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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

#191

Post by bradford »

chabons wrote: post #85

Interesting how the visualization highlights the Eastlake and Montlake neighborhoods (along the south bank of the canal northeast of downtown) as walkability outliers. When I was newer to the Seattle area and looking for housing I did a similar exercise and charted the location of grocery stores. I was surprised that those neighborhoods just didn't have any grocery stores, especially given their proximity to downtown…

> I was surprised that [Eastlake and Montlake] just didn't have any grocery stores ... Given the amount of investment the city/state is making to improve the WA-520 corridor

Montlake had a small grocery store that was torn down precisely because of the 520 construction. (I can't speak for Eastlake).

520 is a highway after all, and highways are hostile to walkability for a multitude or reasons. (this fact still remains, even though efforts are being made to improve the situation in Montlake).

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

#192

Post by calt »

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…

I think that the two go hand-in-hand. In car-centric America, if you can't meet the minimum of a car, then you can't live there. So you migrate to the city where the cost of a roof is artificially high.

And having more livable cities in America are exactly what we need to help solve the problem.

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

#193

Post by [deleted] »

goostavos wrote: post #162
watermelon59 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seattle has so many intersections that are completely bonkers. They’re not only poorly walkable, they also make driving extremely stressful.

Queen Anne has a 7-way stop! The first time I encountered it I was thoroughly stumped. Actually, I'm still stumped years later every time I go through it. At some point, I just commit and hope for the best.

[deleted]

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

#194

Post by purpleturtle22 »

jsz0 wrote: post #187
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.

If you take the corner store model as far as many European, NY, etc cities - You remove the $300-400+/mo cost of a car (ballparking here)

Otherwise if the local shops are more expensive (in any meaningful way), consumers would simply drive the additional N miles to the Walmart Supercenter as things kind of are as is

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

#195

Post by actionfromafar »

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…

It's unfortunate to mix surveillance with these other things. It's completely orthogonal to other things.

(And yes, surveillance is real in London, but not the other things. You can also camera surveil sprawling, car oriented areas, and technology makes it cheaper every year.)

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

#196

Post by jandrewrogers »

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

Yes, I've lived in Seattle without a car, that is easily achievable and many people do this. In the core, you can get around by walking since the weather is mild most of the year, you don't even need to use public transit. You can expand your footprint on light rail and buses, which has been slowly improving its range but many people don't use those if they are in the dense urban areas.

The one gap is that Seattle is surrounded by very popular nature and outdoorsy activities up in the mountains or out on the islands. It is one of the major perks of living in Seattle. If you want to spend a lot of time wandering around the Cascades, you'll need a car. Some people that have a car use it almost exclusively for outdoors activities, not day to day living.

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

#197

Post by dendrite9 »

chabons wrote: post #85

Interesting how the visualization highlights the Eastlake and Montlake neighborhoods (along the south bank of the canal northeast of downtown) as walkability outliers. When I was newer to the Seattle area and looking for housing I did a similar exercise and charted the location of grocery stores. I was surprised that those neighborhoods just didn't have any grocery stores, especially given their proximity to downtown…

The 520 construction took out a gas station and a small but varied grocery store on the south side of the highway. I believe the Montlake library was a drug/grocery store long ago. And there used to be gas stations at 24th and Boyer.

Currently I'd guess the grocery options are Monts, Little Lago, Eastlake market, and Petes. But I doubt many people do all their shopping at any of those they are closer to convenience stores than grocery stores.

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

#198

Post by jsz0 »

nicoburns wrote: post #19
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…

> 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.

The difficultly is making the typical residential dwelling compliant comply with existing regulations like the Americans with Disabilities act and complying with things like commercial insurance policy requirements.

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

#199

Post by Symbiote »

pjc50 wrote: post #24
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…

> Just convert a house. In many places there is a miserable quantity of political and legal infrastructure to prevent that from happening. Undoing that is a necessary part of 15-minute cities, but it may be weirdly unpopular. (also, people expect a wider range of things than will fit in an old style corner shop, and you need to have HGV parking..)

In the densest parts of European cities, the delivery lorry stops outside the supermarket just before or just after the shop opens and they unload quickly. Often, that pretty pedestrian street full of shops has road access to the rear, but not always.

Parking regulations are written to accommodate this. The pedestrian streets in the centre of Copenhagen allow deliveries from 4am to 11am, but I think there may be additional restrictions on large trucks as they seem to be out before 8am. Rubbish collection is also at these times.

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

#200

Post by m-watson »

DoughnutHole wrote: post #122
throwawaythrow1 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was just reading in Vice[0] about talk like this. I am not saying OP is necessarily saying this but it does seem similar.

[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7g898/walkable-15-minute-ci...

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