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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

#181

Post by sandworm101 »

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…

Maybe is Seattle, where weather means you can have door/windows more often than not. But opinions change north/southern in places that alternate between heating and air conditioning. Noise is less of an issue and walking takes much more commitment. It was -15c last night outside my place. I would love to be 15min from a large supermarket. At the moment I am a 25m drive from the nearest place selling bananas. Even if I biked, my food would likely freeze before getting home. And in summer (30c) I couldn't buy meat/frozen food. Motorized transport to buy food isn't going away, at least not outside inner cities.

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

#182

Post by karaterobot »

beoberha wrote: post #173
karaterobot wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

I own a home very close to the PCC you’re talking about and only ever go there if we forgot something in the large weekly grocery run we do at the QFC. Met Market isn’t really an economical option either, but we do love their pre-made food options for when we don’t feel like eating leftovers.

The way I describe Metropolitan Market to people outside Seattle is that it's a just a regular old neighborhood grocery store where you can choose from multiple varieties of foie gras. But it did have some cool stuff in it too, you're right about their pre-made stuff.

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

#183

Post by noirbot »

chamanbuga wrote: post #134
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #128

Do any Seattle-ites not have a car? How do you get around? Asking as a NYer who would consider living there if the car-free life wouldn't be too painful

Living the car-free life in Seattle is depressing due to gloomy weather. Life in Seattle is great if you accept the grey and live outdoors as much as possible. For that you need a car.

I'm not sure that tracks? When I've visited Seattle with friends, I walk to almost everything, even in gloomy weather. I don't see how "living outdoors" requires a car - if anything, driving everywhere is the the opposite of living outdoors.

Sure, if you want to go out to the mountains every weekend you need a car, but with a light rain-proof jacket, it's not too bad to walk or bike through much of the city. The grey weather is either depressing or not, but I don't find it to be much more depressing out of a car than in it.

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

#184

Post by lazyasciiart »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #144
chamanbuga wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living the car-free life in Seattle is depressing due to gloomy weather. Life in Seattle is great if you accept the grey and live outdoors as much as possible. For that you need a car.

I was afraid that'd be the answer. Do you use your car for everything, or are you able to handle day-to-day stuff on foot and use the car mostly for adventures?

I don’t drive and have been in Seattle for 15 years. I do carpool with friends to go skiing or camping out of the city, but day to day I used bike and transit for everything (until the pandemic, now I work from home and mostly just walk to nearby shops).

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

#185

Post by noirbot »

brewdad wrote: post #157
98codes wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Seattle is a weird hybrid that probably could be a model for what is realistic in the US. There a tons of walkable neighborhoods all over the city to provide daily necessities but you really do need a car to make that trip across town or even from one neighborhood to the next in some cases.

Yea, the hills and water really mess up public transit routes in Seattle, making it a lot harder to get around by bus in any sort of efficient timeline, especially around the Queen Anne and Beacon Hill areas.

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

#186

Post by lazyasciiart »

ejb999 wrote: post #141
TurkishPoptart wrote: post #92

As the mental health and drug crisis grows, I simply don't want to walk anywhere, and don't want my family walking places. Plus, it's incredibly inconvenient to do grocery shopping on foot. Yes, I know that people do it and it's possible and I've done it when living elsewhere. Still, this 15-minute city is an initiative created by the WEF which should be ignored and not implemented. If the WEF is so concerned about t…

>>As the mental health and drug crisis grows, I simply don't want to walk anywhere, and don't want my family walking places. Good point. There is very little motivation to make cities more 'walkable', if your walk requires stepping in or over human feces and discarded needles and homeless people camped out on the sidewalk. That problem needs to be fixed first before there is going to be widespread support for proposa…

Good news - allowing people to build more housing in cities achieves both outcomes.

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

#187

Post by jsz0 »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #71

I'm going to venture an educated guess that proximity of things like grocery stores, restaurants and schools in urban areas is going to be highly correlated with income. Lower income neighborhoods are going to have gas stations and 7-Elevens/AMPMs. So an effort to make a true 15-min city should help improve quality of life and access to healthier food for lower-income residents. That would be a good thing.

Gas stations and corner stores also tend to have the highest prices. Climate change policy advocates are doing a real disservice to their cause by not being honest with people about the sacrifices/hardships these polices will cause in the short term. Deception is not a viable long term political strategy.

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

#188

Post by Zagill »

sandworm101 wrote: post #165
com2kid wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

>> ...despite living walking distance to 3 grocery stores, I still typically drive a mile away to a larger store because... A mobile consumer base, people with cars that can travel to potentially hundreds of retail options, is a backbone of American competition. Like cars or not, they empower consumers to defeat local monopolies. The next stage, pickup trucks, then empowers retailers to sell large products (appliance…

Nothing about cars specifically enables this. Building cities so that you have to drive to travel any significant distance, however, guarantees that you need a car to take advantage of competitive pricing. But that's self-apparent... Building dense cities that can be accessed by bike and on foot would have the same effect. Spreading out your city so that what could be a 15 minute walk is now a 15 minute drive isn't an improvement.

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

#189

Post by actionfromafar »

duxup wrote: post #6
actionfromafar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoning laws are too strict. Buy a home and convert it to a grocery store? No can do, in many places.

I agree generally about zoning laws. But I also think they do a good job of keeping joe schmo from trying to turn a random plot into a car repair business that is just not suited to the job. Rando business guy doesn't care if the area is suited for it and neither do their customers. I speak from experience as I lived in a house near a guy who decided to do just that... broken down cars parked everywhere (leaking all…

Sure, write that into the zoning law. No obnoxious or environmentally harming activity. A far cry from buying some milk and cereal in the morning.

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

#190

Post by lazyasciiart »

eptcyka wrote: post #115
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…

What are you on about?

The wingnut right thinks that “15-minute city” is a global Jewish conspiracy to lock everyone into defenseless small neighborhoods and then I dunno, aliens?
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