywhere to rent, it's just
| enormous old houses. 6 of the 9 are downtown+surrounds, all
| very expensive. Ballard and Green Lake are going to be the
| cheapest on the list, and I would guess they're in the most
| expensive quarter of neighborhoods?
| lph wrote:
| It's not about rent so much as density. Seattle has this "urban
| village" concept where designated areas have zoning that allows
| apartment buildings and usually has a commercial strip. I'd
| guess the urban village map [1] overlaps the 15-minute zones
| pretty closely.
|
| Outside of the urban villages, Seattle is comprised of
| neighborhoods of single-family homes. Those areas can't all be
| 15-minute walkable because catchement areas don't have the
| population needed to support those amenities.
|
| But it's also certainly a class issue. The people walking to
| the grocery store are mainly the poor, students, and a small
| core of idealists who go out of their way to live a "city
| lifestyle". Everybody else drives everywhere. Which has a
| strange effect that wealthier neighborhoods are less likely to
| have things like a pharmacy, because the wealthier are in the
| habit of driving everywhere. I get my prescriptions filled at
| Costco, five miles from my house, even though the closest
| pharmacy is one mile.
|
| [1]
| https://i.pinimg.com/736x/87/cd/9f/87cd9ffd44c33154445747de3...
| rileyphone wrote:
| The decision to leave libraries in the standard criteria made the
| numbers at the end meaningless for the most part - most libraries
| are barely open as it is, and should be accessible enough by bus
| regardless. Still a very cool visualisation for Seattle; I think
| this city has great potential for denser urban development, while
| still retaining its charm.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Do any Seattle-ites not have a car? How do you get around?
|
| Asking as a NYer who would consider living there if the car-free
| life wouldn't be too painful
| et-al wrote:
| I know folks who live in Seattle and they get around by bike
| fine.
|
| However they all own cars as well to go to the outdoors on the
| weekend. Feel like that's half the reason of living in Seattle.
|
| If nature is _not_ high on your priorities, I dunno why one
| would trade NYC for Seattle. State income tax?
| whateveracct wrote:
| There's a lot of fun places a 20-ish minute drive from Seattle.
| It's definitely worth it to have a car. And Tacoma is only 45
| minutes away.
| poly_morphis wrote:
| What's in Tacoma that would warrant a 45-minute drive?
| chamanbuga wrote:
| Living the car-free life in Seattle is depressing due to gloomy
| weather. Life in Seattle is great if you accept the grey and
| live outdoors as much as possible. For that you need a car.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| I was afraid that'd be the answer. Do you use your car for
| everything, or are you able to handle day-to-day stuff on
| foot and use the car mostly for adventures?
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| I don't drive and have been in Seattle for 15 years. I do
| carpool with friends to go skiing or camping out of the
| city, but day to day I used bike and transit for everything
| (until the pandemic, now I work from home and mostly just
| walk to nearby shops).
| noirbot wrote:
| I'm not sure that tracks? When I've visited Seattle with
| friends, I walk to almost everything, even in gloomy weather.
| I don't see how "living outdoors" requires a car - if
| anything, driving everywhere is the the opposite of living
| outdoors.
|
| Sure, if you want to go out to the mountains every weekend
| you need a car, but with a light rain-proof jacket, it's not
| too bad to walk or bike through much of the city. The grey
| weather is either depressing or not, but I don't find it to
| be much more depressing out of a car than in it.
| simplyluke wrote:
| This is the real answer. I walk/ride a bike a ton for about 7
| months of the year here. Winter months I am driving much more
| often than anything else. Standing around waiting for a bus,
| walking a mile+, etc in the pitch black when it's 40 degrees
| and raining is not fun and given the option of just driving I
| take it.
| mhink wrote:
| To be perfectly honest, although it's technically possible to
| go car-free here, it can be more trouble than it's worth.
| You'll be able to get to the essentials easily enough, but
| there are a long tail of places that you may want to get to
| which are only bus-accessible if you transfer- and that can add
| a ton of time to your trip.
|
| It's more realistic to think of Seattle as a city where you can
| be "car-light": it's entirely possible to go without driving
| during the week, assuming you commute by bus and have a small
| supermarket nearby to pick up dinner/essentials. Then, on the
| weekend, a vehicle can be super useful to fill in the gaps,
| whether that's going to the larger supermarket for bulkier
| goods, getting out of the city into nature, or going over to a
| distant neighborhood to check it out.
|
| Part of this is because of the city's geography- I might not
| mind (for instance) living in West Seattle and commuting by bus
| to downtown, but if I'm trying to go visit the Woodland Park
| Zoo up, I'd probably want to drive there because it would be a
| considerably longer trip involving a transfer in Downtown.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Yes, I've lived in Seattle without a car, that is easily
| achievable and many people do this. In the core, you can get
| around by walking since the weather is mild most of the year,
| you don't even need to use public transit. You can expand your
| footprint on light rail and buses, which has been slowly
| improving its range but many people don't use those if they are
| in the dense urban areas.
|
| The one gap is that Seattle is surrounded by very popular
| nature and outdoorsy activities up in the mountains or out on
| the islands. It is one of the major perks of living in Seattle.
| If you want to spend a lot of time wandering around the
| Cascades, you'll need a car. Some people that have a car use it
| almost exclusively for outdoors activities, not day to day
| living.
| aendruk wrote:
| Exactly, I have a $2k bicycle for daily use and a $1k jeep
| for getting outdoors. No concerns about leaving that at a
| trailhead overnight.
| solson4 wrote:
| I lived in Seattle from 2016-2020 and didn't have a car for
| about half that time. If your house and work are near a link
| stop you certainly don't need it, everything you'll need is in
| walking distance or a train ride away. Other than link and the
| rapid buses, there's good bus coverage, but it's _slow_ ,
| wouldn't want to rely on it IMO.
|
| Biking is not great. I did it a lot, but I'm comfortable riding
| through heavy traffic on steep hills, if you're not, probably
| would be hard to rely on.
|
| Finally, I'm big into climbing/mountaineering and lack of a car
| was never a big problem. I'd rent one the few times I had too (
| _way_ cheaper than parking and insurance), but otherwise could
| usually carpool with someone else who was going. Sorta ' puts
| you on someone else's schedule, but if you need a belay partner
| anyway...
| slillibri wrote:
| I've lived in Seattle for ~10 years and haven't owned a car the
| entire time. I use public transit, walk, or a Lyft to get
| around. I live in Belltown (5th and Vine) and in general all
| the places I need to get to are within walking distance. Even
| the international district is only ~20-30 minutes walk for me,
| or I can take the light rail.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| It depends where you live. I used to live in Belltown and did
| not have a car, this was just fine. But Belltown is right
| downtown so your choices are either very expensive newer
| buildings or older buildings that are somewhat affordable but
| kinda decrepit. But I'm now in the odd Queen Anne/Westlake
| border area and I think a car is pretty necessary, and if I
| were in the aggressively single-family zoned places like
| Magnolia it would be even more so.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| A friend of mine has lived in Seattle for about 8 years without
| a car so I have a pretty good idea what it's like. We both live
| in one of the 15 minute areas from this article.
|
| Public transportation is decent compared to most of the US (but
| worse than NYC obviously.) There are also lots of other ways to
| get around like Uber, scooters, bikes, and Gig cars (rental car
| you pick up and drop in public parking spots.)
|
| The biggest problem is getting to the mountains if that's your
| thing. That's the main reason I have a car.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Seeing the UK's implementation of 15 minute cities, where cars
| are locked down to zones, movement is tracked by ubiquitous
| camera surveillance, and residents have to apply for a special
| pass to leave their zone. Talk of 15 minute cities in the US
| makes me nervous.
|
| When we talk about 15 minute cities here, do we mean zoning
| changes to build things differently? Or are we talking about
| authoritarian enforcement?
|
| Edit: Okay maybe what I read was overblown. Seems this is being
| trialed in Oxford as "traffic filters" but the ubiquitous camera
| surveillance is certainly part of it. There is also talk of this
| expanding to other cities in the UK. Though not specifically
| talked about as apart of the 15 minute city plan, this seems to
| go along nicely with that concept.
|
| Edit: A source:
| https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2023/01/25/15-minute-city-plan...
| _Wintermute wrote:
| Are you talking about LTNs? They were initially turning some
| residential roads into cul-de-sacs to limit through traffic,
| but a minority of motorists feigned concern about emergency
| service access so many were replaced with no entry signs and
| cameras, now the same minority are feigning concern about a
| surveillance state?
|
| It's definitely non-locals using small resident roads as short
| cuts who are now slightly inconvenienced performing mental
| gymnastics.
| throwawaythrow1 wrote:
| As someone who lives in the UK, this is news to me. Can you
| substantiate this please?
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| I presume he's talking about the London congestion charge
| zone. Although he's certainly being melodramatic.
| m-watson wrote:
| I was just reading in Vice[0] about talk like this. I am
| not saying OP is necessarily saying this but it does seem
| similar.
|
| [0]
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7g898/walkable-15-minute-
| ci...
| Dig1t wrote:
| I admit that the way it was described to me was probably
| exaggerated, but this is what I'm talking about:
|
| https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23073992.traffic-
| filters-w...
|
| "People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and
| can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and into
| other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year. This
| equates to an average of two days per week."
|
| This is enforced with surveillance cameras.
|
| As I said in another comment: it does seem to me that
| enforcing movement like this and adding bureaucracy to drive
| through certain places is a solid step in the direction of
| authoritarianism.
|
| The article is titled "Traffic filters will divide city into
| "15 minute" neighbourhoods"
| eptcyka wrote:
| What are you on about?
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| The wingnut right thinks that "15-minute city" is a global
| Jewish conspiracy to lock everyone into defenseless small
| neighborhoods and then I dunno, aliens?
| Dig1t wrote:
| idk about conspiracies, I'm not talking about that. Here is
| an unbiased article describing the scheme:
|
| https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23073992.traffic-
| filters-w...
|
| "People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and
| can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and
| into other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year.
| This equates to an average of two days per week."
|
| This is enforced with surveillance cameras.
|
| I am saying that enforcing movement like this and adding
| bureaucracy to drive through certain places is a solid step
| in the direction of authoritarianism.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| It's unfortunate to mix surveillance with these other things.
| It's completely orthogonal to other things.
|
| (And yes, surveillance is real in London, but not the other
| things. You can also camera surveil sprawling, car oriented
| areas, and technology makes it cheaper every year.)
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| My family lives in the UK and they all own cars. None of them
| have ever had the experience that you're describing. Either
| you're confused, or making it up, or there's something
| happening as an experiment in a few cities that you're blowing
| out of proportion.
| Dig1t wrote:
| I admit that the way it was described to me was probably
| exaggerated, but this is what I'm talking about:
|
| https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23073992.traffic-
| filters-w...
|
| "People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and
| can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and into
| other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year. This
| equates to an average of two days per week."
|
| This is enforced with surveillance cameras.
|
| As I said in another comment: it does seem to me that
| enforcing movement like this and adding bureaucracy to drive
| through certain places is a solid step in the direction of
| authoritarianism.
|
| The article is titled "Traffic filters will divide city into
| "15 minute" neighbourhoods"
| Pxtl wrote:
| The toggleable map in there is _amazing_ and you can really see
| how it 's the schools and libraries letting the map down... which
| is distinct in that they're the government-provided services.
| Here in Ontario we had a knock-down fight like a decade ago as
| the province decided to save money by shutting down unneeded
| schools, ending a lot of locality in the school system... and
| ever since the school boards have been scrambling to deal with
| insufficient bus-drivers as they effectively offloaded the
| problem onto the busing system.
|
| Aside, the conspiracy-theory right has decided that "15 minute
| city" is another "agenda 21" conspiracy to force all westerners
| to live in tiny urban walled ghettos, and traveling outside of
| your "15-minute-city" will be illegal. And of course, the
| mainstream right media has been feeding this monster by treating
| walkability as some nefarious conspiracy but without explicitly
| mentioning the most insane tinfoil-hat parts of it.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| I would say that the right wing conspiracy theory is half being
| locked in a ghetto, and the other half just who you're being
| locked in with, given right wing views on immigration and the
| "police abolition" movement.
| pclark wrote:
| Great work!
|
| I live in West Seattle and tbh the maps for West Seattle look
| pretty solid, especially when you factor in the significant
| reduction in housing costs. I remain more people don't live here!
| jdlyga wrote:
| Anyone else torn between wanting to live in a 15 minute city and
| in a log cabin in the woods?
| monktastic1 wrote:
| I've always felt that South Lake Tahoe is my ideal town for
| this reason. You can get a 15 minute cabin in the woods!
| trgn wrote:
| Yes!
|
| Both are not trashed up by cars. That's the relationship.
|
| I think that's the main reason why the escape-to-the-woods
| fantasy is so strong in the US. It's an escape from car
| dependent drab. You don't have to flee to the woods for
| serenity; urban environments can feel spacious and verdant. But
| those will always be walkable, have calm traffic, or no cars at
| all.
| chabons wrote:
| Interesting how the visualization highlights the Eastlake and
| Montlake neighborhoods (along the south bank of the canal
| northeast of downtown) as walkability outliers. When I was newer
| to the Seattle area and looking for housing I did a similar
| exercise and charted the location of grocery stores. I was
| surprised that those neighborhoods just didn't have any grocery
| stores, especially given their proximity to downtown and the UW.
| Given the amount of investment the city/state is making to
| improve the WA-520 corridor (the east-west highway which goes
| through there) for cars and pedestrians, I wonder if that's going
| to change in the near future.
| bradford wrote:
| > I was surprised that [Eastlake and Montlake] just didn't have
| any grocery stores ... Given the amount of investment the
| city/state is making to improve the WA-520 corridor
|
| Montlake had a small grocery store that was torn down precisely
| because of the 520 construction. (I can't speak for Eastlake).
|
| 520 is a highway after all, and highways are hostile to
| walkability for a multitude or reasons. (this fact still
| remains, even though efforts are being made to improve the
| situation in Montlake).
| chabons wrote:
| > Montlake had a small grocery store that was torn down
| precisely because of the 520 construction.
|
| Right, I forgot about the Montlake Market. That closed before
| my search, but I did hear about it.
|
| > 520 is a highway after all, and highways are hostile to
| walkability for a multitude or reasons
|
| Yeah, that's fair. I'd argue that 520 in it's final
| incarnation will be a little bit less hostile than most, as
| it's mostly over water, and the lids over the 2 land
| crossings (with parks + transit) will partially mitigate the
| walkability concerns. It'll still be a noisy eyesore though.
|
| Geographically, Montlake is in a pretty desirable location.
| It will have quick transit connections to downtown
| Seattle+SLU, UW (and light rail), and the eastside. I imagine
| the future only blocker to development will be zoning and
| pushback from existing residents.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| The 520 construction took out a gas station and a small but
| varied grocery store on the south side of the highway. I
| believe the Montlake library was a drug/grocery store long ago.
| And there used to be gas stations at 24th and Boyer.
|
| Currently I'd guess the grocery options are Monts, Little Lago,
| Eastlake market, and Petes. But I doubt many people do all
| their shopping at any of those they are closer to convenience
| stores than grocery stores.
| Scuds wrote:
| lol the busses don't go through Laurelhurst. why not? Oh, people
| who ride the bus don't live there.
| teucris wrote:
| Incredible analysis! As a Seattleite I can say the conclusions
| here are very close to accurate, with the key additional note
| being that distance is not the only thing that defines
| walkability.
|
| Seattle has some of the most confounding civil engineering I've
| ever seen, and I've lived in five cities and visited dozens more.
| Here are some things that make a pedestrian life near impossible
| in my neighborhood:
|
| - two high-traffic, multi-lane streets where people routinely run
| red lights and drive erratically, one dividing us from my child's
| elementary school
|
| - Many areas with no sidewalks and no area on the side of the
| road that's safe to walk
|
| - 5-way intersections with extremely confusing walk signals.
| MivLives wrote:
| It's interesting how variable that is depending where you are.
| The area I live in Seattle will have people wave you through
| the stop sign if you're a pedestrian, has side walks on every
| street, and is grid based except where i5 runs through.
| watermelon59 wrote:
| Seattle has _so many_ intersections that are completely
| bonkers. They're not only poorly walkable, they also make
| driving extremely stressful.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Seattle's street plan is so stupid it has its own wikipedia
| article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_layout_of_Seattle
|
| >These three grid patterns (due north, 32 degrees west of
| north, and 49 degrees west of north) are the result of a
| disagreement between David Swinson "Doc" Maynard, whose land
| claim lay south of Yesler Way, and Arthur A. Denny and Carson
| D. Boren, whose land claims lay to the north (with Henry
| Yesler and his mill soon brought in between Denny and the
| others):[2] Denny and Boren preferred that their streets
| follow the Elliott Bay shoreline, while Maynard favored a
| grid based on the cardinal directions for his (mostly flat,
| mostly wet) claim. All three were competing to have the
| downtown built on their land.
| goostavos wrote:
| Queen Anne has a 7-way stop! The first time I encountered it
| I was thoroughly stumped. Actually, I'm still stumped years
| later every time I go through it. At some point, I just
| commit and hope for the best.
| bears-n-beets wrote:
| Ha, I pass through this stop on my work commute. Glad to
| see it getting recognition as being completely bonkers.
| It's not easy to keep track of the order in which the six
| other cars arrived at the intersection. Most of the time
| someone just slowly inches forward until it seems everyone
| else agrees it's that person's turn and then they floor it
| the rest of the way through. I'm surprised there aren't
| more accidents here. It's on a hill, too.
| ruined wrote:
| here's an aerial video of the queen anne 7-way
| https://vimeo.com/124481186 (it's sped up, i recommend 0.5x
| speed)
| eastof wrote:
| I pity all those coming from the right side of the screen
| (I believe that is southbound but I avoid that
| intersection so I haven't driven through in a while) at
| ground level that's the scariest direction to come from.
| [deleted]
| calt wrote:
| Sounds like it used to function as something of a
| roundabout, and America forgotten how to navigate yielding
| to traffic coming from a relative direction (i.e. people
| already in the roundabout from your left) instead of
| someone always having the right of way, or the weird turn-
| taking stress of an all-way stop.
| buildbot wrote:
| If they are talking about the intersection I think, a
| roundabout would not work because some inputs are major
| road offramps, others are side streets, and the
| intersection is basically super narrow as all of them
| merge together. There just would not be enough space!
| eastof wrote:
| No, this area has a ton roundabouts, this was just poor
| planning. Supporting your point about Americans not
| knowing how to use them though, I see many people cut
| these roundabouts in this neighborhood. Meaning they will
| just turn left directly instead of actually going around.
| This is super scary when they're going fast and you're
| coming from the street they're turning into.
| patja wrote:
| Seattle proper has no proper/modern roundabouts.
|
| It has hundreds of traffic calming circles which are
| often confused with roundabouts, but are not in the same
| class. Roundabouts have dividers at each entry/exit point
| which are lacking in neighborhood traffic calming
| circles.
|
| https://wsdot.wa.gov/travel/traffic-safety-
| methods/roundabou...
|
| Technically you can go any way around a traffic calming
| circle you want to, because they are too small to
| accommodate delivery trucks going counterclockwise. It is
| highly recommended to go counterclockwise if you can, but
| not legally required. They have no more legal
| significance than a speed bump.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| This stuff boggles the mind. Make a way to get around
| that's easier, realize it's too easy and causing
| problems, so then hobble it ineffectively-- thus creating
| frustration but also retaining the danger. All the while
| watching ads about 300 hp luxury work trucks and "sport"
| vehicles. What a bizarre slice of modern life.
| mjevans wrote:
| Roundabout; Cars in the roundabout ALREADY have the right
| of way. Everyone entering is yielding to the street
| they're T-ing into. Exit, in theory, is from right of way
| into a dedicated path.
|
| Only self driving cars, or better licensing tests for
| drivers can save us from this. Every N years drivers
| probably should need to re-test, including a physical
| practical test in a standard unit (from the DMV) for
| parking and to see how the driver responds if driving a
| rental car that they aren't familiar with.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Do you guys not have red light cameras?
|
| Australia has them everywhere so running a red light is
| almost never seen.
| loeg wrote:
| We do not have many red light cameras, although there is
| some recent talk of increasing them. There are a handful.
| loeg wrote:
| Where do you encounter roads that lack sidewalks and are also
| unsafe to walk on? I've frequently experienced the former in
| Seattle, but usually they're very low speed residential streets
| that are safe to just walk on. The only real counterexample I
| can think of is 5th Ave NE by the golf course.
| dweinus wrote:
| Basically anywhere in District 5, including some of Aurora:
| https://www.knkx.org/2015-election/2015-10-23/in-seattles-
| si...
| loeg wrote:
| "And are also unsafe to walk on," though? Most of those are
| residential streets with low traffic. I lived in that area
| and ran around somewhat regularly for several years. The
| street I mentioned as the worst one is in that district.
| :-)
| shidoshi wrote:
| The QA 7-way is nightmare fuel. I hate it. I hate going through
| it every-single-time I'm forced to.
| hinkley wrote:
| Stuck in traffic I often wondered why downtown Seattle is in
| the worst spot possible on the east side of Puget Sound. For a
| small town it's a fine spot, for a major metropolitan area it's
| right at the chokepoint of a narrow north-south corridor.
|
| That may be one of the reasons. If you're in Kent and you want
| to sell strawberries to Everett you basically have to go
| through Seattle. The other is that Seattle originally was going
| to be founded in West Seattle, but the weather was so bad they
| moved off the peninsula but in the lee of it. The Port of
| Seattle is built into a river delta that was probably only
| traversible in the mid 1900's so just moving to the lee side
| would have not helped with access.
|
| But here we are 150 years later with a city built like a
| corset.
| pchristensen wrote:
| After West Seattle, the city built up around the area where
| the stadiums are. Capitol Hill was called that because they
| were going to put the Washington state capitol there, but
| decided not to because it was too far from "Seattle". That
| should give some idea of how small the city was. There were
| single digit thousand white people in the entire area at that
| time. The width of the isthmus was not a problem at that
| time.
|
| The reason the city picked that spot is because it had the
| best deep water access on Elliott Bay.
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| And my personal favorite:
|
| Street traffic is allowed through Pike Place Market.
|
| Every weekend I have a grand old time in the market, watching
| tourists make the worst mistake of their visit, their rental
| car crawling at 1mph through probably the largest tourist
| attraction in the PNW.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Right where they throw the fish? I've only been to Pike Place
| Market a few times, but there's a little road there that
| looked like an absolute nightmare if you inadvertently turned
| down it.
| TheDesolate0 wrote:
| [dead]
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| As the mental health and drug crisis grows, I simply don't want
| to walk anywhere, and don't want my family walking places. Plus,
| it's incredibly inconvenient to do grocery shopping on foot. Yes,
| I know that people do it and it's possible and I've done it when
| living elsewhere.
|
| Still, this 15-minute city is an initiative created by the WEF
| which should be ignored and not implemented. If the WEF is so
| concerned about the "carbon footprint" of regular citizens
| driving to work and to the store, a much more effective solution
| would be to ban private jets. Bill Gates' flight to Davos on a
| private jet (to urge people to eat fake meat) exhausts more
| carbon in one trip than my family's entire car usage.
| buildbot wrote:
| It's really much safer than it used to be to walk anywhere than
| it was in the 80s or 90s... Sometimes you have to be street
| smart and maybe walk across the road to avoid some sketchiness,
| but by and large violent crime and muggings are not really a
| thing. I walk to the grocery store nearly every day, the most
| potentially lethal part is crossing the street (because of
| cars) by far.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>As the mental health and drug crisis grows, I simply don't
| want to walk anywhere, and don't want my family walking places.
|
| Good point. There is very little motivation to make cities more
| 'walkable', if your walk requires stepping in or over human
| feces and discarded needles and homeless people camped out on
| the sidewalk. That problem needs to be fixed first before there
| is going to be widespread support for proposals like this.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Good news - allowing people to build more housing in cities
| achieves _both_ outcomes.
| calt wrote:
| I think that the two go hand-in-hand. In car-centric America,
| if you can't meet the minimum of a car, then you can't live
| there. So you migrate to the city where the cost of a roof is
| artificially high.
|
| And having more livable cities in America are exactly what we
| need to help solve the problem.
| goodpoint wrote:
| More like 51 minutes. Of driving.
| mattpallissard wrote:
| I used to work with Nat at IHME. He and others there did great
| work in the global health space.
|
| I highly recommend playing around with some of the datasets and
| visualization tools.
|
| https://www.healthdata.org/data-tools-practices
| kyeb wrote:
| I'd be super interested to see an analysis using exactly the same
| methodology as this performed on various other cities (SF, NYC,
| LA, maybe some European cities like Amsterdam or Cologne) for
| comparison. I would bet Seattle is near the top for the US in
| walkability (probably behind NYC only)
| hiidrew wrote:
| it makes the top 10 according to this:
| https://www.walkscore.com/cities-and-neighborhoods/
|
| honestly surprised that SF is more walkable than NYC with this
| criteria
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I think that's because of where the city is defined. SF is
| just SF- it doesn't extend that far south and doesn't even
| include the east bay. NYC on the other hand includes big
| areas like east Queens and Staten Island that are effectively
| just suburbs.
|
| I've lived in both and if you're sort of near the core then
| NYC is much, much more walkable than SF.
| Aunche wrote:
| SF is a much smaller city. Areas in NYC not connected to the
| subway tend not to be particularly walkable like Staten
| Island.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm guessing because NYC is not just Manhattan.
| Steltek wrote:
| I feel Boston is similarly handicapped in ratings by West
| Roxbury (limited transit and bike hostile residents).
| ghaff wrote:
| Discussions of urban density often require nuance because
| density/walkability/access to transit/etc. is very
| dependent on where political boundaries are drawn--often
| for fairly arbitrary historical reasons.
|
| ADDED: For that matter, the other Boston neighborhoods
| out that way are not especially conducive to living
| without a car either although they're dense enough in
| spots to walking to some things.
| petetheheat wrote:
| SF top neighborhood: Tenderloin.
|
| ...starts to question list.
| tobiasdorge wrote:
| Based solely on the metrics of the site, walkability,
| bikeability, proximity to transit, based entire on map
| data... sure! The reality on the ground of course suggests
| walkability is... not great. Better than having a car there
| though.
| powersnail wrote:
| SF is walkable if elevation is not a problem for you. Some
| slopes are so steep that it's like hiking up a trail.
|
| At least it isn't like San Jose or Newark, where sidewalks
| just aren't there along some roads, in residential area, or
| suddenly cut short in the middle of a block where you have to
| walk back to the previous crossing for an alternative route.
| And there are _so many_ dead ends without warning. So many.
| ackfoobar wrote:
| Depending on the boundary of the city, it might not be an
| apple-to-apple comparison.
|
| I wonder if NYC will rank higher if Staten Island is
| excluded. Not that I have anything against it, just that
| judging from the heat map it is less walkable than the rest.
|
| It's similar in Canada too. Toronto is the megacity (1998
| amalgamation) including some suburbs; Vancouver does not
| include Richmond; Montreal has weird holes like Westmount.
| tobiasdorge wrote:
| I can't imagine Seattle being more dense than San Francisco,
| though I can imagine it's in the top 5
| 98codes wrote:
| Seattle isn't remotely dense. Maybe a neighborhood here &
| there, but it's largely single family homes for most of the
| city.
|
| Seattle doesn't make the top 133 for densest census
| designated places in the US*
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_
| b...
| brewdad wrote:
| Seattle is a weird hybrid that probably could be a model
| for what is realistic in the US. There a tons of walkable
| neighborhoods all over the city to provide daily
| necessities but you really do need a car to make that trip
| across town or even from one neighborhood to the next in
| some cases.
| noirbot wrote:
| Yea, the hills and water really mess up public transit
| routes in Seattle, making it a lot harder to get around
| by bus in any sort of efficient timeline, especially
| around the Queen Anne and Beacon Hill areas.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I'm going to venture an educated guess that proximity of things
| like grocery stores, restaurants and schools in urban areas is
| going to be highly correlated with income. Lower income
| neighborhoods are going to have gas stations and 7-Elevens/AMPMs.
| So an effort to make a true 15-min city should help improve
| quality of life and access to healthier food for lower-income
| residents. That would be a good thing.
| jsz0 wrote:
| Gas stations and corner stores also tend to have the highest
| prices. Climate change policy advocates are doing a real
| disservice to their cause by not being honest with people about
| the sacrifices/hardships these polices will cause in the short
| term. Deception is not a viable long term political strategy.
| purpleturtle22 wrote:
| If you take the corner store model as far as many European,
| NY, etc cities - You remove the $300-400+/mo cost of a car
| (ballparking here)
|
| Otherwise if the local shops are more expensive (in any
| meaningful way), consumers would simply drive the additional
| N miles to the Walmart Supercenter as things kind of are as
| is
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| A big part of the problem is that the U.S. doesn't have
| European-style local grocery stores (and if they do,
| they're expensive farmer market style boutiques in high-
| priced areas).
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Normal farmers markets, at least where I have lived, not
| expensive however (excluding your fancy small flock lamb,
| or whatever). Unfortunately they are not run every day,
| generally once per week. Olympia, Washington was an
| exception with a 4 day per week farmer's market.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Gas stations and corner stores also tend to have the
| highest prices.
|
| Yes, along with the least healthy food. Food poverty (in the
| sense of being unable to afford or access healthy food) is a
| very serious problem in America that contributes to the high
| numbers of unhealthy people and obesity rates. It's one of
| those things that isn't talked about enough, and certainly I
| don't read much about efforts to fix it.
| bitschubser_ wrote:
| this is a very US centric view and problem... in other
| countries lower income does not correlate with no access to
| local grocery shopping school etc... a german newspaper did a
| great income analysis of german cities [1]. You really see the
| differentiation in income, but if you overlay (at least for the
| cities I looked at) it with a map even in the low income
| neighborhood you get decent grocery shopping in walking
| distance (Lidl has also good organic produce/groceries) and
| schools and gyms etc...
|
| [1] https://www.zeit.de/community/2023-02/einkommen-deutsche-
| sta...
| elbigbad wrote:
| The article is about Seattle, which is currently a US city,
| so imho it's reasonable to have a US-centric view of the
| problem.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Yes, I was specifically referring to the US (since the
| article was about Seattle). I've lived in Europe / Asia and
| it's very different of course.
| kortilla wrote:
| Has any city been able to do that? With the current hands-off
| punishment of theft, stores have multiple incentives working
| against them to open in low income neighborhoods.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Is there a problem with thievery of apples, oranges,
| asparagus and beetroots? I don't have the numbers but I would
| bet money that most store thievery is cigarettes, alcohol,
| maybe sodas, and small electronics, pills at CVS, etc.
|
| So no, I don't think theft is the major factor.
| ahoy wrote:
| Retail theft as a new/major issue is mostly a lie, told by
| corporations and parroted by the media who love a crimewave
| story, even if its fabricated.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-
| shopli...
| HEmanZ wrote:
| If you google the New Yorker and Atlantic articles on
| shoplifting issues in the US, you get a slightly more
| nuanced take combining them all.
|
| What I take away is that retail theft 1) is technically on
| the rise, mostly due to the ability to then sell those
| goods online, including on Amazon 2) It doesn't impact
| major retail chains by much, basically they do what they've
| always done and just adjust prices. It actually helps
| amazon on some other online sellers. BUT 3) it definitely
| contributes to how shitty it is to actually work retail 4)
| AND it will influence where places like Walgreens set up
| shop (I'm neutral on this, I would rather have a bunch of
| local corner stores than walgreens)
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Really neat visualization. Would love to see it for other cities
| (perhaps Paris would be a good one for comparison, since it's
| touted as the fifteen-minute city par excellence).
| david927 wrote:
| I don't see how Paris is the best example. I would nominate
| Zurich.
|
| Strangely, I live with my wife and daughter in Boise, Idaho and
| we don't own a car. The high school, my work, grocery stores,
| etc. are all within a short walk.
| ahoy wrote:
| Almost every town in the US used to have these kinds of
| livable zones. Every "historic downtown" used to be a place
| where people lived and worked. You'd walk to the pharmacy, or
| the hardware store, or the grocery. You could live your whole
| live without a car payment yoked around your neck.
|
| It bums me out that we had that taken from us. I'm glad you
| found one of the places where you can still make it work!
| __derek__ wrote:
| Cool map. If you select Elementary schools and all of the
| amenities except Link stations, the map basically highlights
| Seattle's Urban Villages (plus a few extras).[1]
|
| [1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
| news/politics/seattles-... (using this for the nice map image
| because Seattle insists on publishing hulking PDFs)
| ruined wrote:
| the supermarket map discounts a some of the very good corner and
| ethnic groceries that serve specific neighborhoods, which are a
| worthwhile and important (and imo better) segment of the grocery
| market. and some of the "no restaurant" locations definitely
| contain restaurants.
| battery_glasses wrote:
| This underscores how important small businesses are to the health
| of a city.
|
| I live a in less walkable neighborhood on this map - but about a
| year ago a small (tiny really, ~700sqft) corner store opened up 2
| blocks from me. It sells coffee, pastry, simple sandwiches, but
| also pantry staples (flour, sugar, milk etc.) and has a really
| good beer and wine selection.
|
| I can't do my normal grocery shopping there, but being able to
| walk 2 minutes to get coffee or a quick breakfast or that missing
| stick of butter for a recipe has been such a wonderful change to
| the neighborhood. (btw this store is not reflected on the map for
| coffeeshops or groceries.) They also host food trucks several
| days a week so its almost like having a restaurant in the
| neighborhood too.
|
| All it took was 1 little store, owned and operated by a couple
| who lives in the neighborhood, to turn a 20 minute neighborhood
| into a 5 minute neighborhood for several thousand people.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| > (btw this store is not reflected on the map for coffeeshops
| or groceries.)
|
| Why not fix that? Submit it to OSM, Apple Maps, or Google Maps
| or all three.
| battery_glasses wrote:
| It shows up on all 3, I think it might be a labeling issue.
| My guess is that its a classified as a "convenience store",
| but in reality its closer to a coffeeshop and bottleshop that
| sells pantry items.
| hammock wrote:
| The way "supermarkets" are in the US, I don't WANT to be a 15
| minute walk from one. They are usually surrounded by a mile of
| blacktop and concrete, for all the drive-in shoppers in the front
| and all the trucks offloading goods or picking up deliveries in
| the back.
|
| Would much rather be near a decent small or midsize grocery with
| no or limited off-street parking, and which receives its
| deliveries on the street in the early morning (no loading dock)
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| All of the grocery stores in the core of Seattle are exactly
| like that--urban centers with underground parking. Some even
| have apartments on top of them so you could live above the
| store if you desired.
| dmoy wrote:
| I guess that depends on your definition of "core of Seattle".
| There's definitely grocery stores in ID, Wallingford, UW
| area, etc that all don't have underground parking and have
| outdoor lots taking up a lot of space.
| superfrank wrote:
| I wouldn't say all. In the downtown core, most are (some in
| the ID are not), but once you start getting out of the more
| urban neighborhoods, it's hit or miss. West Seattle, North
| Seattle, and South Seattle all have plenty of supermarkets
| that are large one story buildings in the middle of a big
| parking lot.
| karmelapple wrote:
| And in some places it's illegal to build something like
| that. Zoning laws can be so restrictive, even in urban
| areas like those you mention.
|
| I think supermarkets becoming 4-over-1 buildings with
| living places above them would be fantastic. Walk down to
| the first floor to get your groceries, walk them up to your
| home.
| BryantD wrote:
| Can confirm. This is also true in the denser areas outside
| the core. Ballard has a couple of large supermarkets with a
| lot of parking (although one of them is likely to get
| purchased and turned into a light rail station), but it also
| has several supermarkets that fit the urban core description.
| Fremont has an urban core supermarket right in the middle of
| the neighborhood; the U District has one coming.
| epistasis wrote:
| There's nothing I hate more than a massive massive super
| market, offering the same variety of products as a decent sized
| store but with wiles filled with many feet and entire shelves
| with exactly the same product. So much pointless walking,
| hunting, and searching for so little benefit.
|
| My favorite grocery store is about 1/4 to 1/5 of the typical
| supermarket like a Safeway, because it has all the same
| products without all the fluff. And an actual real butcher
| counter with plenty of on staff butchers, instead of row upon
| row of prepackaged cuts.
| inpdx wrote:
| I have sympathy for the argument, but a lot of people can't
| afford to spend the extra money a smaller store charges.
| gtk40 wrote:
| I haven't spent a lot of time in Seattle so I can't comment
| there, but in my experience urban supermarkets are more likely
| to have a parking lot underneath the building or in general
| have less parking than a suburban supermarket.
|
| Example: https://goo.gl/maps/AeXZhm6ZfYntEE1p7
| crowbahr wrote:
| That's what the supermarket in Lower Queen Anne looked like
| when I lived in Seattle.
| Rediscover wrote:
| Out of curiosity, which one: QFC or Safeway?
| skt5 wrote:
| both
| teucris wrote:
| Seattle has a mix of these. In my neighborhood, the closest
| supermarket has a gigantic parking lot. I never think of
| walking there.
| Arelius wrote:
| But in contrast, the QFC on Broadway in Capital Hill for
| instance, has no above-ground parking lot. And is very
| walkable.
| muricula wrote:
| There's actually a parking lot above the QFC. There's
| also a solid ramen place and a drugstore up there.
| yayadarsh wrote:
| I assume they are talking about the _other_ QFC on
| Broadway (north of the Pike St one)
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| San Francisco & Washington DC are USA cities in which I've
| lived that I enjoyed walking to & from the supermarket. I'd be
| fine walking 20 minutes each way, carrying a couple bag on
| groceries home with me. Those cities are very walkable, and by
| walkable I mean interesting.
| ahoy wrote:
| Well yeah, a "15-minute-city" kinda precludes the 10-acres-of-
| asphalt style development.
|
| I live in brooklyn, exactly the kind of city described. I'm
| within a 10 minute walk of at least 4 grocery stores, none of
| which have a parking lot at all.
| upon_drumhead wrote:
| The IGA in downtown Seattle is a great example of how it should
| be. It's just a standard store front on the block that goes
| down a level to a normal sized grocery store. No huge parking,
| and in fact, I walked past it for years before realizing it was
| a grocery store.
| slillibri wrote:
| That store closed last year, I believe. That entire block of
| 3rd is a deserted wasteland now.
| allturtles wrote:
| This comment seems to be based on a misconception of what
| "supermarket" means. These days supermarket pretty much ==
| grocery store. The grocery stores that existed before
| supermarkets (with limited selection, probably no meat
| department, maybe no self-service, maybe no prices listed on
| the items) don't exist anymore. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarket.
|
| edit: this is in a U.S. context, I don't know how these terms
| are used in other English-speaking countries
| [deleted]
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Does this fit your definition of the kind of grocery store
| that doesn't exist anymore? They have a few misc. items, but
| it's almost all just food, and a fairly small building.
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/KSnn5Fq37DQwiSpAA
| ghaff wrote:
| You do see smaller, usually not great, markets located
| especially in more rural areas. Sometimes they're
| affiliated with one of the bigger chains like Hannaford's.
| vel0city wrote:
| That's definitely closer to my idea of a "grocery" versus a
| "supermarket". It seems like I see them in some small older
| towns but anything that had a lot of recent construction
| usually sees larger supermarkets with big parking lots even
| for small towns.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| There's a Dollar General nearby but the parking lot isn't
| that big.
| allturtles wrote:
| No, it doesn't fit the pre-supermarket definition. It's
| self-service, prices are labeled, it has a selection of
| various items in each category, it has a meat department.
| Plus it has the word supermarket in the name.
|
| This is what a pre-supermarket grocery store looked like: h
| ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grocery_store#/media/File:1909
| ...
| JieJie wrote:
| That's actually what kills walkability in my neighborhood, the
| ridiculous acreage of parking lots in North Seattle near 130th
| and Aurora Ave. Most of my neighbors are in senior housing and
| are pretty much afraid to cross the street, so the three
| grocery stores a block away might as well be on the moon.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| It's different in most parts of NYC, they're more like what
| you're describing as wanting (and I agree with you). The
| original supermarket in my neighborhood, about a block away,
| has no parking and a loading zone in front of it to receive
| shipments. I've always liked these regular NYC supermarkets.
|
| A Whole Foods moved in down the street a few years back and
| they do have a parking garage under the building, but I'd guess
| most customers aren't using that. I wouldn't be mad if it went
| away tomorrow though.
|
| We're of course a very different city than pretty much all
| other cities in the US, as we're not at all car dependent in
| most parts of the city.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _The way "supermarkets" are in the US, I don't WANT to be a
| 15 minute walk from one._
|
| In a walkable neighbourhood, they'd just be a store front:
|
| *
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/197+Roncesvalles+Ave,+Toro...
|
| *
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/1435+King+St+West+Toronto,...
|
| Or at the very least, much smaller:
|
| *
| https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6395232,-79.4172267,3a,75y,3...
| rhino369 wrote:
| Chicago neighborhoods on the near north side (which are some
| of the most walkable in America) have large supermarkets.
| They just have parking garages (either above or below them).
| They are slightly smaller than suburban ones, but not that
| much.
|
| Whole foods has plenty of them in all big cities.
|
| It's just a cultural reason why some cities lack them--
| probably because people don't cook at home as much in NYC,
| for example.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| In NYC it's more a combination of lack of suitable lot
| sizes, and rent per sq ft. Supermarket buildings easily
| require 10,000 sq ft.
|
| There is also very heavy competition from more traditional
| markets, like those found in Chinatown with very cheap meat
| and produce prices.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| I live on top of a large supermarket, and did at my old
| building. It's absolutely awesome. No parking lot at all, but
| why would you need one? It's always packed.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Many of the supermarkets in the urban areas of Seattle have no
| surface-level parking lots and some have no parking lots at
| all. They are mixed in with all the other store fronts.
| costcofries wrote:
| I'm not American but I really agree with this comment. Each
| time I do go to America, everything just feels very.. American.
| Lots of concrete, big vast spaces of industrial, roads that
| seem far too wide and just overall very, overwhelming and big.
|
| Just my personal observations of course.
| ejb999 wrote:
| True in a lot of areas in the USA, but someday when you are
| in the US explore some of the less populated areas in small
| to mid-sized towns, far away from the major population areas.
|
| Sometimes I think people that grew up in, and live in a big
| city forget that not everyone in the USA lives like that.
|
| There are still a tremendous amount of beautiful places in
| all 50 states.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| I grew up in a rural area of upstate NY with a very low
| population... but still has the same "overbuilt, overwide,
| overfast" road problems.
|
| I've lived in a few US cities since then; of them, NYC was
| the only place that didn't feel built for cars more than
| humans. But NYC still feels like humans have been pushed
| "out of the way" in favor of car traffic in many places,
| especially outside of lower Manhattan.
|
| I currently live in a small New England town that does an
| OK job at "human" infrastructure because it was originally
| built for walking and there just aren't enough cars to ruin
| things for pedestrians. But I would love to hear
| suggestions of other not-cities in the USA that are
| walkable, bikeable, and not car-dominated. I've been
| considering buying a home to combat out-of-control rising
| rent prices and walkability is a requirement for me, so I
| love adding new areas to my list.
| costcofries wrote:
| I don't doubt this and I've seen some of it firsthand! I
| only meant to compare the larger cities of Canada and
| America and the observed differences. Each of our lands has
| their own distinct beauties.
| Spivak wrote:
| America really lost the cultural victory here. In pretty much
| anywhere else in the world a place's unique atmosphere,
| customs, architecture and way of organizing would be
| generally respected even if to an outsider it's unfamiliar or
| odd.
|
| You see this idea everywhere, it's not "corn is one America's
| staple crops and the use of corn syrup which is sweeter and
| more abundant than cane sugar gave Americans a preference for
| the very sweet" but "Americans with their unrefined pallets,
| unhealthy diets, and obesity crisis put heaps of sugar in
| everything."
| jdlyga wrote:
| I live in an apartment complex that has a full-sized grocery
| store in it in the US. It's actually not what you think. The
| grocery store and shops are on the bottom, with 5 floors of
| apartments on top. There's no big giant parking lot, but a
| parking garage that's built into the apartments. Shoppers park
| in the 1st floor of the garage (free for shoppers). It's a very
| walkable area, since it's about 500 feet from a riverside
| pedestrian path connected to tennis courts and a nice park.
| It's a little bit of a unique situation since it's across the
| river from a major city, and most people (rich or poor) take
| the bus or ferry in instead of driving.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Is this in Jersey City, across the river from Manhattan? (you
| don't have to dox yourself if you don't want to, but
| everything you say matches what I saw living there,
| particularly the ferry)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Maybe is Seattle, where weather means you can have door/windows
| more often than not. But opinions change north/southern in
| places that alternate between heating and air conditioning.
| Noise is less of an issue and walking takes much more
| commitment. It was -15c last night outside my place. I would
| love to be 15min from a large supermarket. At the moment I am a
| 25m _drive_ from the nearest place selling bananas. Even if I
| biked, my food would likely freeze before getting home. And in
| summer (30c) I couldn 't buy meat/frozen food. Motorized
| transport to buy food isn't going away, at least not outside
| inner cities.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| You don't live in a city though.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| 15k people. It's spread out but is called a "city" on the
| sign. All the grocery stores are centralized and beside
| each other on the main drag.
| burnished wrote:
| Where I grew up we had the kind of huge parking lot stores you
| are talking about - where I live in Seattle now those dont
| exist. Some places have parking lots but none of them are big
| enough for a rousing game of hide and go seek.
| Brystephor wrote:
| I live in downtown Seattle. In the more dense urban areas such
| as Queen Anne and South lake Union the grocery stores aren't
| like that. They have underground parking and street parking. If
| you get into more residential areas such as Pinehurst, Lake
| City, etc then you find more grocery stores that are similar to
| what you're describing.
| com2kid wrote:
| > The way "supermarkets" are in the US, I don't WANT to be a 15
| minute walk from one. They are usually surrounded by a mile of
| blacktop and concrete, for all the drive-in shoppers in the
| front and all the trucks offloading goods or picking up
| deliveries in the back.
|
| I live in a walkable Seattle neighborhood. Accordingly, the
| "supermarkets" are not quite the mega-large stores they are in
| other parts of the city, and they have smaller parking lots
| accordingly.
|
| This is a generalization, but as a rule, Seattle is laid out on
| a grid system, and every 5 blocks there is a larger 2 lane road
| where the speed is 25 MPH instead of 20MPH. Grocery stores are
| generally on the corner of those larger blocks.
|
| > Would much rather be near a decent small or midsize grocery
|
| In my experience, prices are higher and the selection is very
| limited, so living near one of those doesn't present much
| benefit to me.
|
| Which is my next point, despite living walking distance to _3_
| grocery stores, I still typically drive a mile away to a larger
| store because prices there are 2 /3rds to 1/2 what they are at
| any of the stores close to me.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> ...despite living walking distance to 3 grocery stores, I
| still typically drive a mile away to a larger store
| because...
|
| A mobile consumer base, people with cars that can travel to
| potentially hundreds of retail options, is a backbone of
| American competition. Like cars or not, they empower
| consumers to defeat local monopolies. The next stage, pickup
| trucks, then empowers retailers to sell large products
| (appliances) to an enormous consumer base from a central
| location without dealing with transport companies and/or
| teamsters for local delivery.
| Zagill wrote:
| Nothing about cars specifically enables this. Building
| cities so that you have to drive to travel any significant
| distance, however, guarantees that you need a car to take
| advantage of competitive pricing. But that's self-
| apparent... Building dense cities that can be accessed by
| bike and on foot would have the same effect. Spreading out
| your city so that what could be a 15 minute walk is now a
| 15 minute drive isn't an improvement.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Building dense cities that can be accessed by bike and
| on foot would have the same effect.
|
| I love density, but, in my experience this is not true.
| London doesn't have a large competitive market of grocery
| stores. Neither does Boston or New York City.
|
| Density means higher real estate prices, that means
| grocery store sizes go down, and the barrier to entry
| goes up. Yes you can get more small specialty shops
| (which is great!) but I've had times where I've had to go
| to 3 different large supermarkets to find some oddball
| item I needed, and density would make that even harder on
| me since stores would have a smaller variety of stock.
|
| Of course the 2 largest grocery store chains in America
| are trying to merge, so very soon American cities won't
| have much competition either.
|
| I'm not saying density isn't good, it is, and it makes
| lots of shopping easier, but certain types of (uniquely)
| American retail experiences fall apart when cities become
| more dense.
|
| Heck Seattle already is dense enough that there is only 1
| Costco within the city limits, the density of Costco's in
| the suburbs surrounding Seattle is actually quite high!
| Prior to living in the city proper, I was a 15 minute
| drive from two Costcos! Now I am a 30 minute drive from
| one Costco. Since I don't have the time to go that far on
| a frequent basis for groceries, I am paying more for food
| living in a city that has more grocery stores around me,
| than I was when I lived in the suburbs.
| fineIllregister wrote:
| That doesn't match my experience in Boston.
|
| Multiple neighborhoods I lived in had walking access to
| Stop & Shop, Star Market, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods,
| Target, bfresh, cheap overstock/clearance stores, a
| farmers market, and other independent grocers, many
| catering to nationalities/ethnicities with large
| subcommunities in the area. Just a train or bus ride away
| I could go to Market Basket, Roche Brothers, Wegmans, a
| worker owned-co-op, and more farmers markets and
| independent grocers.
|
| Costco was a longer train ride away, but accessible if
| you wanted something specifically from there. Delivery is
| more economical because of the shorter distances
| involved.
|
| You can see this yourself by doing a map search.
|
| In rural areas I've lived, one is common, sometimes zero
| within a fifteen minute drive. Suburban areas might have
| two or three regional supermarkets, plus Walmart, Target,
| Costco and/or Sam's, but always way fewer within the area
| covered by the same travel time.
| com2kid wrote:
| May depend on the part of Boston, my wife used to live
| there and her area didn't have much, she was either
| walking a mile or taking the train to a different area.
|
| Different parts of Boston is incredibly varied though, I
| shouldn't have made a general statement.
| gen220 wrote:
| From NYC, within a 15 minute walk from my door:
|
| - Whole Foods
|
| - Key Food
|
| - 2-3 specialty grocers (think italian importers, etc.)
|
| - gourmet grocer
|
| - two butcher shops and a fresh fish shop
|
| - CVS (yes, they sell groceries! spooky)
|
| - 2-3 bodegas that sell shelf-stable goods, as well as a
| small collection of fruit and vegetables
|
| If you go expand it to 15 minute bike, the world is truly
| your oyster, but the primary one that pops up is Trader
| Joe's.
|
| The most remarkable part of this description, is that it
| identifies at least 4 or 5 different neighborhoods in
| NYC, those are only the ones I can think of off the top
| of my head, and I haven't been close to everywhere.
|
| There's a lot of things to knock about NYC, but it's
| easily the most walkable city in the US, that I've seen.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The Costco's are a result of bulk buying, which relies on
| motorized transport and easy at-home refrigeration, both
| very American things. The more European tradition of
| buying food multiple times per week is odd in America
| outside of a few downtown cores.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Huh? London has Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Morrisons,
| Aldi, Lidl, Asda, Co-op Food, Iceland and Marks & Spencer
| Food.
|
| Here's a map of all of them:
| https://maps.walkingclub.org.uk/shops/
|
| Alternative map: https://www.toptiplondon.com/food-
| drink/london-supermarkets-...
| com2kid wrote:
| When I was doing AirBnB[1] in London, I noticed that the
| vast majority of London's grocery stores were quite small
| compared to the stores in America. The small co-op near
| me is about the size of an average London grocery store,
| and the selection of stock is poor enough that I really
| can't get much shopping done there.
|
| London does have larger stores, but it isn't like in
| America where the average grocery store is, well, huge.
|
| (Obviously some chains such as Asda have larger stores!)
|
| On the west coast at least, American grocery stores are
| either small like Trader Joe's (Aldi sized I believe),
| tiny local ethnic stores, or you start getting into
| larger and larger categories that start at "really damn
| big" and end up at "you can get lost here".
|
| The "you can get lost here" sized stores typically have
| much cheaper prices, and families go there on weekends to
| buy essentials (meat, veggies) to stay on budget.
|
| All in all I'm not saying it is a bad thing, having a
| higher density of grocery stores is nice, it means going
| to the grocery store isn't a dedicated trip, but those
| cheap huge discount stores are very nice to have around.
|
| [1] I like to stay for awhile in the middle of cities so
| I can actually shop at local stores, cook some food
| myself, etc.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| But where is the calculation for all the effort to
| distribute food to all those tiny shops? It is comes in
| via truck/van often at night. Central large stores, with
| customers buying in bulk, means fewer trips. The total
| carbon/energy in the system isn't as simple as saying
| "walking is better". It may be that a monthly trip to
| fill a pickup with food is more _green_ than thirty daily
| trips to the corner shop by foot. Environmental concerns
| and modern lifestyle trends don 't always line up nicely.
|
| I Costco baker told me once that they used less
| preservative in bread than small bakers. Costco has such
| a high turnover that they don't need bread that can
| survive a whole day on the shelf. Same too with their
| vegetables that spend far less time in transit than they
| would getting to a tiny farmers market.
| Zagill wrote:
| 100s of people driving individual cars to get to a
| grocery store is absolutely less efficient than a couple
| dozen box trucks delivering food to smaller localized
| stores. Not to mention, we can electrify those delivery
| trucks and negate a lot of the carbon emissions. Even if
| you electrify all of those cars you still have the
| massive environmental impact of building and maintaining
| the roads and parking lots they have to use.
| Individualized auto transit is a blight. "Modern
| lifestyle trends" not lining up with environmental
| concerns is usually more of an issue of modern lifestyle
| trends being unsustainable.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| I can choose between 5 supermarkets in a walking distance.
| And they are all busy.
|
| America is just not denselly populated enough to really
| make it worth your while to build a supermarket ever 3
| miles. Too much empty space so people refuse to live
| efficiently.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| I look forward to the day when we all drive semi trucks to
| work so that we can journey cross country to stock up on
| goods and not have to deal with the corrupt long-haul
| trucking industry.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| I have a weakness for fresh food so stocking up once a
| month doesn't appeal to me.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Depends on definition of fresh. I like fresh bread and so
| make it at home. One can definitely bulk-buy ingredients
| for fresh bread.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Your food will be flash frozen to preserve taste and
| nutrition!
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Reminder that it only takes about 6 minutes to bike a mile,
| or 8 if you go at a leisurely Dutch pace. You don't need
| cars to go far enough to have quite a few options, you just
| need the infrastructure to let you do so.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Lol. Maybe is Seattle or SF. Biking in unplowed snow/ice
| is far slower, when it is even possible.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Unplowed? Sure, but cities should be plowing. Driving on
| unplowed snow/ice is also far slower. :)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The city doesn't plow the sidewalks and bike trails, at
| least not until the roads are passable. First priority is
| emergency services and highway connections to the outside
| world, not shovelling out bike trails through the woods.
| Even then, we drive on compact snow for 1/3 the year.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Then this goes back to what I said initially:
|
| > you just need the infrastructure to let you do so
|
| Yes, if your city treats cycling as an afterthought, it
| will be less practical to cycle. If your city treated
| driving as an afterthought, it would be less practical to
| drive. You get what you build for and what you
| prioritize.
|
| > Even then, we drive on compact snow for 1/3 the year.
|
| Oulu has snow for half of the year and still has a
| substantial cycling mode share, because they prioritize
| it: https://youtu.be/s3Sx_OH_wok
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Lots of alternative transport things are possible in
| cities with 10x the population and 4x the urban density.
| And little farming/agra business. In a country one can
| drive across in a day. There is no comparison to the
| middle parts of North America.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| We're talking about cities, so... the urban density of
| Oulu is 2,372/sq mi. The urban density of Indianapolis is
| 2,352.6/sq mi. Pretty comparable!
| canucker2016 wrote:
| But it seldom snows in Seattle, so they don't bother to
| invest in any snow-clearing infrastructure - the city
| just shuts down for a day or two after a mild snowstorm.
|
| San Francisco is known for its hills, but Seattle has
| some pretty bike-unfriendly hills as well, unless you've
| got an electric motor attached to your bike.
| [deleted]
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The more dense the area, the more likely you're in a 15 minute
| city and the more likely there is a supermarket with no big
| parking lot. Compare the Whole Foods in the UES Manhattan vs
| the Whole Foods in Manhasset.
| kenperkins wrote:
| Seattle is complex in this regard as the elevation changes
| between neighborhoods are an additional dimension. If I was
| living at the base of Lower Queen Anne and the "facilities"
| meeting the 15m criteria was at the top, that's not something I
| would consider a viable walk.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Seattle is complex in this regard as the elevation changes
| between neighborhoods are an additional dimension.
|
| And then there is the socio-economic history of elevations in
| Seattle. tl;dr Historically poor people (and minorities) lived
| at the bottom of hills, rich people at the top. To this day,
| you can literally see houses get nicer as you go up hills.
|
| There are also neighborhoods with a hill in the middle where
| one side of the hill was historically poor, and the other side
| well to do. My dad used to tell me that when he was a kid, him
| and all his friends knew not to go to up the hill where they
| didn't belong.
| harshalizee wrote:
| Well, today I can't afford to buy anything on either side of
| the hill on QA. Equality achieved! I'm only half kidding
| though.
| bialpio wrote:
| > (...) that's not something I would consider a viable walk.
|
| Why not? As long as it's truly a 15m walk? The metric should
| take into account that the speed is going to be reduced when
| walking on a steep incline, otherwise it's a bad metric...
| bears-n-beets wrote:
| You might change your mind if you saw how steep Queen Anne
| Hill is, haha
| karaterobot wrote:
| Was thinking about this too. A 2D distance map doesn't do it
| justice, really, because it ignores the non-trivial hill in the
| middle of your route.
|
| The other thing about Seattle is that you can have a grocery
| store nearby, but still not really have access to it if you're
| lower income. We have a lot of premium stores, especially in
| walkable neighborhoods. When I was a student I lived in
| Wedgwood, and I had 2 grocery stores within a 5-minute walk:
| the PCC, and the Metropolitan Market, both places where a
| week's groceries were about 2-3x as expensive as they were at
| the nearest Safeway, which was more than 15 minutes away.
|
| Not faulting the creator of this article, as it's an okay rule
| of thumb, and it's hard to include details like that in a
| model.
| beoberha wrote:
| I own a home very close to the PCC you're talking about and
| only ever go there if we forgot something in the large weekly
| grocery run we do at the QFC. Met Market isn't really an
| economical option either, but we do love their pre-made food
| options for when we don't feel like eating leftovers.
| karaterobot wrote:
| The way I describe Metropolitan Market to people outside
| Seattle is that it's a just a regular old neighborhood
| grocery store where you can choose from multiple varieties
| of foie gras. But it did have some cool stuff in it too,
| you're right about their pre-made stuff.
| jgust wrote:
| What's the difference between walking and hiking, elevation
| gain?
| duxup wrote:
| I like the idea of walking 15 minutes to get all the things.
|
| But man when I think of the costs involved in making sure there
| is a High School (in the US they tend to be large and draw from a
| distance) within 15 minutes of everywhere (no small cost to drop
| in a high school somewhere), or plop down a grocery store in a
| neighborhood ... that sounds both super expensive and politically
| difficult, and for some good reasons.
|
| Heck I'd be annoyed if someone decides "Sorry we're rezoning /
| creating an incentive to build a restaurant in the plot next to
| you, not enough restaurants nearby. Good luck..."
| dkarl wrote:
| You make a good point. Living in walkable neighborhoods means
| evacuating most of the country and concentrating ourselves in
| fewer, denser cities. It'll be a great thing to the extent we
| can accomplish it, but people have a strong attachment to place
| and to suburban lifestyles, and the shift will fuel the nasty
| culture war we already have.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > he costs involved in making sure there is a High School (in
| the US they tend to be large and draw from a distance) within
| 15 minutes of everywhere (no small cost to drop in a high
| school somewhere), or plop down a grocery store in a
| neighborhood ... that sounds both super expensive and
| politically difficult, and for some good reasons.
|
| A high school I understand (where I live in the UK it's common
| for high school kids to catch the bus to school if they don't
| live close - as long as you live within a 15 minute walk of the
| bus stop that seems fine). But a grocery store? What's
| difficult about that? Just convert a house.
| duxup wrote:
| Yup, kids busing to school is very common in the US too. I
| agree about a bus stop.
|
| Heck even suburban schools around me are trying to stop
| everyone from dropping off their kid with their car in
| person. It's just a hassle / traffic.
| dublinben wrote:
| That's the inevitable consequence of the local decisions
| that have made it dangerous or impossible to walk to
| school. Many school districts then see an opportunity to
| save money by charging families to ride the bus.
|
| Ergo, massive traffic jams of parents individually driving
| kids to school.
| duxup wrote:
| The suburban schools I'm thinking of are perfectly
| walkable.
|
| There's also ample bussing.
|
| The parents just want to pick their kids up.
| r00fus wrote:
| The logical followup would be to subsequently charge
| parents to use the pickup areas and lower/subsidize the
| bussing costs.
| User23 wrote:
| Bussing in the USA was a civil rights innovation to
| integrate schools. At the time neighborhoods were still
| racially segregated, so neighborhood schools were
| overwhelmingly the race of whatever the local
| neighborhood was. The only way to have integrated schools
| was to send many kids to a school in a different
| neighborhood, hence bussing.
| philwelch wrote:
| That's distinct from just having school buses. Most
| school bus service does not exist to desegregate school
| districts.
| patja wrote:
| You are correct. But Seattle's history with desegregation
| bussing had a major impact on the nature of the schools
| in Seattle today. It was very common for students to
| spend a total of 90 minutes each day being bussed across
| town rather than walking 15 minutes to their closest
| school. It gave birth to a thriving ecosystem of private
| schools that still dominates the social fabric of the
| city today. Over 25% of all students in Seattle are in
| private schools, with that figure being much higher in
| the wealthier North Seattle neighborhoods.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Just convert a house.
|
| In many places there is a _miserable_ quantity of political
| and legal infrastructure to prevent that from happening.
| Undoing that is a necessary part of 15-minute cities, but it
| may be weirdly unpopular.
|
| (also, people expect a wider range of things than will fit in
| an old style corner shop, and you need to have HGV parking..)
| fnimick wrote:
| Not weird at all. People don't like change. There's a
| reason NIMBY attitudes are nearly universal.
|
| I don't agree that it's how it should be, but even in an
| already urban area (Somerville) getting things built is
| like pulling teeth. There's a literal hole in the ground
| from a fire a decade ago that people have been fighting
| development on for years, because they argue it will bring
| more people to the area and make it harder to street park.
| As if there's a guaranteed right to have public space
| dedicated to your private vehicle.
| Symbiote wrote:
| In the densest parts of European cities, the delivery lorry
| stops outside the supermarket just before or just after the
| shop opens and they unload quickly. Often, that pretty
| pedestrian street full of shops has road access to the
| rear, but not always.
|
| Parking regulations are written to accommodate this. The
| pedestrian streets in the centre of Copenhagen allow
| deliveries from 4am to 11am, but I think there may be
| additional restrictions on large trucks as they seem to be
| out before 8am. Rubbish collection is also at these times.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Yeah, I would add: for a small shop the delivery van
| doesn't necessarily need to be that big either. I know a
| lot of shops that get supplied primarily by vans that are
| not much bigger than a transit van.
| piva00 wrote:
| > But a grocery store? What's difficult about that? Just
| convert a house.
|
| I feel that the American view of a grocery store is one of
| those mega-Walmartesque stores with infinite aisles of stuff,
| rather than the more common small-scale grocery stores we are
| used to here in Europe.
|
| At least on my trips to the US I don't recall seeing many
| small-scale grocers in neighbourhoods, it was either stores
| like CVS or going to a mega-grocer.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Many urban areas in the US all have lots of local, smaller,
| specialty, and neighborhood grocery stores. It's not a
| novelty for those who live in those areas. And they're not
| 7-11s.
| ghaff wrote:
| In the US you don't really have the urban Tescos and
| Sainsbury's and so forth. You have some equivalent local
| markets but it's mostly fairly spread out supermarkets or
| 7-11/CVS/etc. which really don't count as grocery stores.
| bluGill wrote:
| Those large stores are where most people buy food. The
| margins for food in them are very low, but they make it up
| by volume. Smaller stores cannot compete on price or
| selection, and so even if there is a small store close
| Americans will make regular trips to the large store that
| has everything at a low price for most food. There isn't
| much room for the small stores anymore.
|
| There are pros and cons to the above. Do not claim what you
| are used to is better: it is different, not better or
| worse. Odds are you have not spent enough time using both
| to make a real claim. even if you have, odds are your stage
| of life is different enough that you cannot compare.
| jsz0 wrote:
| > But a grocery store? What's difficult about that? Just
| convert a house.
|
| The difficultly is making the typical residential dwelling
| compliant comply with existing regulations like the Americans
| with Disabilities act and complying with things like
| commercial insurance policy requirements.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Good point in that European high schools (generally) do not
| have large sports facilities and therefore are suited to
| typical urban multi-story buildings. Kids do sports at
| private/public sports clubs that are usually located outside
| town or in suburbs.
|
| So high schools within 15 min walk/bike in Europe is much more
| doable than in the U.S.
|
| Caveat: this is how it was when I was growing up in France; it
| may have changed since then, though I looked up my old high
| school and it's the same.
| logifail wrote:
| > a High School
|
| (This is going to sound like we're playing Sim City 2000) but
| don't forget to add a hospital (a proper one, with an emergency
| room), a fire station, a police station...
|
| > a grocery store
|
| Are there many neighbourhoods which don't already have some
| kind of grocery store?
| trillic wrote:
| They're called food deserts and they exist all over the
| United States. Even in big cities.
|
| They are not the same as a food dessert.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Food deserts can also be looked at as cheap (in time or
| money or both) transportation deserts.
| logifail wrote:
| > They're called food deserts and they exist all over the
| United States. Even in big cities.
|
| Wiki (sorry) appears to define that as "an area that has
| limited access to affordable and nutritious food"
|
| I appreciate their point, but "no grocery store" really
| isn't the same as "limited access to affordable and
| nutritious food".
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >no grocery store" really isn't the same as "limited
| access to affordable and nutritious food".
|
| Without a grocery store you are at best in a "pick one"
| situation, at least in the US.
| brewdad wrote:
| The "limited access to affordable and nutritious food"
| criteria is primarily to distinguish between having a
| Safeway-type grocery store nearby versus only having a
| Plaid Pantry/7-11/Circle K where you can buy a gallon of
| milk and maybe a loaf of bread but it's nothing like a
| proper grocery store.
| ghaff wrote:
| It probably depends on what you mean by "grocery store." In
| dense urban areas, bodegas, chain convenience stores, and
| pharmacies with a small grocery section are pretty plentiful.
| Supermarkets a lot less so.
|
| That's probably part of a shift over time. In general, we
| probably have more relatively large but spread out businesses
| than little mom and pop places on every corner.
|
| (This is sort of a US comment. There seem to be more
| serviceable smallish grocery stores in Europe that are in
| between a supermarket and a convenience store. That's less
| common in the US other than one-off markets and sometimes
| downsized chain grocery stores.)
| logifail wrote:
| > It probably depends on what you mean by "grocery store."
| In dense urban areas, bodegas, chain convenience stores,
| and pharmacies with a small grocery section are pretty
| plentiful. Supermarkets a lot less so. That's probably part
| of a shift over time. In general, we probably have more
| relatively large but spread out businesses than little mom
| and pop places on every corner. (This is sort of a US
| comment. There seem to be more serviceable smallish grocery
| stores in Europe that are in between a supermarket and a
| convenience sore. That's less common in the US other than
| one-off markets.)
|
| While on a business trip I stopped at a petrol (gas)
| station in the UK a couple of weeks ago, the sort on the
| side of a major road outside a city, and with a mini-
| supermarket attached, and was literally speechless when I
| realised they had a whole shelf rack containing gluten-free
| products.
|
| I have coeliac disease, and had been assuming I'd have to
| travel specially to some large supermarket to get the stuff
| I can eat, but thanks to this place I grabbed loaf of
| gluten-free bread and a pack of gluten-free cornflakes, and
| I was good to go.
|
| I'm discovering that coeliac and mid-range hotels don't
| always mix :/
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Yes, these are called food deserts, some people "grocery
| shop" at Walgreens, 7-11, Rite Aid, or CVS and have very
| limited access to fresh produce.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yes, there's a term called "food desert" that exists for a
| reason. Think inner city areas. Parts of the town that are
| attempting to be "gentrified" (in whatever discriminating
| tone that word implies) where there were places to live, but
| stores were more than 15 mins by car. it was just yet another
| reminder of how city planning is anything but good.
| Qworg wrote:
| According to the USDA, about 6.2% (19M) Americans have
| limited/no access to a grocery store.
|
| https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts
| covers the research (and links to the paper).
| logifail wrote:
| I'm sorry, but I've read that article twice and I'm still
| not sure what they're actually saying.
|
| Are we talking about neighbourhoods not having a store
| selling fresh fruit and vegetables, or not having a grocery
| store _of any kind_?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's pretty clever - they use SNAP benefits as a proxy
| (you can buy what they call staples; fruits/veggies,
| bread, meat & fish, milk, etc but no hot or prepared
| food: https://fns-
| prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/snap/SNAP-...) but
| they map to all of the stores who accept SNAP and combine
| that with a map of supermarkets from a Nielson directory.
| They then map the number of census tracts and compare
| against that map -- the 6.2% figure is the "1 and 10"
| method which counts households >1 mile from a store in an
| urban area and >10 miles in a rural one.
|
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/82101/eib-1
| 65....
| ghaff wrote:
| Being more than 10 miles from a real market of some sort
| in an actual rural area seems a pretty low bar.
| Population density is certainly lower but 10 miles isn't
| very far if you need to drive to the next town over.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's not just 10 miles, it's 10 miles _and_ being a low
| income tract which they define as average household
| income below 80% of state median or >20% households in
| the tract being below the poverty line. So trying to
| measure where the poorest areas have the most limited
| access.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm guessing the income criteria is satisfied in a lot of
| rural areas however.
| bluGill wrote:
| How are you defining rural? The people who live in small
| towns in farm country, or the farmers living on their
| farm. In general farmers are not poor, but the people who
| live in the towns around them often are. It takes a lot
| of money to run a farm, you have to be great at business
| as you will have several years in a row where you lose
| $100,000 - over the long term though things work out to
| making a lot of money on farms.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Yeah, you're not wrong, here's the 2010 map;
|
| https://assets.aecf.org/m/blogimg/blog-
| exploringamericasfood...
| ghaff wrote:
| That map looks to me as if it's much more about poorer
| rural areas that are more than 10 miles from a grocery
| store than inner cities.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's as misleading in that way as the big silly maps they
| show around election time -- since we care about the
| number of people, not the number of acres.
|
| There are 19 million people in the shaded areas. If we
| bump up the criteria to 1 mile urban / 20 miles rural,
| it's still over 17 million people, so clearly a lot of
| the people at discussion are in urban areas. Even so, it
| looks like another half million people are over 20 miles
| from a store who don't have access to a vehicle. Not
| great!
| ry4nolson wrote:
| > Are there many neighbourhoods which don't already have some
| kind of grocery store?
|
| Tons. They're called food deserts.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Zoning laws are too strict. Buy a home and convert it to a
| grocery store? No can do, in many places.
| duxup wrote:
| I agree generally about zoning laws. But I also think they do
| a good job of keeping joe schmo from trying to turn a random
| plot into a car repair business that is just not suited to
| the job. Rando business guy doesn't care if the area is
| suited for it and neither do their customers.
|
| I speak from experience as I lived in a house near a guy who
| decided to do just that... broken down cars parked everywhere
| (leaking all sorts of stuff), noise at all hours.
|
| Gotta be a balance between things.
| tstrimple wrote:
| I think this is why people tend to like the Japanese zoning
| model where things are divided up into different "nuisance"
| levels. Something like an auto shop would be more of a
| nuisance than say a coffee shop. You're allowed to build
| anything in a zone as long as it's below the zone's
| nuisance level. This will help keep real industrial style
| work away from where people are living and eating, but
| allows for so much more retail opportunity in those zones.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Sure, write that into the zoning law. No obnoxious or
| environmentally harming activity. A far cry from buying
| some milk and cereal in the morning.
| duxup wrote:
| >A far cry from buying some milk and cereal in the
| morning.
|
| Depends on the store. I've lived next to grocery stores
| with the loudest compressors for refrigeration that I've
| ever heard. Going to take some nuance there.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| When you kick out all those businesses that the upper
| middle class finds unsightly there ceases to be enough
| latent economic activity for the businesses you do like to
| exist in an economically sustainable manner.
|
| Banning automotive repair might be ok by itself but there's
| another idiot who wants to ban X, and Y and Z and their
| complaints are just as valid as yours and the status quo is
| what you get when you try and accommodate all of them.
| trgn wrote:
| Yeah. Some things need to be kept out. Funnily enough, it's
| nearly always car related. Repair shops, gas stations,
| parking lots, ... Nothing trashes up a city more than cars.
| Ialdaboth wrote:
| Zoning laws are a great way to implement social segregation
| without explicitely saying it too loudly, I guess that's the
| reason they are so popular in "free" and "open" societies.
| gameman144 wrote:
| Zoning laws are just a great way to implement whatever
| priorities people have for the places they live and access.
|
| Want to prioritize walkability to shops? Zoning is a great
| way to make that happen.
|
| Want to prioritize keeping noisy things away from
| residential areas? Zoning is great for that too!
|
| Want to make a socially segregated city? You can absolutely
| do that with zoning!
|
| Zoning is a super great tool, it's just that the things it
| optimizes for are sometimes misguided (or in some cases
| straight-up harmful).
| blakesterz wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing. This doesn't seem like it's a
| realistic goal, as much as I do really like the idea. 15
| minutes of walking isn't really much in terms of feet or meters
| or however you want to measure it. 15 minutes of biking time,
| that's better. I guess I live in a "15 Minute Area" if you only
| count the bike time. Maybe more like 20 if you count the time I
| end up sitting at intersections?
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| You perfectly describe the Nimby mindset.
|
| > I like the idea of walking 15 minutes to get all the things.
|
| But
|
| >Heck I'd be annoyed if someone decides "Sorry we're rezoning /
| creating an incentive to build a restaurant in the plot next to
| you, not enough restaurants nearby. Good luck..."
|
| >But man when I think of the costs involved in making sure
| there is a High School (in the US they tend to be large and
| draw from a distance) within 15 minutes of everywhere (no small
| cost to drop in a high school somewhere), or plop down a
| grocery store in a neighborhood ... that sounds both super
| expensive and politically difficult, and for some good reasons.
|
| Even has the weak "what about the costs" argument.
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like people wield around "NIMBY" labels so that they
| don't have to think about how to plan things.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| My guess is that most USA urban neighborhoods in, say, 1960 (or
| 1930), met the 15 minute criteria.
|
| Still, I'd guess you'd be right that it would be enormously
| expensive and difficult to bring this back.
|
| But it was once this way, and it was human decisions that made
| it not this way. If we want it to be this way again and start,
| it can be eventually.
| spacemadness wrote:
| My hope is that if not Gen Z then the following generation
| will push for American cities to get their act together and
| become better for people to live in. It is going to take a
| lot of political will to make it work as the entrenched older
| generations want things to stay the same as always and/or
| cannot envision a different way of living. A walkable city
| with car free zones seems like a fantasy and that is a real
| shame.
| kortilla wrote:
| Why would they though? Covid just forced the development of
| technologies even further to make working from home even
| more viable than before.
|
| Millennials followed the boomers right into the suburbs as
| they got older and that was before there was a path to
| killing the commute.
|
| When Gen Z can get by without a commute and live in social
| media, where is their push for cities going to come from?
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of what we consider "elite" US cities were losing
| population well into the 1990s. While I don't think the
| WFH trend is as widespread as people in some bubbles
| think it is, it's probably an open question whether the
| latest young college-educated cohort will move into
| cities for a while like some of their predecessors did.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| Young people want things to do. I'm right on the divide
| between Millenials and Gen Z (the MillenialZ generation,
| if you'll forgive my poor portmanteau skills) and many
| college students I knew during covid have done one of the
| following:
|
| - secured a remote job and settled down in their college
| city
|
| - as a remote worker, followed a significant other or
| close friend to a city where _they_ have to work in
| person
|
| - found a hybrid role that allows some in-person work in
| a city
|
| I think the "work remotely, from your college city" trend
| is a positive one. I attended college in a small city
| with a serious brain drain problem (aside from medical
| folks) and it's nice to see more and more classmates move
| back to that city as the brain drain reverses.
| ghaff wrote:
| Fair enough.
|
| Certainly the fact that I would have needed to commute to
| a job that was an hour outside the nearest major city
| (where I went undergrad) influenced the fact that I just
| went to live near my office when I graduated grad school.
| It was mostly the same with my classmates who also worked
| way out in the burbs/exurbs.
|
| If the commute weren't a factor, I'd probably have at
| least considered living in the city--at least while I was
| still renting. (Of course, urban prices weren't nearly as
| relatively high as they are today.)
| coldpie wrote:
| It is truly shocking how much damage the car has done to
| our cities and lives. Here in the Twin Cities, we have
| _three_ enormous concrete canyons completely dividing up
| the city[1], destroying any chance at walkability or
| density for miles. All for the sake of people who don 't
| even live in the cities to drive 30 minutes in their
| personal luxury steel cages from their suburban mansions to
| spend 30 hours a week here and then buzz off again. We lose
| so much to cater to the surburbanites and gain so little.
|
| We have a real opportunity to fix this by removing one of
| them[2], but we're too terrified of change to improve our
| own lives. So the concrete canyon called I-94 will remain,
| poisoning the heart of our cities, for at least another
| four generations. Sigh.
|
| [1] Comparison of the Twin Cities before & after the
| freeways were built:
| https://twitter.com/SegByDesign/status/1623376761722490881
|
| [2] https://www.twincitiesboulevard.org/
| j_heffe wrote:
| Not to mention the opposition of public transportation
| here. People are already up in arms about the light rail
| expansion cost, plus the people angry about losing
| parking on Hennepin Ave for the proposed 24 hr bus lane.
| bluGill wrote:
| I grew up there. The public transit was always worthless
| for anyone who wanted to do something more than go to
| work downtown. It is no wonder most people oppose
| anything: so many years of bad service makes even good
| ideas look like throwing more good money after bad (and
| like most cities they have plenty of bad ideas they are
| funding as well)
| coldpie wrote:
| If you haven't, give your congresspeople & city
| representatives a ring about the TCB :)
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| It's difficult on a few levels I suspect, because genz will
| be fighting the previous generation and maybe the one
| before it too, all the homeowners that will fight tooth and
| nail for their investments to remain (plus any genz that
| benefits from the status quo, the inheritors of landlords)
| kasey_junk wrote:
| It was enormously expensive and difficult to undo that so
| it's not at all surprising it's hard to go back.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Imho it was pre-war when it peaked. You look at rust-belt
| cities that were designed to be suburban but transit-oriented
| and you see a good balance; 3-bedroom houses where everybody
| has a back-yard but not necessarily a driveway, and the
| cities were irrigated with street-cars. Minor arteries would
| have corner stores and there were local shopping districts.
| bluGill wrote:
| Those pre-war suburbs often featured larger lots than what
| modern suburbs do. (not exburbs which get very large).
| Pxtl wrote:
| While many modern suburbs have embraced townhomes and
| other denser form-factors, they have other strategies
| that result in taking up a lot of space - parking lots,
| massive wide right-of-way, Euclidean zoning blocking
| local shops, and heavily redundant road-ways, like
| arteries that have no development around them at all,
| just a sidewalk then a fence then some trees and a ditch
| and then the local road. Every person trying to walk to
| the artery to catch transit has to cross that.
|
| In an old streetcar suburb, the only road wider than 3
| cars were the arteries, and those arteries would still be
| lined with homes if not shops.
| duxup wrote:
| I think it is plausible to work towards, much of it. Some of
| it is fairly low hanging fruit. If you get several of the
| check boxes but not a coffee shop, high school, restaurant
| .... that's pretty good, you got a lot of bases covered.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| For me personally, coffee shops and restaurants within a 15
| minute walk is huge for my quality of life. I currently
| have it... barely.
| duxup wrote:
| I think that's a personal preference thing, you pick
| where you go based on that. Just a bit less essential
| than say groceries.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Grocery, pharmacy, schools, and a public transit stop,
| only after those would I rate restaurants or coffee
| shops. This isn't some moral statement about making your
| own food, outsourifood preparation to a professional
| makes sense from a specialization standpoint if you can
| afford it, but if you can't and for daily life, being
| able to get food and medicine seems a bit higher.
| bluGill wrote:
| I include public transit time in my 15 minute city.
| However you have to always include the worst case: just
| as your arrive at the stop the vehicle closes its doors
| and leaves.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I suppose it's all a personal preference thing to some
| extent -- at least if you have a car to get you further
| away for whatever it is.
|
| But true, different people at different points in their
| lives, income levels, social positions, and preferences
| will prioritize different things.
|
| The OP list seems pretty good for improving quality of
| life for a big round population of people at different
| stages of their lives and social positions. (After all,
| generational and income diversity in a neighborhood is
| probably also a plus?)
|
| I wish I could make a personal preference to have all of
| those things in a 15 minute walk from me! It would
| require moving to a different city probably, and paying
| much much much more than I do now for living expenses.
|
| I think 15 minute walkability actually has would have a
| much larger impact on quality of life than many people
| realize. I think if most people could get it without
| having to trade off between different personal
| preferences (like being able to afford the rent!), we'd
| be doing a lot better.
|
| Like... nobody _needs_ a coffee shop or everyday
| restaurant within a 15 minute walk. And if it requires
| trade-offs, including to affordability, not everyone is
| going to choose it. But when everyone has one (or ideally
| several), I think it 's going to make neighborhood
| relationships and connections stronger in general, the
| people that run into each other at such establishments,
| or while one (and not necessarily the other) of them are
| walking to such establishments, the relationships between
| workers and customers, etc.
| bluGill wrote:
| While you don't need those things, the more that is
| within a 15 minute walk, the more likely you are to walk
| there.
|
| I've seen people who have drove to a neighbors house even
| though the walk from where they parked on the street was
| longer than just from their door to door (cutting across
| the lawn). They did it because that is their habit: they
| have so few places where they can reasonably walk that it
| never in occurs to them to walk the few times they could.
| (the above case was an extreme that they laughed about
| when they realized it, most people wouldn't drive that
| trip, but the thinking makes perverse sense)
| nicoburns wrote:
| Politically difficult, yes. Enormously expensive, I'd imagine
| not. Retrofitting a house to be a cafe/shop isn't that
| difficult or expensive. And it needn't be done all at once,
| it could be done gradually over time.
| dabbledash wrote:
| I think it's possible that we lost this because, while people
| do genuinely like it, they like quiet, space, and privacy
| more.
| Zagill wrote:
| Most of the noise I hear from my apartment in a medium-
| density neighborhood, like 95% of it, is just car traffic.
| Big noisy trucks and people on Harleys, people honking at
| each other as they try to leave a parking lot, all that.
| Building spread out unwalkable areas creates way more noise
| than the opposite. What is true, however, is that this
| design was mostly created for the benefit of suburbanites
| who live in isolated communities with no readily accessible
| amenities besides a road into the city. Their peace and
| quiet comes at the expense of mine, and especially at the
| expense of lower income communities which often exist in
| the noisiest, most car-heavy parts of the city.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I live within 30 seconds walk of 2 cafes, 2 grocery shops,
| and a pub (I can see them down the street from my window as
| I type this). And you literally can't hear them from my
| house. There's also a primary school nearby which
| occasionally gets noisy, but there's no noise from the
| shops.
| kortilla wrote:
| What? It takes 30 seconds to walk across the street
| nicoburns wrote:
| I also have to walk along the street a little, and cross
| a small road that intersects my road. It's still probably
| less than 30 seconds, but it's close enough. It's 30
| seconds if you include walking down the stairs inside my
| house, slipping my shoes on, etc.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| A very wide street, maybe. Not the sort you're likely to
| have in a 15 minute city. :)
| rovolo wrote:
| It takes a lot longer to walk across a street when you
| have to wait for a walk signal. City streets can be 1.5-2
| lane residential streets which you can cross basically on
| demand, making them equivalent in time to walking on the
| sidewalk. Based on an average walking pace of 1.33 m/s
| (3.0 mph), you can cover 40m in 30 seconds.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6243731,-122.3250919,18.8
| 1z
|
| The blocks in this section of Seattle are ~80m long, so
| one block takes 60s to walk. The "Mercer on Summit"
| apartments on this map are within 1/2 block (30s) from 3
| restaurants, 2 bars, and 1 small grocery.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| I don't think you can broadly make that statement and back
| it up with data. Some people do in fact like space and
| privacy, some really don't care.
|
| I'm one of the latter and I enjoy having no yard and
| neighbors.
| duxup wrote:
| Is there something that tells us that those traits are
| specific to white people?
| dabbledash wrote:
| I think you misread me? I said "while people like those
| things" Maybe you read "white people like those things"?
| duxup wrote:
| Yup, my bad. TY
| fatnoah wrote:
| >Still, I'd guess you'd be right that it would be enormously
| expensive and difficult to bring this back.
|
| I've moved into and out of downtown Boston over the past 20+
| years, and it's been interesting to see this trend actually
| happen. In the neighborhoods I've lived in, there are usually
| 1-2 smaller markets that offer convenience at a price, and
| then a more "traditional" grocery store within 5-10 minutes
| of walking.
|
| Over the years, a few new grocery stores have been built in
| the urban core, and they've actually been of the "larger
| traditional" variety. In most cases, they're part and parcel
| of new development, so the space, loading, and (reduced)
| parking requirements can be accommodated as part of the
| build.
|
| The key is that the stores are being built concurrently with
| more housing being developed as well, so the stores are
| effectively meeting new demand. In my most recent "city
| phase", I actually had 3 "large format" grocery stores, 2-3
| smaller markets, plus the assortment of convenience stores
| within a 15 minute walk.
| elAhmo wrote:
| Having schools distributed within walking distance should be
| done by city planners ahead of time.
| duxup wrote:
| Unless you're building a new city from scratch or have a lot
| of open land I think you're way far from what the article is
| about.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _But man when I think of the costs involved in making sure
| there is a High School (in the US they tend to be large and
| draw from a distance) within 15 minutes of everywhere_
|
| Not _absolutely everything_ needs to be walkable in 15 minutes.
| Once kids are teenagers having go to school on transit or
| bicycle would be fine.
|
| Perhaps focus on elementary schools being walkable.
| brewdad wrote:
| Elementary schools having the added advantage of being a
| smaller footprint. In my area, elementary schools tend to be
| 200-400 students. Middle schools are around 800 students and
| high schools about 1500. I (car dependent suburb) live within
| walking distance of one elementary and a second one would be
| walkable if you didn't have to wind through a series of cul-
| de-sacs to get there.
|
| The closest high school is 2.5 miles away and the high school
| my child attended was 6.5 miles away due to a quirk in the
| boundaries and which schools feed into which higher level
| school.
| com2kid wrote:
| Seattle doesn't have nearly enough density to have that many
| high schools. Given the ever falling birth rate, it likely
| never will. The density would need to be obscenely high.
|
| Figure high schools have 4x the number of students that
| elementary schools do, and we'd need 2x the elementary schools
| to make them all walkable, that means Seattle would have to
| have 8x the number of students in high school than it currently
| does to justify building enough high schools to make them all
| walkable.
|
| Not to mention Seattle couldn't really afford to build that
| many schools, as the city can't even maintain the current
| schools to basic levels of safety (ongoing lead water pipe
| issues...)
| bailoon wrote:
| > Given the ever falling birth rate, it likely never will.
|
| But Seattle and Washington are attracting people from the
| world and the rest of the nation. Both Seattle and Washington
| have been experience positive population growth for decades
| now.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| I believe the relevant factor is the ratio of school aged
| children to adults. This determines the relative demand for
| schools over other amenities such as housing. That ratio is
| largely dependent on the birthrate regardless of the
| population or density of the city. While people are moving
| in, it's not clear that new residents have a higher average
| birthrate than existing residents.
| duxup wrote:
| >Seattle doesn't have nearly enough density to have that many
| high schools
|
| That's a good point too.
|
| The local urban schools near me have had to close high
| schools, not open new ones.
| f1yght wrote:
| I would love smaller more local schools, but It's worth
| noting that unfortunately a bunch of the schools have reduced
| enrollment and the funding is per kid. I don't know how to
| fix it but I hope it doesn't lead to closing even more
| schools.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > annoyed if .. creating an incentive to build a restaurant in
| the plot next to you, not enough restaurants nearby
|
| Why?
| jgwil2 wrote:
| I think every neighborhood should have an elementary school
| within walking distance (my local elementary school is not and
| it annoys me to no end) but I agree that for high schools this
| might be unrealistic, and anyway a good transit system should
| be able to make it easy for kids to get to high school whether
| they attend their local school or not.
| trollski wrote:
| [dead]
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