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Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk

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Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk

#41

Post by nicoburns »

dabbledash wrote: post #36
jrochkind1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that most USA urban neighborhoods in, say, 1960 (or 1930), met the 15 minute criteria. Still, I'd guess you'd be right that it would be enormously expensive and difficult to bring this back. But it was once this way, and it was human decisions that made it not this way. If we want it to be this way again and start, it can be eventually.

I think it's possible that we lost this because, while people do genuinely like it, they like quiet, space, and privacy more.

I live within 30 seconds walk of 2 cafes, 2 grocery shops, and a pub (I can see them down the street from my window as I type this). And you literally can't hear them from my house. There's also a primary school nearby which occasionally gets noisy, but there's no noise from the shops.

Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk

#42

Post by galangalalgol »

duxup wrote: post #26
jrochkind1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me personally, coffee shops and restaurants within a 15 minute walk is huge for my quality of life. I currently have it... barely.

I think that's a personal preference thing, you pick where you go based on that. Just a bit less essential than say groceries.

Grocery, pharmacy, schools, and a public transit stop, only after those would I rate restaurants or coffee shops. This isn't some moral statement about making your own food, outsourifood preparation to a professional makes sense from a specialization standpoint if you can afford it, but if you can't and for daily life, being able to get food and medicine seems a bit higher.

Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk

#43

Post by mikeyouse »

logifail wrote: post #25
Qworg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the USDA, about 6.2% (19M) Americans have limited/no access to a grocery store. https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts covers the research (and links to the paper).

I'm sorry, but I've read that article twice and I'm still not sure what they're actually saying. Are we talking about neighbourhoods not having a store selling fresh fruit and veg­eta­bles, or not having a grocery store of any kind ?

It's pretty clever - they use SNAP benefits as a proxy (you can buy what they call staples; fruits/veggies, bread, meat & fish, milk, etc but no hot or prepared food: https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/snap/SNAP-...) but they map to all of the stores who accept SNAP and combine that with a map of supermarkets from a Nielson directory. They then map the number of census tracts and compare against that map -- the 6.2% figure is the "1 and 10" method which counts households >1 mile from a store in an urban area and >10 miles in a rural one.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/82101/eib-165....

Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk

#44

Post by gtk40 »

hammock wrote: post #38

The way “supermarkets” are in the US, I don’t WANT to be a 15 minute walk from one. They are usually surrounded by a mile of blacktop and concrete, for all the drive-in shoppers in the front and all the trucks offloading goods or picking up deliveries in the back. Would much rather be near a decent small or midsize grocery with no or limited off-street parking, and which receives its deliveries on the street in the e…

I haven't spent a lot of time in Seattle so I can't comment there, but in my experience urban supermarkets are more likely to have a parking lot underneath the building or in general have less parking than a suburban supermarket.

Example: https://goo.gl/maps/AeXZhm6ZfYntEE1p7

Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk

#45

Post by spacemadness »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #7
duxup wrote: post #2

I like the idea of walking 15 minutes to get all the things. But man when I think of the costs involved in making sure there is a High School (in the US they tend to be large and draw from a distance) within 15 minutes of everywhere (no small cost to drop in a high school somewhere), or plop down a grocery store in a neighborhood ... that sounds both super expensive and politically difficult, and for some good reason…

My guess is that most USA urban neighborhoods in, say, 1960 (or 1930), met the 15 minute criteria. Still, I'd guess you'd be right that it would be enormously expensive and difficult to bring this back. But it was once this way, and it was human decisions that made it not this way. If we want it to be this way again and start, it can be eventually.

My hope is that if not Gen Z then the following generation will push for American cities to get their act together and become better for people to live in. It is going to take a lot of political will to make it work as the entrenched older generations want things to stay the same as always and/or cannot envision a different way of living. A walkable city with car free zones seems like a fantasy and that is a real shame.

Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk

#46

Post by ghaff »

piva00 wrote: post #28
nicoburns wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he costs involved in making sure there is a High School (in the US they tend to be large and draw from a distance) within 15 minutes of everywhere (no small cost to drop in a high school somewhere), or plop down a grocery store in a neighborhood ... that sounds both super expensive and politically difficult, and for some good reasons. A high school I understand (where I live in the UK it's common for high school ki…

> But a grocery store? What's difficult about that? Just convert a house. I feel that the American view of a grocery store is one of those mega-Walmartesque stores with infinite aisles of stuff, rather than the more common small-scale grocery stores we are used to here in Europe. At least on my trips to the US I don't recall seeing many small-scale grocers in neighbourhoods, it was either stores like CVS or going to…

In the US you don't really have the urban Tescos and Sainsbury's and so forth. You have some equivalent local markets but it's mostly fairly spread out supermarkets or 7-11/CVS/etc. which really don't count as grocery stores.

Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk

#47

Post by [deleted] »

logifail wrote: post #3
duxup wrote: post #2

I like the idea of walking 15 minutes to get all the things. But man when I think of the costs involved in making sure there is a High School (in the US they tend to be large and draw from a distance) within 15 minutes of everywhere (no small cost to drop in a high school somewhere), or plop down a grocery store in a neighborhood ... that sounds both super expensive and politically difficult, and for some good reason…

> a High School (This is going to sound like we're playing Sim City 2000) but don't forget to add a hospital (a proper one, with an emergency room), a fire station, a police station... > a grocery store Are there many neighbourhoods which don't already have some kind of grocery store?

[deleted]

Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk

#48

Post by kyeb »

I'd be super interested to see an analysis using exactly the same methodology as this performed on various other cities (SF, NYC, LA, maybe some European cities like Amsterdam or Cologne) for comparison. I would bet Seattle is near the top for the US in walkability (probably behind NYC only)

Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk

#49

Post by throw0101c »

hammock wrote: post #38

The way “supermarkets” are in the US, I don’t WANT to be a 15 minute walk from one. They are usually surrounded by a mile of blacktop and concrete, for all the drive-in shoppers in the front and all the trucks offloading goods or picking up deliveries in the back. Would much rather be near a decent small or midsize grocery with no or limited off-street parking, and which receives its deliveries on the street in the e…

> The way “supermarkets” are in the US, I don’t WANT to be a 15 minute walk from one.

In a walkable neighbourhood, they'd just be a store front:

* https://www.google.com/maps/place/197+Roncesvalles+Ave,+Toro...

* https://www.google.com/maps/place/1435+King+St+West+Toronto,...

Or at the very least, much smaller:

* https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6395232,-79.4172267,3a,75y,3...

Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk

#50

Post by hiidrew »

kyeb wrote: post #48

I'd be super interested to see an analysis using exactly the same methodology as this performed on various other cities (SF, NYC, LA, maybe some European cities like Amsterdam or Cologne) for comparison. I would bet Seattle is near the top for the US in walkability (probably behind NYC only)

it makes the top 10 according to this: https://www.walkscore.com/cities-and-neighborhoods/

honestly surprised that SF is more walkable than NYC with this criteria

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