What can you get to within a 15-minute walk of your house?
What can you get to within a 15-minute walk of your house?
A recent YouGov survey asked Americans what they think they should be able to get to within a 15-minute walk of their house.
Of these choices, I can currently walk to all of them from my apartment, aside from a university (no biggie, I'm not currently studying, although there is a Tafe within walking distance), a hospital, and a sports arena.
How many can you get to with a 15 minute walk from your house?
#fuckcars #walkability #urbanism #UrbanPlanning @fuck_cars #walking
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Why are bars so low? Do Americans like having to use a car when drinking?
Apparently it's important that they can walk to a petrol station though.
American here, the gas station is our version of the local corner store. Most places you have to drive to get to it but where I live there is one right at the entrance to the neighborhood and lots of adults/kids do walk there. I would sorely miss it if it was gone.
I agree with this, but also want to point out that gas stations are a poor substitute for a corner grocer or bodega. They are simply too large and require too much land for the function they are serving. Zoning rightfully mandates that they can't be on the bottom floor of a larger building due to the dangers posed by gasoline and they require lots of space for cars to park.
Essentially, we have forfeited a lot of valuable space to dispensing gasoline and significantly diminished the best features of corner stores by making them serve both functions. I would be curious to see what would happen if gas stations were forbidden from serving anything other than gas in high density areas. I would assume there would be much fewer of them, and each one would be optimized for efficiency to take up as little space as possible. We would also likely see the reemergence of neighborhood bodegas and corner grocers to fill the gap.
Gas station is a somewhat colloquial form of bodega/corner store in the US. Often corner stores without gas stations will still be referred to as gas stations. Sometimes they're also called convenience stores.
Wait really? I'm from a big city and I've never heard "gas station" refer to a place that didn't sell gas at all. Huh, TIL
I've noticed it's less common in the city and more common in rural areas. I live in SF and people here don't call them gas stations unless they have gas, but in the Central Valley this is extremely common.
I grew up there and I always forget how much more "proper" I speak at home vs where I grew up. My partner sometimes struggles to understand what I'm trying to say a lot of the time when I slip back into it when speaking with my family. Gas station is just one of the many overly generic terms. Another one is "Vallarta" which doesn't necessarily mean the chain grocery store Vallarta, but a Mexican grocery store usually selling produce and with a meat counter.
I definitely don’t refer to it as a gas station if there’s no gas, but… I may very well refer to the convenience store attached to the gas station as a “gas station”. Like “I’m gonna stop at a gas station and get some coffee”, even if I mean any convenience store, gas or no.
It’s like a rectangle-square situation
Yeah I know of a few 7-elevens that are just the store, no gas, but would still be thought of as a “gas station”.
Significantly diminished?
I live maybe 10 minutes walk from a gas station, it’s the size of a small grocery store, it has lot of staple groceries and a mini restaurant in it that makes pizzas, sub sandwiches, coffees, ice cream, and a full breakfast menu. Plus donuts every morning. Our gas stations often take the place of 2/3 businesses rolled into one.
I live by a QT for those Americans familiar with STL’s favorite gas station
Probably don’t want to live near drunks, or the piss and vomit that exists after a weekend.
Living near one, I don't have these issues
That and the noise, bars can be pretty loud
Tbf we're talking about within a 15 minute walk, not inside your building. There's a bar 5 minutes away from me and I can't hear the noise there unless I'm literally standing next to it.
Same, I have a bar a few lots from mine, and it only gets bad a few weekends a year.
I have neighbors that blast music while having super smoky fires and getting piss drunk, though. They are much much worse than the bar. Hands down. Because I can’t have windows open about half the time without my house smelling like smoke (a smell that gives me migraines).
If you ever drive through rural America, you'll usually at least see one or two crosses, often on telephone poles, on rural roads. People, often teenagers, die pretty regularly in rural America because of drunk driving.
Some people like it. Some people are just numb to it. It's just insane to expect people not to when bars are the only social space in a lot of these towns, and those bars are not accessible by anything but car. There is no such thing as a taxi for most of the US (space wise, not population wise).
I'd wager not a single example of a 15-minute city exists or has ever existed throughout all history without a bar in range.
That was the one that stood out to me, too (especially the dichotomy between "bars" and "restaurants"). It maybe explains a lot if NIMBYs are actually just moralizing puritans being dishonest about their motives.
The website has a British version that doesn't include bar/pub as a choice at all. Does include liquor store, though. Thought that was odd
Some things go without saying.
Why would you need to ask if a pub should be in a 15 minute city. Its like asking should a house be in a 15 minute city? Should electricity be in a 15 minute city?
This stuck out to me too. This is one of my top items for a 15 min. city, not because I visit bars frequently, but because when I do visit, or when my neighbors visit, I'd like it to be a car-free trip.
Where are they going to have AA meetings? that's the bigger concern. the only thing on the list that functions as a community center is the elementary school and park.
Maybe they want to drink at home
@Vash63 @ajsadauskas they drink piss-weak beer and if you have more than two somebody will accuse you of being an alcoholic
Lol, local breweries have completely saturated the American market. I barely know anyone that drinks traditional retail beers anymore outside of sports and/or music venues where outside drinks aren't allowed.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars One thing you can get within a 15 minute walk of some US homes is arrested!
(My grandma went for a walk in a Miami suburb. The locals thought that someone walking (rather than driving) was obviously suspicious so they called the cops. Because my grandma was white and female and elderly, rather than black and male and young, they stopped to talk to her rather than just shooting her. They then spent several minutes trying to get her to admit that she was walking because her car had broken down - they just couldn't get it through their heads that she was walking because she wanted to walk.)
@Zugumba @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars On my one trip to Texas my host said we were going out to dinner. So at the hotel we got into a car, were driven out of the hotel car park, up the ramp onto the motorway, along for one junction, down the ramp, and into the restaurant car park.
And when I looked around I could see that the hotel was in fact next door. Each was surrounded by a vast nearly empty car par. We could have walked from one to the other ... except of course there was an impenetrable fence between the two car parks. 'cos nobody would want to walk, would they, when they could drive, so why leave a gap in the fence?
And then ... there were all sorts of weird hoops to jump through before we were allowed to buy alcohol to go with our dinner. Of course if we'd been able to walk from the hotel we could have drunk as much as we liked without worrying about being sober enough to drive back.
They saw an elderly woman walking on the street, and they didn't shoot her on sight?
I hope those officers were fired on the spot for not following standard protocol!
16% said "should not" to a grocery store? What?
I feel like there should be a separate question for the "I don't want anything near me" rural choice, since those might be making the rest of the responses misleading.
How is bar so low?? Do people want drunk drivers? Because that’s how you get drunk drivers
Who needs a gas station within walking distance? One need a gas station within 15-minutes driving.
I wonder what the meaning of “should not” is in this survey. A restaurant “should not” be withing 15 minutes of my home, as in “I don’t want any restaurants near me” or is it “It’s not important enough to be in the local government’s target list”?
I don’t understand the red bars the way the question is phrased now. Why wouldn’t you want a park near you?
If they used the phrase “15 minute neighborhood” during polling then a portion of the no’s are probably from people who have had it turned into a trigger word for them by conservative talk media.
Yeah that's what I'm assuming the 16% who don't even want a grocery store near them is. That sets your baseline.
"If your local government did adopt..."
I bet 16% don't want "the government" to anything.
That said, people in my neighborhood are strongly against sidewalks. Something about bringing the problems of the big city to us. (I presume crime, but it could be anything.)
I think this is the correct interpretation given the exact wording of the question.
Gas station above elementary school?
Why do you need a gas station in walking distance?
Am I the only one impressed 16% of people dont want a grocery store nearby?
Do the 32 percent not know what a bus stop is?? Why would you want a bus stop farther than 15 minutes away????
I do not understand why you would want to walk to a gas station.
Makes you wonder how many people actually understood the question.
Also, you have to realize the obesity problem isn't just a function of our diet, many people can't imagine walking fifteen minutes no matter what.
Everyone answering that they understand it to mean “convenience store” is missing out on standalone convenience stores….
But what about a “garage”, that traditionally used to be at gas stations as well. I find it very convenient that when my car needs servicing, I can drop it off and walk home. Yes, I also need a car and that shouldn’t contradict walkability
Snacks
Tbf, 24/7 kiosks are even better than that
Wouldn't a grocery store cover that use case?
Grocery stores typically have normal working hours. Petrol stations could be thought of to work 24 hours. Also ducking into a small kiosk for a snack is less of a hassle than a grocery store.
Who doesn't run out of gas in your own home, every now and again?
Most gas stations here have convenience stores attached and they're typically 24 hr. It's a common gathering place for night owls and degens lol. I've spent a lot of time at gas stations just hanging out with friends or the cashier after getting off work at 3am. Drink a couple tall boys, chain smoke, shoot the shit and unwind a bit before heading home. It's nice
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I'm kind of sad that "cafe", "bookstore", and "library" aren't even on this list at all. 😢
I would honestly have to do a web search to find out where the nearest elementary school, day care, and gas station are, but I'd be stunned if I didn't have those within 15 minutes. As it is, I do have everything else, including a university and a sports arena, and *two* malls. (I'm in between the Barclays Center and Long Island University in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NYC.)
Pretty bizarre results. Park and bus stop should be 100.
University, hospital, mall, theatre, arena? Those are massive, you can't have one 15 minute walk from everywhere.
Now bars are the one commercial item that's easy to have around.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I wonder why they included gas stations unless it's for their use as convenience store. Buying gas as a pedestrian is a very marginal use case...
How else will you burn the cars?
I don’t think lawn mowers, snow blowers, and other ICE landscaping tools, are “very marginal use cases”. Sure they might not use a lot of gas, but most everyone with a lawn/driveway has them (at least mower and blower).
But also, yes, it’s a convenience store. Other than maybe in cities, we often don’t have any convenience stores at all, just gas stations with shops inside.
I'm in my 20s and only once have I ever used a lawn mower that required fuel, and it was pretty old. Unless you're living on a huge tract of land and need a ride-on one, an electric one with a long cord will do the job 99% of the time.
I've never seen a snow blower but I can only imagine it being useful to people living in areas that get a crazy amount of snowfall, otherwise it's overkill.
Besides a lawn mower, there's not really any large powered landscaping tools I can think of that the average person would ever need to outright buy and own.
lawl, nobody here has electric mowers. You can’t even find them in retail stores most of the time. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but just because you haven’t personally used one by your 20s doesn’t mean they aren’t damn near mandatory elsewhere.
I have one I bought online and it struggles to get through my tiny yard. It uses batteries, but same basic concept. The grass is just too dense in the area for them to be practical, unless you want to go over the whole thing twice every week. Some people do, and good for them, but the vast majority simply won’t.
And sure maybe a snowblower in the south is overkill, but around here (and frankly in a ton of areas) if you don’t have one people -feel sorry for you and offer to help- because we do get a lot in a typical year. But also useful for old people, those with physical problems, etc. shoveling snow is hard work, unless the most you ever get is a dusting.
I’m not sure where you got the idea that a person needs to own tools in order to use and need fuel for them. That’s just silly. I borrow tillers and shit from friends all the time and have to get gas for them. Don’t own them, but use them. Same if I were to rent shit from the hardware store. You have to refill them before return.
Most people near my dacha that have lawn mowers have electric one.
My can even cut some twigs. Got corded one.
Here in New England, my battery powered snow blower does pretty well, but then again we don’t really get much snow anymore
Why would you carry a lawn mower to the gas station?
Im confused about (from the poll)
As someone in the UK, I already live within a 15 minute walk of most of these.
Is it really that bad over there? If you're not within a quick walk to the shops, or the doctors, or school, tram and bus stops, opticians, dentists, etc, how do you and the kids get anything done?
Who would intentionally move somewhere like that? The first thing we do when looking at moving to a new place is see what services are within walking distance, to get an idea for how worth it living there would be.
If you've got to walk 30+ minutes just to get to the shops? That's an arse ache you don't want.
Missing a gym, physio, and doctors clinic.
This poll shows a population not really taking the question seriously.
Why should a gas station be more accessible on foot than a local pub?
I have everything but pharmacy, post office, cinema, and university. The pharmacy is within a 15-minute bike or bus, though.
What I feel is lacking is a hardware store. I really wish I had even a small hardware store close by. There used to be one.
Also missing from the list, but I have: a bakery, a swimming pool, and a coffeeshop.
Mid-sized village (around 10k inhabitants) in Germany:
4 grocery stores
2 pharmacies
Bus stop (and train station)
5 or so restaurants
Post office
Bank
Gas station
Elementary school
2 Kindergartens
2 barber shops
Bar
Sports field (calling it an arena would be a bit much)
Alas, no university or hospital, but I think for a village it's pretty good.
This feels like the type of thing open street maps could provide a service for where you put in your postcode and it returns the services within a 15 mins walk.
Osmand does that, search or tap a PoI and it lists similiar in the area, nearest first.
I assume you mean point of interest?
I don't see this option in the web based version, also, "similar in the area" != within 15 mins walk.
From where I live in my small Swedish town (about 8k inhabitants), so pretty much the whole town
2 grocery stores
2 convenience stores
2 bus stops (5 lines)
At least 10 resturants including a burger joint, a thai and a chinese. Most pizza places though
1 hardware/home appliance store
1 hardware/gardening store
2 home appliance stores
3 clothing stores, of which one for babies and one for sports
4 (?) Hairdresser
2 pharmacies
3 second hand stores
3 gyms, one of which at the sport centre
A sport centre with swimming hall, general sport hall, bowling alleys, gym and fields for outdoor sports
Two large schools and a couple of daycares
Church
2 graveyards
Police station
Municipal services
2 Opticians
1 library
Think that may be it
I moved to a tiny village (1.2k inhabitants) at the outskirts of the Paris metro. We got:
Considering the size of the village and how many people live there, I’d say we’re pretty good on the 15 minutes thing.
I have a lot of these here in the US, even an interesting house called a “castle”, but have no idea to where there might be a bakery or pastries, depending. Grocery has a lot of baked goods, and places like Starbucks has pastries. Do those count?
My experience with Starbucks here in Europe is that it’s industrialized processed shit. Tastes good every once in a while but isn’t really healthy nor are the ingredients ok. On the other hand, in France, even the smallest supermarket has its own baker and pastry chefs who do daily fresh loafs of bread and baguettes / tradition and pastry. I like American bread that you get in your stores but consider it more of a cake as it’s quite sugary. Like slap some salted butter and jam on top of it, an espresso shot on the side and you’re set for a nice breakfast unless you’re diabetic.
To be fair, 10k is a small city here.
I would say an urgent care or doctor's office is more important to have on this list than a hospital. If you really need the Emergency Room you're probably not walking. And even in the US, if you wind up being admitted to the hospital, insurance will usually pay for the ambulance. (They ought to pay for other vehicle transport, for broken bones and stuff as well, but they suck.)
I could get to most of them, the Hospital/University/Sports (all together) would take more like 30 minutes and involve getting over or under the 405. Which means that there's times of day it would be quicker than driving....
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I can walk to all except university (1hr walk, or 15min bike ride) and sports center (1+ hr walk, 18min bike ride).
I don't get the gas station though. Why so many "should"s? Why would you need to walk to a gas station?
Unless ppl are considering "gas station" to mean "convenience store", which in a lot of America that's what they are.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars There's a couple of weird things missing there I would definitely include, like a doctor's office, a library and a gym.
I'm in a city in the UK and a lot of those are in 15 minutes walk from me. Some, like a hospital, university, cinema, shopping mall and sports arena and I think a bank I'd have to go into the city centre for, but that's only about 30 minutes walk, 10 minutes on the bike, or a short bus or metro ride. I'm generally pretty lucky in my location.
A gas station?! How often do you walk to a gas station?
I have all of this in a 15 minute walk of my apartment. The key thing, if people would like all of this very close by is they will need many fold more apartment buildings.
That's the thing people aren't willing to accept in the US.
Also who tf really needs the post office that close by, these days? Makes me think this was an older crowd that was polled.
Same for all of these except a movie theater and that post office.
I work irregular hours so I have any online orders delivered to pickup points I can go grab them from at my convenience.
Post offices in my area have been closing down, and having to walk further and further to my "local" office when picking up parcels has been infuriating over the last few years.
Yes, the automated ones are showing up in local grocers and it has helped, but having to go pick up several kilos of cat litter from the other side of town instead of next door when the delivery gets re-routed due to the pickup machine being full, is not nice.
It doesn't have to be high rise apartments though. Duplexes, quadplexes, small apartment buildings, row houses, and so on can increase density without huge buildings (although I don't mind them personally).
@vividspecter @wolfpack86 Even three or four stories of apartments above the shops, instead of... Just a roof.
The area i live generally maxes out at 5 stories. You don't need towers, but duplexes aren't going to be enough to get the density needed to have the full listing of services in a walking distance.
@LovesTha @wolfpack86 They're also important because if Australia Post can't deliver your parcel, you need to pick it up from your local post office.
With more people buying and selling things online than ever, a local post office is more important than ever for parcels, even as it's become less important for mail.
@wolfpack86 @ajsadauskas I thought to myself, I walk to the post office several times a month.
That being said, I Am over 50. So there's that ;)
Of course, in my town most essentials are walkable but no clinic or hospital within 5 miles, and virtually zero public transport. I'd like to see us do better.
I've had packages that went to the post office instead of my apartment, and I had to go pick them up. Having it nearby worked out better.
Any number of businesses could enroll as a pickup point for packages in a walkable city. They don't need to be sending points, only pickup.
This model works pretty well where I live.
@wolfpack86 @ajsadauskas you may not need a post office per se, but some of us need a service that helps you print documents (yes, unfortunately this is still required) and mail them.
The fact that only 68% of respondents say a bus stop should be within a 15 minute walk of your house and only 32% say a bar says a lot about the SEC and age of the sample pool.
I live in a city of about 3/4 of million people, just shy of it. Winnipeg Manitoba Canada.
I can walk to every one of those other than a university and sports arena (pro football or hockey, minor community center within ten), within twenty minutes. The movie theater is probably twenty away, everything else is accessible within 15 pretty easy.
It's possible but you gotta get into one of those post war community type places that hasn't been turned over yet..
Do people really use the post office or bank that often? If I'm walking into either of those, odds are something has gone catastrophically wrong that day.
Montreal, I'm a 10 minute walk from the Olympic stadium, so I think I technically have all of those things except a shopping mall within 15 minutes walk. That said, I have everything I might need from a shopping mall within 15 minutes.
Living in a rural town, I just wish I had sidewalks. I could probably walk to a local hospital within 15 minutes. 30 minutes would get me a lot of stuff on that list but there are zero sidewalks for any of that.
I lived in the suburbs once that required a 1 hour bike ride just to get to the nearest bus stop. That place was miserable
I'm actually surprised that my area of Wisconsin has the majority of these within a 15 minute walk. Bar included, of course. It makes me appreciate my neighborhood more.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Aw, c'mon! You have to have at least one pub or something to call it a neighbourhood. Sheesh!
Everything where I live (Austrian city), except for the hospital. That would be 20min.
Replace the walking with bicycling and that would be everything (the Netherlands, so cycling is the default mode of transportation), except the mall, we don’t do malls.
Replace walking with bicycling and you get the entire Oslo within 30 minutes distance. Just don't stop anywhere or your bike will probably get sabotaged.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
Why should I *walk* to a *gas station*?
As someone else said: snacks.
If you have a 24/7 kiosk in your area, that's even better though.
@flying_sheep A gas station is selling petrol, diesel and oil, sometimes hydrogen, LPG or electricity charging. For all these, you need a vehicle.
If one means snacks oder drinks, one should write down "kiosk", "grocery shop" or "elementary store".
It's generally called a "convenience store" whether or not it's on a gas station.
It's a dying type of business in Europe, but they still thrive in big cities. I wish we had Japanese style convenience stores here.
I feel like it’s pretty rare to see them not attached to gas stations, at least in America.
@volkmar @flying_sheep in the US basically every gas station has a convenience store. But I agree that people seem to have forgotten that you can have a convenience store without the gas.
Almost every gas station is attached to some type of store, mostly convenience stores, which usually have a modest selection of quick snacks, drinks, beer, sometimes basic groceries and hot meals too. When I hear “Kiosk” I think one of those touch screens that fast food restaurants use for ordering in place of human cashiers. I guess it’s also the name of the small booths in malls (and could conceivably exist stand-alone) but I couldn’t imagine them selling anything more than e.g. magazines and hot dogs. Aka far less variety than a gas station convenience store.
Oh and “grocery shop” sounds too much like “grocery store” (aka larger and less convenient), and I’ve never heard the term “elementary store” before (sounds too much like “elementary school” — is it a place for 5th graders to shop?)
@knexcar I know the reality, but I think it is the other way round: The stores are attached to the gas station, otherwise they wouldn't exist.
When have you walked to a gas station for buying petrol products the last time?
The discussion about the type of name of additional businesses of gas stations is not the point. It is about what you *need* and what type of business depending on your needs you would walk to.
You never see gas pumps on their own, they’re always attached to some sort of store, and from what I’ve heard has makes very little profit but brings customers so they’re both pretty closely tied together.
Yes I’ve never walked to the local gas station to buy gas but I’ve walked to the local gas station plenty of times to buy bananas, cigarettes, and various snacks. I feel like they probably asked “gas stations” specifically because it was a more familiar way to say “convenience stores” because in practice most Americans don’t visit standalone convenience stores much (and people probably think of the ones that cater specifically to alcohol/cigs/sketchy lottery tickets).
@knexcar Please change "You never see gas pumps on their own" to "I've never seen" - because I see and use autonomous gas stations, even without personnel, just self service cash/card payment, no shop.
I know what you mean. I think without the gas station the shops would not have been opened and made enough profit on their own. The gas station is the egg, from which the hen "convenience store" hatched. Example: Lonely gas stations along desert highways or in small villages.
Why less people want daycare in walking distance than restaraunt? Even less than fucking gas station.
And who are those 32% who don't want bus stop in 15-minute walk? Or why? Maybe they don't want it so far away and want it in 3-minute walk? If so, then I agree with them.
The fact that it's called a gas station rather than convenience store on a survey about walking is somewhat disappointing.
I live in a city of 1/2 million and have not even one of these within a 15-minute walk. Some, I could not care less such as bars, but a grocery store, gym, and park would be nice.
My 15-min walk list:
some kind of tech store, like Microcenter but smaller with less items because you wouldn’t want a big ass Microcenter near yougame/hobby store (trading cards, figurines etc.)I sincerely disagree that post offices and banks have to be within walking distance when we have mailboxes and online banking. Also, I’d like to be able to drive my car out with ease to get to other cities or states if needed. I assume 15min city urban planning accounts for the desire to long distance travel at will.
I am also not sure it’s a good idea to have schools because schools are kinda big and require lots of parking space.
As an American you could ask me what should be in a 15 minute neighborhood and I'd answer things but I can't walk off of my street without taking my life in my hands. The only thing I can walk to is my neighbors' houses.
I knew I was pretty far away from anything. Just checked on maps and I'm 1 hour from the closest business walking. It's a dog kennel. Another 20 minutes I can be at a cafe, same story if I go in the other direction, about 1 hour and 20 to a small market. Roughly 5 miles. Biking would be a out 25 minutes, maybe faster if I hustle. Driving is just minutes. No bus or train nearby at all. ( There used to be a train that ran through my neighborhood about 100 years ago). I live in northeast US
An auto repair place is something that people don't think about. It's great being able to drop off your car and walk your ass home and then wait for them to call you.
I can't reach any of the above in 15 minutes. In fact I can't reach anything in 15 minutes as it takes me 5 to just reach the gate - very rural middle of nowhere, population 50, with a single road and some street lamps as the infrastructure.
Larger German city (>500k), just from memory
A grocery store, about 11
A park, 1 large, three small
A pharmacy, six
A bus stop, only a few, dozens of train and tram stops
A restaurant, 40+
A post office, one large, dozens of shop-in-shop ones
A bank, six, dozens of ATMs
A gas station, none
An elementary school, two
A day care center, five
A hospital, I have to walk 20min for that :(
A barber shop or hairdresser, about a dozen
A shopping mall, one
A movie theater, three
A bar, 40+
A university, none
A sports arena, none
Why the fuck is “school” so far from the top of the list 🙄?
Also, if the whole point is the place being walkable, gas station shouldn’t even make the list.
I'm in the UK. I have all except a hospital, movie theatre, university, and sports arena within a 15 min walk of my house. I live in a suburb in a large city (not London).
I can get to a hospital, movie theatre, and a university within 20 mins on a bus. I can get to 3 sports areas in about 30-40 mins on a bus in different directions.
My area is not a 15-min city, but is moving that way. My own street has been split up and blocked to through traffic (which I love), and there is proposal for a pollution tax to dissuade polluting traffic in the city.
But at the moment I cannot realistically commute to work as the public transport capacity is just too low to make it comfortable and safe (I work early and late hours).
I think the concept is great but I suspect they need most of the elements to be in place before they can achieve critical mass and change behaviour. Certainly for me I'm still doing a lot of driving.
Need a proper public house
I live in a big city and every single one of these things is within 15 minutes walk from my door except a sports arena, although if you substitute that for a gym with a pool and basketball court there's half a dozen.
I love it because I never need to use my car. Although there are consequences... Heavy traffic, loud music at night, unruly people in my neighborhood, ambulance sounds, people who rev their cars and motorcycles, trash on the street sometimes, etc.
I grew up a bit far outside of any neighborhood which meant every single trip involved the car and 20 plus minutes of driving. That lifestyle is perfect for some people because they appreciate the isolation. But it also meant planning well ahead and if you needed a quick run to the hardware store or some convenience item it would take half a day. The percentage of my childhood life in the car was too damn high.
Zero. In my car... still zero.
I have a 90-minute drive to work because moving to walkable range would be too expensive.
The houses near my office start around 4-5 million dollars. Apartments within walking distance cost $3,000/month for 600 square feet.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars 57% of respondents prefer to drink and drive.
Have everything except university and sports arena. But for me it makes sense being in the NJ/NYC metro area.
Bar should be way higher on that list. Seems a lot of people haven't experienced the freedom of being able to walk home drunk from a bar, or at least take a subway/bus, without worrying about dealing with a car. Or worse relying on the friend who had a few beers but is still "good" to drive.
Living in rural US I sadly don't have any of those within walking distance. Some would take over an hour walk, and most are not even accessible to walk. A decent bike ride can get me to a few, but I hate riding on county roads. Far too many people get hit around here.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I live in Philadelphia, so all those are within a 15 minute walk from me except the university, mall, movie theater, and sports arena. But these are all accessible by transit, whether bus or subway.
On the short distance, the nearest bar to me is 40 ft (12m) away!
I have 11, outside Boston, but where is the train station in the survey?
I lived near Fenway Park once, and it was horrible. Do not recommend. The positive was I could goto a game after work and look for half price tickets after they start, but freely choose not to go if I didn’t get my price. But the noise, the mess, and the crowds making things just unuseable was not worth it.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I’m in Toronto’s Danforth area, so basically everything except a professional sports arena is within 5-20 mins walk.
The framing of that poll has such a sinister American conspiracy theorist edge: “if your local government decided…” — like having these things nearby can only be forced upon you and you must fight back.
@CStamp @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Most charitably, they don’t think food security without a car should be legislated. Less charitably, they want to ensure the car-less never live near them.
@CStamp @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Also very important to remember that “riffraff” is almost exclusively a racist definition for these situations. It adds more depth to all these situations and the solutions. Every story of bad planning is about keeping Black folk, Indigenous folk, or basically anyone not sufficiently white, out of [insert neighbourhood name here]. Class and income come into play too, but always subservient to race.
@CStamp @c_9 @fuck_cars It would also be interesting to see a regional and a rural/inner urban/suburban breakdown as well.
I suspect the numbers might be very different between, say, someone who lives in the heart of Brooklyn vs a rural town in Idaho (where everything in town is or could be a 15-minute walk) vs a suburb of Dallas or Atlanta.
@ajsadauskas @CStamp @c_9 @fuck_cars I live next door to a single woman who is solidly middle class, lives within 5 walking-minutes of a grocery store and restaurants. She never EVER walks, preferring instead to fire up her oversized, gas guzzling, Cadillac Escalade (to drive 60 seconds).
Why?
Because America. 🤦🏼🤦🏼🤦🏼
@CStamp @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Bus stop is weirder. Do they want to drive to one?
@seanddotmedotuk @CStamp @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Easy: “the people who use bus stops are not welcome in my neighbourhood.”
@c_9 @CStamp @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Thankfully, I don't think people here have reached that state of mind. Lots of people would never get on a bus themselves, but I think there's a general feeling that they are a good thing, just not good enough to actually use.
@CStamp @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Yes, I know, for my commute, it is quicker to walk than to take the bus!
However adding bus lanes, banning cars from city centres etc could make the times closer.
@CStamp @seanddotmedotuk @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars measuring travel time should include parking at both ends of the trip when driving. And the level of concentration required to drive is more stressful -- I would rather be able to read or knit or something (if the distance is not walkable) than have to pay attention to the road.
@CStamp @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars many people envision grocery shopping as too big to manage without a car. They are buying large quantities to take advantage of sales or bulk discounts.
@ocursedspite @CStamp @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars and then throwing out 40% of the food when it rots before they can eat it
@CStamp @ocursedspite @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars it's not a hard and fast rule and maybe it doesn't apply to you personally (I don't think I throw out that much food either and I try really hard not to), but yes, Americans waste a ton of our food supply by just throwing it in the garbage. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-why-americans-throw-out-165-billion-in-food-every-year-2016-07-22
@CStamp @ocursedspite @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I was just trying to give you something accessible so you didn't have to go searching for the information. It's also possible that I was misremembering the exact thing that that number was representing but Americans throw out a lot of their food. That was the statement I was making. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956053X19300194#b0085
@CStamp @c_9 @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
At the local Safeway it is assumed you drive because every receipt comes with a gas coupon. If you arrive with a backpack, for carrying, it is assumed you are a thief. The changes would mean people would need to check their assumptions and possibly adjust corporate enabling.
Who are these people that responded "No, no I would not like a park or bank or gas station less than 15 minutes from my house!" ?
I can get to....more houses!
As an Englishman, I counted 8 of these.
Shopping mall is the only one on the list I can't walk to in 15 min or less. Love living in a walkable city, it's so rare in America these days.
Manure, swamp, ticks, Coyotes (after dark at least), deer, bear
Disappointingly I only have the grocery store within that distance, and it's a Walmart with no sidewalk for a stretch of that walk... But back to that list... Why would you need a gas station within walking distance? Am I walking with my car Flintstones style?
Most gas stations come with convenience stores, and I’d imagine people would want to walk there to get quick snacks, munchies, and beer. Some (like Wawa and Kwik Trip) can be surprisingly nice, even featuring hot meals, free ATMs, and basic groceries.
I know they could have specified “convenience store” but most people’s experience with convenience stores is at gas stations, and it seems like a lot of the ones without gas stations are sketchy/alcohol-focused, or are ethnic stores with weird groceries.
Prices too. In my (limited) experience in the US, petrol stations charge a bit more for groceries than supermarkets, but convenience stores are significantly more.
@phorq @ajsadauskas I was thinking the same thing. But even a gas station is within walking distance to my apartment in Boston. Everything on that list is within walking distance.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars At the corner of my road, I have:
- Bakery (that took over the shops left and right because they kept winning awards)
- Pharmacy
- Post Office
- Women's Hairdresser
- Pizza, Chinese and Indian
- GP (although always booked out)
- Petrol Station chain which sells marked-up cornerstore stuff, don't get milk there it's 6 bucks
Other than the primary school (~20 minutes) and the physical bank, which we barely have any left off in Norway, they're all within 15 minutes.
- Trondheim
Haha yeah i noticed that about the bank as well, i haven't been to a physical bank in... 6 years?
Having one nearby wouldn't be very high up on my wishlist
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars can reach all of them, although depends on what is considered a “sport arena”. I'm shocked not to see a “church” as list option, though 🇻🇦
I'm in one of the less walkable, more car centric cities, but have made a lifelong effort to live where I can walk to things and have a few bus routes nearby. The buses have been starved and some come only every hour now but I can walk to:
Work
Cafe
Corner store
Bank (but I bank online)
Doctor and dentist (dentist more like half hour walk but sidewalk all the way) also every specialist doctor
A pot dispensary
Drugstore
Several restaurants
And believe it or not, a stadium.
No bar :(
ETA: Grocery, yes but not on the path to/from work so wildly inconvenient, and I can still walk to a comic shop but it's on the other side of the river now and while the bridge has sidewalks there is no barrier between cars and the sidewalk, it's more like a pedestrian lane in the road!
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars 15 minute walk: Park, elementary school, bus stop, restaurant, gas station.
15-30 minutes: (I do walk sometime but usually bike): Grocery store, pharmacy, bank, barber.
I can easily bike, though not walk, to all of the rest except a university (which seems an absurd ask for a 15-minute neighborhood).
As someone who lives within 15 minutes ot a sports arena, i agree with not having one
I live within a 15 minute walk of a sports arena. It's not so bad, it's neat to see all the community fill up the streets on big game days. I walked to see the red hot chili peppers last year, that was pretty cool.
A lot of stuff actually, but I'm pretty damn lucky to like in a place that's somewhat walkable and not a death sentence to ride a bike in.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars the only ones that are out of my reach by walking 15 mins are a bank, sports arena (I have many recreational pitches and fields around) and a mall. But they are not that far anyway.
There's some nuance to this: where I live there is a microcosm of sorts because of how big the city where I live is, so I CAN find all of this in my area but in many other places in the same city you couldn't get to half of the stuff listed there.
I can't get to any of those within a 15-minute walk from my house because I don't live in a city. I apologize for my lack of urban living.
I live in Brooklyn. Almost all of these are well covered. It's pretty great. Hospital, mall, and sports arena are a little outside a 15 minute walk.
I think "places to see live music" should be on the list. There's one by me but it tends to be for bigger acts. If I want to see a smaller band play I usually need to travel a bit.
Surprised shooting ranges aren't on this list.
I actually have all of these within 15 minutes. I live North of Detroit
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
In pretty central … all of them except I think a gas station.
Not even sure why a gas station is included here.
@ajsadauskas in Umeå Sweden near campus I fall short of bank office whatever that is.. a movie theater and a gas station (it closed).
Such a list should have more focus on work places.. not only have "service", if we want o limit traffic :) Even though hospital and university has a lot of staff.
Office complex, hotels, branches of government etc.
@fuck_cars
the only ones i don't have within 15 min walk from me
I do have a local GP within that distance though so i'm fine with not having a hospital within walking distance. Plus there is a hospital not too far away, just not within 15 mins.
I have a college about 25 mins walk away too
I live in the centre of a large british town though so having everything on my doorstep is kind of expected
There's a brothel about 100 meters away. A doctor's surgery where I can get tested for STDs less than 50 meters in the other direction. A pharmacy within the same radius. A post office 8 minutes away, the gas station is across the road from the post office. Several hotels, bars and restaurants. A few convenience stores. Several fast food eateries. At least three gyms, three banks and a Greek Orthodox Church.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I live in a rural village and can get to 11 of those within a 3 minute walk.
I'm moving to a large town soon where it'll go up to the full list.
I can't imagine having to drive everywhere.
I live within a 15-20 minute walk of all but three of these places: shopping mall, university, and sports arena. While a uni being closer would be neat, I am well out of college at this point in my life... the other two locations could simply not exist at all and I would be fine with that.
My sister is fortunate enough to live close to a lot of this stuff.
And there are no sidewalks 😂
Everything but a movie theater, but when the street car extension is done, I'll have one on the streetcar line.
It is pretty glorious.
There's no university or sports arena within 15 minutes of me but, the bus station will take me to either and I could walk to the sports arena if I really felt like it. I think the movie theater might be closer to a 20 minute walk but that's still reasonable.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
In Manchester, England.
All within 15 minute walk except for:
Hospital - 20 minutes Metro (but health centre only 5 minutes walk)
Cinema - 20 minutes Metro (but theatre 10 minutes walk away)
University - 20 minutes bus
Buses and Metro every 12 minutes or better.
@GeorgeCzernuszka @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
I live in Melbourne suburbs (Australia) and all of these are 15mins walk away except uni, hospital and sports stadium but could get to all of those from the train station 400m away
I feel a bit lucky looking at this. I live in the middle of the US and I have the first 9 listed within a 15 min walking distance. I live in a rather large town though too and I'm smack in the middle of that.
All but 5: grocery story, mall, university, sports stadium, hospital
All but 4, I can get to. University, theatre, sports arena, and shopping mall.
Although those four are a 5-10 minute Uber
I have every one of those within 15 minutes by bike, except the university, which is about 30 minutes away by bike.
However, our cycling infrastructure does not give you the most convenient/fastest way to those destinations, so I can see how some would just drive.
A few changes, and this could be easily fixed.
Living in an urban part of Ottawa, Ontario. The neighborhood is called Centretown West
Grocery: Not a supermarket, but right across the street from my building, there's a corner store that sells all of the relevant staple foods like bread, milk, eggs, some produce, dry groceries, etc.
Pharmacy: Yes actually a couple of options.
Bus stop: There is one near me, and I'm also only about 10 minutes from the metro light rail station.
Restaurant: I live near the city's "little Italy" and "Chinatown" areas, so I'm spoiled for choice here. I also live near a stroad which means fast food options.
Post office: They are commonly in pharmacies here in Canada, and the one near me is no exception
Bank: Yes, in fact I could probably access a branch for all of the major Canadian banks within a 15-20 minute walk.
Elementary school: Yes there's one close to me. A high school too.
Daycare: Yup, a few actually.
Hospital: Not within walking, but there are clinics
Barber: Quite a few over in Little Italy, including the one I go to.
Bar: Tons along the strip of Little Italy
Mall: Nope, but lots of shopping options at individual shops around me. Malls are gross anyway.
University: I am about a 20 minute walk to Carleton, and the walk would be through the park mentioned above
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars In a Brussels suburb we've got all of those things within max 15min walking except a gas station, a sports arena and a movie theatre.
As someone who has lived within 5 minutes to a football stadium my whole life across multiple cities, I'd argue it's a positive to not have it that close. Too much noise.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Practically all of them (I'm in Europe of course) although the hospital and the sports arena would require a brisk walk, more like 20+min. But there are dozens of doctors nearby.
I'm only missing 3 here in Philadelphia, a hospital, movie theater, and university. Though there are plenty of urgent care facilities around my location. And if we include a 15 minute bus ride, I can get to all three. I had to think in where the nearest theater was.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
This is such a city-centric question, that I doubt many rural folks bothered to answer it.
46 years ago, we moved from London, where these things were available, to a rural Vermont town where none of them are except an elementary school (well, I can step outside and be in the woods; better than a park).
It's beautiful, quiet, and cheaper than city life.
When we drive, we combine visits to many of these amenities in one trip.
We don't regret our decision a bit.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
I grew up in Collingwood, Melbourne and all of these things were within 20mins walk from my house.
I'm on the other side of Melbourne now (Footscray) and the only thing I'm not walking distance from is 'sports arena'..unless you count horse racing.
@jessta @fuck_cars Depending on where abouts in Footscray you are, you might get half a point for the Whitten Oval...
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars ah, good point.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars ultimately, it’s largely about density. Eg. There are maybe 7000 pubs/night clubs etc in Australia. So if there are about 4000 ppl within walking distance of you, good chance you’ll have a pub within walking distance. Or if there are 4000 ppl within driving distance of you, good chance you’ll have a pub within driving distance. And so on for the rest…
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I also don't get A Bar being so low. The bar is exactly the place I WANT people to be walking to instead of driving. Perhaps this is just a limitation of the polling method; these responses are mostly just gut reactions, not carefully considered positions.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
In a 15 minute walk, in the Greater #Montreal , I have access to:
- Grocery Store
- (Miniature) Park
- Pharmacy
- Bus Stop
- Restaurant
- Post Office
- Bank
- Gas Station (why‽)
- (Fake) Shopping Mall
I recently moved from the town where I grew up to a much larger city (small city).
I had almost anything I wanted within a 15 minute walk.
Now, the only thing is a relatively crappy convenience store. Adjusting to my new location is proving more difficult than I imagined. It's certainly nice to be a 2 minute walk to a private beach, but, I miss many of the things that were a very easy walk away.
high rise strip malls with conveyor belts. ala Jetsons. my robovac has a lot to learn
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars all but the university (that is an hour🚲 or 40 min 🚄+🚍).
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars who doesn't want a park 15mn walking from their home? SMH.
#RuralLife
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars All but the hospital, university, arena, movie theatre, and bank. Notably all of those are still less than 45 minutes walk and understandable. Also all are under 20 minutes on my bike.
Everything except four things on the list
@fuck_cars @ajsadauskas all but a park, hospital and uni for me, though I’d get to them in about 30-45 mins and there are good buses to the latter two. Not a bad score really. I’m intrigued that the question in the poll starts out with reference to the 15-minute neighbourhood. Given the conspiracy theories I wonder if they’d get higher scores without an “ideological” scene setting and just asked the questions in isolation.
@simonvarwell @fuck_cars @ajsadauskas
Yeh. The 16% who voted no for a grocery store probably voted no for everything else, too.
Or maybe they thought “grocery store” meant a giant Walmart-type building with an ugly parking lot and heavy car traffic.
@MrLee @knexcar either way, a sad reflection eh.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars All except a Uni.
Shopping Mall? Well, not really, but yes to local shopping strip (5 minutes), Fitzroy St, St Kilda and Clarendon St, South Melbourne (10 Minutes) both covering all shopping needs.
Brisk 20 minutes would get me to the closest CBD campus of a Uni.
And three minutes walk to two tram lines.
Kids walked or public transported to school.
I rode or public transported to work (or taxi and flew because it was in another state or country).
One car family - have never been really able to give up a car, entirely, but never needed two.
@BernardSheppard @fuck_cars If you're within walking distance of a good shopping street with a supermarket (Fitzroy St definitely counts), I think it's fair to tick off that box...
Where is “cricket pitch”? That and pub would come top where I’m from.
I can reach everything on that list in 15mins by foot except for a sports arena and a hospital.
Groceries, (crappy) park, pharmacy, 2 bus stops, light rail stop serving three lines, at least 15 restaurants/food carts, a bank, a gas station (and a standalone convenience store), a hospital, a barber shop, and a few bars.
For the missing, good transit access fills in the gaps mostly:
There are two exceptions:
Seeing that those surveys exist does not really motivate me to ever visit the US besides the big cities. I literally have most of these in 15 to 30 minutes by foot or public transport. Wow.
8 of these if a Dollar general counts as a grocery store, otherwise 7.
15 min walk.. In the US...?
40% do not think an elementary school should be within a 15 minute walk?!?!? (16 not sure 24 no)
That's wild.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars No cinema @ 15 minutes and only a couple of medical centres (no full hospital), but everything else is right here.
@muiiio @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars no university, no sports arena but everything else less than 15 minutes,
oh and international airport in 1 h train ride
@ajsadauskas
And the amount of grocery stores i can reach within a 15 minutes walk must be at least 80, easily.
This town is still structured around small family businesses.
@fuck_cars
@ajsadauskas
In the south of Portsmouth, UK, all of the majority shoulds bar a gas station and a hospital, and I am *fine* with that. The hospital is 5 miles away.
And for the minority shoulds, I can get to a bar. And the others are just a bit further.
@fuck_cars
I can’t help but think that this is just a ranking of how much people need these things. Everyone needs a grocery store all of the time, so it makes sense to have one nearby whether or not you use a car to get there. But people don’t need a bar or a shopping mall every day. So people might be more willing to have one a bit further away.
laughs in San Franciscan
Jokes on you, I live in the countryside and we have a bar/restaurant and 2 Bus stops and that's it.
I’ve got all those things in my suburb of Melbourne! Well the hospital might be more like 20-25.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I'm in Riverside South in Ottawa, so I can only walk fifteen minutes to a park, a bus stop, and an elementary school (which also, I believe, operates a day care). That's it. But if I expand that to half-an-hour, I can add a pharmacy and a post office in one direction and *maybe* a restaurant and a grocery store in another (I'm not sure if I'd get there in half an hour, though. Might be a bit longer).
And lord knows the bus stop in Ottawa, via OC Transpo is... a gamble.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Also, I'm surprised "Library" didn't make the list. (Or, maybe I'm not surprised? I'm not sure.)
Live in Rio, from this list i have almost everything in a 15 minute walk distance the only exceptions are
Although i have a lot of services close, it is still a chore to go walking because a lot of the walking is uphill, i wish there was more public infrastructure to help people move up and down like trams and stuff like that, way back them the city uses to have trams everywhere, but now there's almost none.
What isn't on the list, but i absolutely didn't want around, was an neopentecostal church. Unfortunately, they are everywhere and super loud and disrespectful.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars i think i only "miss".
- a bank
- a gas station
though i didn't look for them as i don't need them.
(I live slightly to the south of Amsterdam, NL).
Oh my god, just imagine if there were hospitals every 15 minutes <3
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars
Everything on the list, except for a shopping mall and a movie theatre, is within a twenty minute walk.
The bus route is a three year pilot project - a subsidized shuttle from the regional transit hub [ 1 hr South of us ] to the small city one hr north of us.
No university nor college though highschool has night-school uni credit courses.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars 7 of these are available to me, but the park closes at sundown, I don't have children, hair, or drink outside my home. The only one I use is the bus stop.
Linving in.Montreal. Hospital is about 25 walking. No university but one college under 15. I have the mf olympic stadium at a 10 minutes walk lol. Everything elses checks.
Okay, damn I don't have 15 minute access to a "bar"-bar, and the university/sports arenas are just outside that walk
I can reach half of them by foot and the other half by public transit in a similar amount of time. Sweden here obviously lol
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Great question! I can do all of these in a fifteen minute (ish) walk except:
- a hospital (though I can walk to my doctor's office in 15 min)
- a university (if you count community colleges, I have one about 30 minutes walk away)
- shopping mall, movie theater, and sports arena
Every last one of these is accessible within 20-ish minutes if I use public transit, though.
@ajsadauskas @wesley @fuck_cars They ask about park, but I think they should also ask about running water https://tutoteket.no/@forteller/111931813852899136
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I built free software to quantify amenity categories within a 10-min walk:
https://mark.stosberg.com/new-software-to-calculate-walk-potential-for-cities/
My default categories:
- Arts / cultural space
- Bank / ATM
- Bar / pub
- Barber
- Bike shop
- Bus stop / Rail Station
- Café / Tea Shop
- Car share station
- Community center / place of worship
- Daycare
- Fitness or Sports Center
- Grocery store
- Hardware store
- Laundromat
- Library
- Liquor / cannabis store
- Park
- Pharmacy
- Restaurant
- School
- Retail / boutique
@[email protected] @[email protected] I can get to all of those except a hospital and arena, too. Most in much less than 15 min. Granted, I live in a small city with a still vibrant downtown.
Of course, I wouldn't walk right now. It's freezing out there!
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I can walk to all of these under 15 minutes except five of them that are all near the bottom of the list.
I've got 14, 15 if I switch university with a trades school (which is much more important to a semi rural town of 7k)
I only have 1, a park, and technically not a park it's a trail and you have to go on a dangerous road with no sidewalk to get there.
@fuck_cars @ajsadauskas there should be more hospitals than hair dressers/barbers said no one ever.
I can get to everything except the hospital, mall, movie theatre, and University in twenty minutes. If I use public transport I can get to those in about half an hour.
None of them because there are no sidewalks
Richmond, VA checking in. I can walk to all of these except a shopping mall.
One of the really interesting things about reading this thread is noticing how these places clearly mean different things to different people.
Like one person says how "can somebody not want a pub in their neighborhood?" A pub and a bar might not mean the same thing to everyone. To some people a bar might mean something much closer to a night club and a pub something much closer to a restaurant.
Gas station doesn't mean convenience store to me AT ALL. To me it's only a place for buying gas. I would never go to one unless I was buying gas at the same time.
Is what I call a green grocer/fruit market what other people call a grocery store?
The questions abound...
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Of those:
* A bus stop
* A restaurant
* Maybe a park, I haven't timed it?
There's also a convenience store (with no associated gas station), which while expensive has proven handy in emergencies.
@ajsadauskas
Pretty much every place in Barcelona.
Even most villages will fit this, with the exception of the ones that require a large population, like hospitals, sport arena, and universities.
@fuck_cars
@ajsadauskas
I have all of that within a 350 meters radius from my home but a hospital, a shopping mall, a sports arena and a movie theater. Although i have 3 regular theaters within that same radius, and the university being that close is, admitedly, a bit of luck.
That's downtown Buenos Aires for you.
In 15 minutes i have multiple options for hospital and movie theaters, but still no luck for sports arenas and shopping malls. Although being far away from any shopping mall is actually for the better imo.
@fuck_cars
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars if I make it a 20 min radius, then it's everything except sports arena and university, and there are multiples of both not much further than that.
If I keep it strictly to 15 mins, all I lose is the shopping mall and movie theatre.
I live where I live very much because I can have a walkable (slash cyclable slash public transportable) life.
Imagine if that gas station ⛽ could also be a kindergarten 😁! Your neighborhood would totally rock!
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars I can get to a gas station.
OK, maybe to a park if you don't require it to have playground equipment 🙂
@Jakra @fuck_cars Very good point.
I took "sports arena" to mean a stadium where professional sports are played. (So the MCG/SCG/Adelaide Oval/Optus Stadium/Gabba/Olympic Park/etc.)
If you mean local community cricket/Aussie rules/soccer/rugby ground then there's one within walking distance of my house.
Every American should have a major league stadium within a 15 minute walk.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars we've been in coburg and although a few bits of gentrification are getring toe-holds it feels like it hasn't changed much in 50 years. surprised to see bar ranked so low - definitely best to have within walking distance.
we can get to everything except hospital (though there are plans to build one in the next decade or so), sports arena (plenty of pitches around), university, and gas/petrol station (should have one this year or next).
What a dumb ass question.
Sure, give me unlimited money and I want all these things!
I have all except the hospital and university are about 10 mins drive. My bank is about the same, but I haven't walked into a bank for about a decade. I live in a city that's had a focus on modern design, though. The result is everything is a walk away. Super boring. I get in the car and head to the mountains every chance I can get so I can feel like I'm not in a retirement village and still have some sort of constitution. Ya know, in case of the zombies.
Shot.
Just kidding, I live in Europe. :) All the things in the list except the arena.
I dont even want neighbors within a 15 minute walk of my house, why would i want a cities worth of foot traffic going by my house every 15 minutes?
15 what? Fuck that shit...
This 15 minute city shit is propaganda.