Where I live my kids can go on a 5 minute walk through a quiet neighborhood then cross one street to get to McDonalds. If they go a different direction they wind up at Subway.

In 10 minutes they can go to a wide variety of places, everything from IHOP to a dollar store. Albertsons is an 11 minute walk. Less if they run. More if they stop and play at the park on the way.

Not all of suburbia is big box malls off of freeways. There are a lot of little strip malls around as well. And you can choose a place for how walkable it is.

That's anecdotal.

10 minutes of walking won't even get you out of my subdivision. Plop down a 15-minute radius on my map and there are literally zero places of business anywhere in it.

This is largely due to zoning. There is a strip of land zoned for local businesses a mere 10 minutes away, but unsurprisingly, no one has chosen to build anything on it.

You can't always prioritize walkability if you have a limit on your housing budget. My current place costs $11k/year, and the commuting to work by car isn't entirely horrible. But walking anywhere is really out of the question.

I live in a suburban neighborhood. We're near a number of stores and restaurants without crossing any streets, and the number multiplies if you allow a crossing or two. An actual grocery store is about half an hour's walk, but it's closer than the freeway, and you'd pass three or four convenience stores and about a dozen restaurants within the same distance.

Getting to Mega-lo-mart would be a 45 minute walk, and involves going under the toll road overpass and crossing about 4 streets (so, a little farther than I'll want my kid going anytime soon).