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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

#101

Post by teucris »

gtk40 wrote: post #44
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

Seattle has a mix of these. In my neighborhood, the closest supermarket has a gigantic parking lot. I never think of walking there.

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

#102

Post by duxup »

dabbledash wrote: post #94
duxup wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there something that tells us that those traits are specific to white people?

I think you misread me? I said "while people like those things" Maybe you read "white people like those things"?

Yup, my bad. TY

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

#103

Post by com2kid »

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. 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.

I live in a walkable Seattle neighborhood. Accordingly, the "supermarkets" are not quite the mega-large stores they are in other parts of the city, and they have smaller parking lots accordingly.

This is a generalization, but as a rule, Seattle is laid out on a grid system, and every 5 blocks there is a larger 2 lane road where the speed is 25 MPH instead of 20MPH. Grocery stores are generally on the corner of those larger blocks.

> Would much rather be near a decent small or midsize grocery

In my experience, prices are higher and the selection is very limited, so living near one of those doesn't present much benefit to me.

Which is my next point, despite living walking distance to 3 grocery stores, I still typically drive a mile away to a larger store because prices there are 2/3rds to 1/2 what they are at any of the stores close to me.

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

#104

Post by 98codes »

tobiasdorge wrote: post #53
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)

I can’t imagine Seattle being more dense than San Francisco, though I can imagine it’s in the top 5

Seattle isn't remotely dense. Maybe a neighborhood here & there, but it's largely single family homes for most of the city.

Seattle doesn't make the top 133 for densest census designated places in the US*

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

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

#105

Post by crowbahr »

gtk40 wrote: post #44
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

That's what the supermarket in Lower Queen Anne looked like when I lived in Seattle.

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

#106

Post by rileyphone »

The decision to leave libraries in the standard criteria made the numbers at the end meaningless for the most part - most libraries are barely open as it is, and should be accessible enough by bus regardless. Still a very cool visualisation for Seattle; I think this city has great potential for denser urban development, while still retaining its charm.

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

#107

Post by Dig1t »

Seeing the UK’s implementation of 15 minute cities, where cars are locked down to zones, movement is tracked by ubiquitous camera surveillance, and residents have to apply for a special pass to leave their zone. Talk of 15 minute cities in the US makes me nervous.

When we talk about 15 minute cities here, do we mean zoning changes to build things differently? Or are we talking about authoritarian enforcement?

Edit: Okay maybe what I read was overblown. Seems this is being trialed in Oxford as "traffic filters" but the ubiquitous camera surveillance is certainly part of it. There is also talk of this expanding to other cities in the UK. Though not specifically talked about as apart of the 15 minute city plan, this seems to go along nicely with that concept.

Edit: A source: https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2023/01/25/15-minute-city-plan...

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

#108

Post by inpdx »

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 have sympathy for the argument, but a lot of people can't afford to spend the extra money a smaller store charges.

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

#109

Post by ghaff »

jimmaswell wrote: post #95
allturtles wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment seems to be based on a misconception of what "supermarket" means. These days supermarket pretty much == grocery store. The grocery stores that existed before supermarkets (with limited selection, probably no meat department, maybe no self-service, maybe no prices listed on the items) don't exist anymore. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarket . edit: this is in a U.S. context, I don't know how the…

Does this fit your definition of the kind of grocery store that doesn't exist anymore? They have a few misc. items, but it's almost all just food, and a fairly small building. https://maps.app.goo.gl/KSnn5Fq37DQwiSpAA

You do see smaller, usually not great, markets located especially in more rural areas. Sometimes they're affiliated with one of the bigger chains like Hannaford's.

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

#110

Post by com2kid »

kenperkins wrote: post #39

Seattle is complex in this regard as the elevation changes between neighborhoods are an additional dimension. If I was living at the base of Lower Queen Anne and the "facilities" meeting the 15m criteria was at the top, that's not something I would consider a viable walk.

> Seattle is complex in this regard as the elevation changes between neighborhoods are an additional dimension.

And then there is the socio-economic history of elevations in Seattle. tl;dr Historically poor people (and minorities) lived at the bottom of hills, rich people at the top. To this day, you can literally see houses get nicer as you go up hills.

There are also neighborhoods with a hill in the middle where one side of the hill was historically poor, and the other side well to do. My dad used to tell me that when he was a kid, him and all his friends knew not to go to up the hill where they didn't belong.

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