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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

#121

Post by brewdad »

logifail wrote: post #32
trillic wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're called food deserts and they exist all over the United States. Even in big cities. They are not the same as a food dessert.

> They're called food deserts and they exist all over the United States. Even in big cities. Wiki (sorry) appears to define that as "an area that has limited access to affordable and nutritious food" I appreciate their point, but "no grocery store" really isn't the same as "limited access to affordable and nutritious food".

The "limited access to affordable and nutritious food" criteria is primarily to distinguish between having a Safeway-type grocery store nearby versus only having a Plaid Pantry/7-11/Circle K where you can buy a gallon of milk and maybe a loaf of bread but it's nothing like a proper grocery store.

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

#122

Post by DoughnutHole »

throwawaythrow1 wrote: post #112
Dig1t wrote: post #107

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: O…

As someone who lives in the UK, this is news to me. Can you substantiate this please?

I presume he’s talking about the London congestion charge zone. Although he’s certainly being melodramatic.

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

#123

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Dig1t wrote: post #107

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: O…

My family lives in the UK and they all own cars. None of them have ever had the experience that you're describing. Either you're confused, or making it up, or there's something happening as an experiment in a few cities that you're blowing out of proportion.

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

#124

Post by com2kid »

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…

Seattle doesn't have nearly enough density to have that many high schools. Given the ever falling birth rate, it likely never will. The density would need to be obscenely high.

Figure high schools have 4x the number of students that elementary schools do, and we'd need 2x the elementary schools to make them all walkable, that means Seattle would have to have 8x the number of students in high school than it currently does to justify building enough high schools to make them all walkable.

Not to mention Seattle couldn't really afford to build that many schools, as the city can't even maintain the current schools to basic levels of safety (ongoing lead water pipe issues...)

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

#125

Post by karaterobot »

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.

Was thinking about this too. A 2D distance map doesn't do it justice, really, because it ignores the non-trivial hill in the middle of your route.

The other thing about Seattle is that you can have a grocery store nearby, but still not really have access to it if you're lower income. We have a lot of premium stores, especially in walkable neighborhoods. When I was a student I lived in Wedgwood, and I had 2 grocery stores within a 5-minute walk: the PCC, and the Metropolitan Market, both places where a week's groceries were about 2-3x as expensive as they were at the nearest Safeway, which was more than 15 minutes away.

Not faulting the creator of this article, as it's an okay rule of thumb, and it's hard to include details like that in a model.

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

#126

Post by mdorazio »

>Of the 89 neighborhoods considered, only nine are “15-minute neighborhoods” walkable for 90% or more of their residents.

I'd love to see the median rent in those nine compared to elsewhere in the city. Can any Seattle residents here provide some insight?

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

#127

Post by tomtheelder »

hiidrew wrote: post #50
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

I think that’s because of where the city is defined. SF is just SF- it doesn’t extend that far south and doesn’t even include the east bay. NYC on the other hand includes big areas like east Queens and Staten Island that are effectively just suburbs.

I’ve lived in both and if you’re sort of near the core then NYC is much, much more walkable than SF.

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

#129

Post by WaxProlix »

mdorazio wrote: post #126

>Of the 89 neighborhoods considered, only nine are “15-minute neighborhoods” walkable for 90% or more of their residents. I'd love to see the median rent in those nine compared to elsewhere in the city. Can any Seattle residents here provide some insight?

Downtown (CBD): Expensive

International District: Euphemism for Chinatown, not expensive

Pioneer Square: It varies, but fairly expensive despite the rampant homelessness

Pike Place Market: Very expensive

Ballard: Expensive new buildings, more affordable older ones

Capitol Hill: Expensive, generally

South Lake Union: Expensive

Madrona: Expensive

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

#130

Post by vel0city »

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

That's definitely closer to my idea of a "grocery" versus a "supermarket". It seems like I see them in some small older towns but anything that had a lot of recent construction usually sees larger supermarkets with big parking lots even for small towns.
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