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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[–] 171 points 2 years ago (12 children)

Why are bars so low? Do Americans like having to use a car when drinking?

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  • [–] 171 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Apparently it's important that they can walk to a petrol station though.

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  • [–] 47 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Probably don’t want to live near drunks, or the piss and vomit that exists after a weekend.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That and the noise, bars can be pretty loud

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago

    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).

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    [–] 132 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    @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.)

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  • [+] 48 points 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 57 points 2 years ago

    @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.

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    [–] 92 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Some people might genuinely prefer a humongous superstore, and the parking lot culture that comes with it.

    In the UK, you see tons of "corner shops", which are just overpriced grocery stores where the owner pretends to be serving the community, but is actually putting his daughter through private school.

    In contrast, the Sainsbury's down the road hires actual suffering locals who you know from high school, the parking lot is full of teens blasting music and worried parents teaching their children how to drive -- i.e. there is an actual community happening there.

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    [–] 83 points 2 years ago (24 children)

    How is bar so low?? Do people want drunk drivers? Because that’s how you get drunk drivers

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    [–] 54 points 2 years ago (17 children)

    Who needs a gas station within walking distance? One need a gas station within 15-minutes driving.

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    [–] 50 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 47 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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    [–] 40 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Gas station above elementary school?

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    [–] 38 points 2 years ago (15 children)

    Why do you need a gas station in walking distance?

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago

    I love that.

    "Ok guys, picture a future city where everything you need is in walking distance. You can walk to the grocery store instead of driving. There's a park in your neighbourhood so whenever the weather's good you can be outside with your feet in the grass in just a few minutes. If you want to go out to eat, there are restaurants a short walk away. It's a nice, safe community where your kids can even walk to school on their own. Got it? Ok, in that kind of city, what kinds of things would you need to find a short walk away?"

    "A Gas Station, for my Car, so I can Drive."

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    [–] 37 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Do the 32 percent not know what a bus stop is?? Why would you want a bus stop farther than 15 minutes away????

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    [–] 34 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    Am I the only one impressed 16% of people dont want a grocery store nearby?

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    [–] 32 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    @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.)

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    [–] 28 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I do not understand why you would want to walk to a gas station.

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    [–] 26 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Im confused about (from the poll)

    • bar.. if this is not walkable you are promoting drunk driving. (even if its not your thing)
    • what do you need to walk to the gas station for? or is this being used also as a corner store?
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    [–] 26 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    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.

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    [–] 22 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    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?

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    [–] 21 points 2 years ago (33 children)

    @ajsadauskas @urlyman @fuck_cars Why on earth would anyone answer ‘should not’ to a bus stop being within 15 mins? How are they thinking you get to the bus stop, by driving?!

    Also, as a Dutchie, the amount of ‘should nots’ for a bar within 15 mins is killing me. I understand it, but it points to such a lack of imagination about what a city can look like. I have at least 20 bars within 15 mins walk of home and I’m not in the city centre 😄

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    [–] 21 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Missing a gym, physio, and doctors clinic.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    @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...

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    [–] 19 points 2 years ago* (8 children)

    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.

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    [–] 18 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    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.

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    [–] 18 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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    [–] 17 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    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....

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    [–] 17 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    @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.

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    [+] 16 points 2 years ago (3 children)
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    [+] 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (9 children)
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    [–] 15 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    @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.

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    [–] 14 points 2 years ago (16 children)

    A gas station?! How often do you walk to a gas station?

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