> It doesn't sound like something I'd care much about.
But recognize that many, especially increasing numbers of millennials, feel differently and this is now reshaping the demographics of cities.
- The ability to just stop by a neighbor for a drink or a chat
- Somebody to give your house keys to while you're on vacation, without inconveniencing them since they live so close
- Being able to call your doctor off hours in an emergency because you have a personal relation beyond your yearly visit
- The grapevine that will let you know if somebody saw your kid hang-out with the trashy teenagers
- Ability for your kids to walk to school, so you're not wasting your time driving them. Same for your parents, they walk for their daily groceries, instead of whining about how they no longer can drive and making you feel guilty for not chauffeuring them around
- Ability to use your neighbor's car when yours is in the shop, because he doesn't need it since he generally bikes to work
Basically, supreme convenience. A small town has everything you need for daily life, at your fingertips. There's redundancy and fallbacks literally around every corner for life's little setbacks, because you have actual convivial relationships with your neighbors.
Some people really don't care about that. Other people really do. In America, the second group is SOL. If they want that convenience, they'll pay dearly for it. In other countries, it's the other way around. The norm is the walkable town, and the exception is the sprawling burbs.
Living close-by does strengthen informal ties, because you're more likely to run into eachother, literally. The alienation of the car-dependent suburb is admittedly a literary trope, but it is rooted in reality.
Different people, different strokes, suburbs have a different appeal. But it's a sliding scale. People that don't enjoy car-dependency have very little inexpensive options in this country. The market has spoken, and the demand for town-living is far greater than the supply. It's reflected in the house prices, virtually any metro, the walkable areas are more expensive than the car sprawl.
In most towns there are school buses that have routes in the morning to bring kids to school from their houses. It's not a choice between only driving and walking.
From my perspective, we have bitter few of them. For me and many others, walkability is fundamental. It's fine if others don't agree. Our segment of the market is woefully underserved though, and we can see that in the fact that walkable neighorhoods and towns are always almost more expensive than areas that require car-dependency. I also think that price-differential is because of the constrained supply of walkable towns because collectively we prioritize speedy car travel at the expense of everything else.
A small town or "streetcar suburb" in Jane Jacobs parlance functions very much like a city microcosm in terms of walkability, amenities and vibe. Most modern American suburbs are entirely different than small towns.
https://books.google.com/books?id=Xk06al1sAmUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA...
Passage begins on page 171 but I can't link to it via Google Books.
Everyone has their own taste, but generally speaking, if every journey out of your home has to begin and end with a parking space because you live in a pedestrian-hostile environment, that will certainly damage quality of life and the social fabric of that place as a "town".