Another hot take - Being in the middle of a city doesn't make one more social. Actually it can be more lonely ironically. You are surrounded by strangers.

In my current suburb I am good friend with all of my neighbors. We share vegetables from our gardens, have block parties, let children play together, it's extremely social.

5? Depends where you live of course, I have 100+ within 20 min walk, easily!

> Being in the middle of a city doesn't make one more social. Actually it can be more lonely ironically. You are surrounded by strangers.

Depends. If you go to the same coffee shop every day, you certainly start meeting people.. or sit on a coffee shop for a while on the street, on a park..

My wife and I stayed in a suburb for 3 months while we were caretaking and working remotely.

I couldn’t step out my door and go out on a run, the nearest coffee shop was a 15 minute drive away, and no restaurants were open past 9 and often closed on weird days.

It felt like the only way to be comfortable in the suburb was to own more things and build your own castle.

We returned back to Chicago and immediately bought to secure our preferred urban lifestyle for the long term.

Even thought in Chicago MOST of the time we go to the same handful of restaurants, its the option to have a near countless amount that we COULD go to that keeps us from feeling like were going to the same few places.

I personally feel like it overvalues commercial activity (restaurants, retail, grocery, entertainment). Obviously, it depends on how often you want to partake in said commercial activities as far as how you would value it.

I would love if the conception of walkability could also take into account:

'How far can I walk without having to worry about cars/crossing streets/waiting for lights?'

'How safe/comfortable is the walk? Will I be walking by people who will harass me/be high on drugs/try to sell me something?'

'How easy is it to string together a run without having to stop?'

'How busy are the sidewalks? Will I have to be dodging people on their phones all the time?'

'Is it easy to take a dog for a walk? Or are there limited green spaces?'

'Are there social/interest groups nearby that meet up?'

I find some of these types of factors much more important than closeness to X number of commercial venues. So a busy downtown street may get a high walkability score (i.e. Walk Score) because of the restuarants/retail/theaters, but it might be atrocious to my conception of walkability.

Link: https://www.walkscore.com/score/Times-Square-New-York

The strip in Las Vegas is not far behind. While people didn't tend to bump me, there was a never endings series of people trying to get me to buy their prostitutes for the night.

I'd happily take a less nice walk than being forced to drive.

In my case you'd be off by at least an order of magnitude. You like variety, eh? I mean.. I can get any kind of cuisine at all that can be found in a big city... Not sure what suburbia has to offer on top of that. I mean, you do you. Just saying your argument could maybe use an accuracy adjustment.

Whether I walk to the grocery store or not isn't super relevant.

Probably going off on a tangent here, but I grew up surrounded by hundreds of acres of farmland and woods to get lost in the minute I walked out the door, which I still escape to as much as I can, whether it's family owned rural property or state parks/mountains. Working in tech early in my career made that escape harder to get to, but I wouldn't trade rural life for any amount of restaurants, social gatherings, or whatever else within walking distance.

We also have block parties, lol.

These also are the highest cost of living places in the world to live. It's not practical to think everyone could live like that. They also are miserable with homeless people, drug addicts, and crime. It also relies on a huge network of people commuting to those jobs to support that area.

You can't have 30 restaurants within a few square miles with all the people to support that living there in homes. You'd need a combination of super dense housing and people commuting. It's really inefficient.

What aspect of urban development caused these people to be homeless, drug-addicted, or criminal? Did the frequency of bus service get them addicted to drugs? Did the taller building height take their job?

We make this unconscious logical leap that there's some justification for human misery to be concentrated in urban cores. I live in a dense urban core right now, and I see human misery when I go outside. I think "boy, it'd be nice to move to an area where this miserable person isn't". But... it'd be ridiculous to be happy by pretending misery doesn't exist because it's not in eyeshot. If that were the case, we should just ship miserable people to the suburbs where I don't have to see them (that would be cheaper and more convenient for me!). The wealth density of an urban neighborhood is huge, there's easily enough money to relocate miserable people into even rich suburbs.

The better thing to do is to make choices that cause there to be fewer miserable people. I'm optimistic that the current debate around the urban-suburban-rural divide and the role of cars will make us recognize that there's huge mutual interest in the idea that _public spaces should be nice_, and that seeing the misery that results from our policy choices is a feature and not a bug.

that would be a low number for a middling town in the pre-car era.

I have 56 eateries (restaurants, cafés and bistros) in a 500m radius, and also 36 bakeries, butchers and supermarkets all of which offer warm, ready-to-eat meals. Am I a weird outlier?

I don't think I'd be more likely to make friends with my neighbors if I moved to the burbs. This seems to be driven more by personality and need than location, right?

Not only a walkable city will provide you with some 50 restaurants at 10-15 minutes by feet, but what is more important is having groceries and other household shops at 5 minutes.

> In my current suburb I am good friend with all of my neighbors. We share vegetables from our gardens, have block parties, let children play together, it's extremely social.

All of this often happens in walkable cities as well.

Source: Last 20 years I lived in cities with population from 5M to 15M and I always had at least 10 restaurants at walking distance and I used public transport and cars to go to places way beyond the walking distance.

I did this. I have 100 restaurants, too many bars to count, music and theatre (three!) and festivals and arts within trivial distances. No car needed.

If you enjoy biking to establishments, it's worth it to actively think about dirt roads and rail trails in your search -- dirt roads cut car speeds to safe levels, and rail trails let you avoid cars almost entirely. Both make biking miles better.

It's also almost evenly centered between NYC and Boston if you want to do weekend city adventures. You'll probably still need a car but if you live in the center of town you won't use it except for longer trips.

That is how I became aware of western Mass, actually. FWIW education is a major driver for us since we have 3 young kids. My thinking waffles a bit because there's a list of criteria in my head, like being walkable, bikeable, having a downtown area, in addition to the more major concerns we have as a family around education, local economy, and affordability. I appreciate the reply!

Maybe. Two examples I've lived in or around are Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, with populations around 50k. Chambersburg is probably little bit more walkable because it's a little more dense, but neither are (in my opinion) comfortable for walking or biking outside of specific areas, and those specific areas don't have everything you need.

Unfortunately, there are relatively few places to live inside the dense part of town. The city is overly-zealous about maintaining historic districts and you'd better believe people get all up in arms about "changing the character of the neighborhood" every time a new development is proposed, even in non-historic and totally dilapidated areas. I've seen literally hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new housing and commercial projects be cancelled or indefinitely postponed due to this attitude just in the last 10 years.

While the city has a lot of potential, it's population has stagnated since the 1970s and the surrounding area has become a massive suburban sprawl. Many of the buildings downtown have been replaced with parking lots. Traffic is generally terrible, and the bus system has low coverage and poor frequencies.

Around 100 years ago, Portland was a thriving metropolis with electric trolleys going to every imaginable destination. All of those trolleys are gone now and their tracks have either been removed or awkwardly paved over.

Portland was once a vibrant inter-city train hub with hourly connections to the rest of Maine. The two primary stations, Union Station, and Grand Trunk Terminal, have been torn down. The current train hub, "Portland Transportation Center" is much further from the city center to make room for a large parking lot. It is about a 40 minute walk from what is considered the downtown area. 20 minutes by bus if your schedule happens to line up.

It's pretty disappointing how much better it once was. I'm doubtful that it will ever be as good as it was back then, but still hopeful. There are plans to move the train station back to where Union Station was. New routes to Lewiston and Rockland have been studied (although would apparently cost hundreds of millions to repair the tracks). The state has recently subsidized certain interstate train and bus routes to make them very affordable. And generally I think a lot of problems could be immediately solved by straightening out bus routes and increasing frequency, as well as obviously removing a lot of building-size restrictions and parking minimums.

What area were you referring to?

This is especially true in north America where cities all went through a huge conglomeration effort in the second half of the 20th century and absorbed their suburbs.

The best walkable suburbs I've visited, Montclair and Red Bank in NJ and Ardmore, PA seem pretty sad, small, and boring in comparison. Fine for a visit, but I wouldn't wan to spend three days in a row there.

There's nothing wrong with small and boring, the major issue is that generally the overwhelming majority of US housing stock and zoning laws are geared towards picket-fence suburbia, to the detriment of people who don't necessarily want that. Plenty of people certainly want that, but it's probably not anywhere near like 90% of people in the US.

I grew up in a dense city outside the US, and even as a not-particularly-social child, I still had plenty of friends I played with and hung out with, and also had tons of interaction with adults. Meanwhile I’ve seen my cousins grow up in suburbs over the past 10 years, and they interact with maybe 3 non-family members outside of school, because everything is like a 15 minute walk away through winding suburb streets. That kind of isolation is not healthy at all.

That's because if you want an individual home, you're giving up the customer density required to make those amenities viable. In a world with the internet, at-home delivery, and yes, cars, it's simply not economically viable to create a grocery store that only caters to 100ish families.

It’s just that these small groceries cannot outcompete supermarkets once people are in the habit of going everywhere by car.

This is true to a limited extent. If small grocers and bakeries were allowed to setup in mixed use areas they would do a whole lot better. However sticking them an average of 3 miles from their customers in a horrible strip mall kills them.

I would happily pay a premium for having a grocer just down the street instead of having to go 4+ miles to a supermarket. Being able to get a gallon of milk and some onions in 10-15 minutes from a place just down the street will always beat driving to, parking at, and walking around a 10 acre supermarket on a 50 acre parking lot. Just the stress of dodging all the parking lot speedsters is more than enough to keep me far from that place.

That's the crux of the problem in the US. Vast swaths of land are dedicated to single-family homes (and ONLY single-family homes). You literally couldn't build a small grocery next to these homes if you wanted. And the hurdles to getting a zoning change as so high that developers just build strip malls on the outskirts of town/subdivision.

We're beginning to see some progress in the DC suburbs, with more mixed-use "village centers" being built in the 'burbs. My main complaint with these is the development is done in one pass by a giant corporate developer, leaving the area feeling very sterile (compared to an old urban downtown in a small city, which might not be as clean, but has a more organic mix of businesses). IMO, of course.

So yes, it's not that you can't have single families, and it's not really about people having cars or not, it's the density, and therefore, it's the lawns and the streets that are too wide, making the number of places that you can go to in a 15 minute walk far smaller

> it's simply not economically viable

You replied:

> t’s just that these small groceries cannot outcompete supermarkets

So you are confirming what he said.

And with Covid restrictions and work-from-home, deliveries and online ordering were cemented as normal behavior.

Uh, somebody has to deliver those orders. And in the US, that's by car (van). You might make single-car households more viable with pervasive online ordering/delivery, but you don't necessarily change the core character of the neighborhood that way.

And there's always services who will pick up bread from such locations and deliver it. With or without the bakery's backing.

This mix is really rare in North America, at least and especially north of Mexico, but it does exist.

Neither of which sounds very nice to me. I don't have a huge yard, but I do have enough yard to raise a few trees and firepit. If I lost that, I might as well be in an apartment.

And that still wouldn't provide enough density to support a variety of restaurants and grocery stores (not to mention things like employment for non-techies).

Take my neighborhood (south Reston, VA). The main road is about 2.5 miles long. There is a strip mall at both ends, leaving homes in the midde just outside easy walking distance (from my house, by footpath, it's nearly 2 miles to one end and a bit over 1.25 to the other). There is a major intersection about halfway down that main road. Instead of allowing a small shopping area, it's more houses. Hard to change now, but if it had been zoned mixed-use/light commercial at build time, there could be a coffee shop and small grocer there. And bring between 1/3 and 1/2 of the available customers in the area within walking distance of at least some of their regular errands.

Additional benefit of this would be reducing the size of the malls at each end, mostly by removing parking spaces, freeing that space for townhouse, apartments, or more shops.

Take my office... it's 1.25 miles away, and I walk. But, the complex is all offices. If there were a grocer there or on the way, I could eliminate my 1x weekly carload, instead grabbing things as-needed on my walk home.

Same office. I have coworkers who live closer than me, but refuse to try walking because the sidewalks and street crossings from their direction are less user-friendly. Crossing on/off ramps without signals. Crossing a 4 lane highway with 50mph traffic. Etc. Some simple crosswalk modifications could make the office complex walkable to some of these coworkers. But, traffic planners don't even appear to think of these things when building roads - it's almost 100% car-focused.

With the number of signaled intersections, I can't drive it any faster than the bike. But definitely faster than walking most of the time (though walking is a guaranteed time - driving that distance has taken 20+ minutes before because of traffic jams).

Basically, if it takes the same or less time than driving, I try to walk or cycle. Sometimes I walk the ~2 miles to CVS or Starbucks, but that's as much recreation as transport - I can drive it in 5 min. Nice to have the option, but if they were closer to 1 mile, I'd always walk.

It's not far from reality. But mostly because so much of the US lacks sidewalks, so driving is the safest way to get A-to-B.

When getting anywhere useful requires navigating places like this [1], using the car for everything quickly becomes the default.

1 - https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ijhV2hgcKaq...

Edit - yes, that photo has sidewalks, but there are so many intersections and road crossing, it's not a pleasant place to walk. Many places don't have sidewalks at all, or have some, but they're disconnected from each other block-to-block. Or you have to walk across a massive parking lot to get to the shops. Much of suburban US really is quite dystopian in this regard.

If this link works [2], it's the intersection to enter th nearest shopping center to my house. Note the lack of sidewalk on at least 2 corners. Crosswalk only on one side (if you live on the close left corner, there's no way to safely walk across the street in either direction). Lack of bike lans on the crossing street (the street has some, but they inexplicably end JUST before the shopping center). And even if you do manage to walk/ride into the shops, you have to dodge cars trying to park before you get to the actual shops. I wish this was unique, but it's extremely common in the suburbs.

2 - https://www.google.com/maps/@38.93839,-77.3287099,3a,75y,293...

But here's the thing: all those big spaced out houses with big yards leave less room for trees and parks that make everyone happy. Suburban spaces also tend to be bereft of trees overall because no one can stand to have their lawn 2m shorter so the street can have a boulevard.

Apartments suck, a lot, in the US.

  * Noise; aren't built to sufficient privacy levels.
  * Smell; laundry, cooking, or whatever...
  * not designed to scrub, filter, and direct exhaust.
  * Patios == smoke or grill; even though those are banned by policy.
  * Somehow cost more than renting elsewhere
  * Rent seeking causes negative patterns
  * Car parking hell

Yes these problems also exist when you rent in single family home (intended, often not fulfilled) suburbia, but they're less due to the lower density.

I think a future with comfortable, large, isolated apartments is possible, and even such "fancy" apartments are going to be cheaper than full houses, if there are enough of them.

    * Noise is an easily solvable problem, with insulation.
    * Proper ducts and exhausts can handle smells/smoke.
    * high rents means there is a demand but not enough supply. 
    * car parking can be in basement, easily accessible.

   * easy to secure/gate. 
   * grocery, pharmacy,...  are < 5 min walk. 
   * a large pool, 2 hectare park inside the society. 
   * multiple badminton, tennis, basketball courts inside the society. 
   * above all allow my 7 year old to go for lot of activities on his own or with friends.

Suburban parts of cities often aren't zoned for high density housing because the NIMBYs don't want them near their detached homes. When everyone sees a house as an investment there's no incentive for them to increase housing in their city.

How can you possibly believe such a thing? That is just an outright foolish assertion. The labor cost to build something to code is the same regardless of the quality of materials. Builders skimp on materials to pad their margins. Even if they used cheaper unlicensed labor there's no impetus to use more expensive materials.

They were not noise, in fact in one I only ever heard my neighbors one time in three years of living there, they were typically pretty spacious, rent didnt fluctuate that greatly, I didnt need/have a car most of the time but there was lots of street parking, and I don't have a great sense of smell but oders were never an issue.

Nice apartments exist. You just pay about the same as you would for them as you would on a mortgage.

If they're not finding it, it's probably because they're looking for a low density housing option.

Every passing year is another one in which old buildings are redeveloped and the US population grows, increasing market pressure.

—-

There’s a separate issue with new modern mixed use in the US where retail tends to have low occupancy. Partially this is because there continues to be a massive glut of retail space in the US, and partly because the new spaces tend to be too large to be profitable for anything other than chain stores, and there are only so many chain stores to go around.

NIMBYs in this city bemoaned old Amoeba records loosing its "historic" low rise commercial building. But Amoeba just moved into one of these mixed used developments a few blocks away closer to the metro station, got more square footage out of the deal, and sold the old property for a lot of money. The city changes and it isn't a bad thing, in fact its typically a good thing that it changes as this keeps rents closer to the actual wages seen.