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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

#221

Post by Arelius »

teucris wrote: post #101
gtk40 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But in contrast, the QFC on Broadway in Capital Hill for instance, has no above-ground parking lot. And is very walkable.

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

#222

Post by dullcrisp »

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…

I look forward to the day when we all drive semi trucks to work so that we can journey cross country to stock up on goods and not have to deal with the corrupt long-haul trucking industry.

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

#223

Post by ryukafalz »

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…

Reminder that it only takes about 6 minutes to bike a mile, or 8 if you go at a leisurely Dutch pace. You don't need cars to go far enough to have quite a few options, you just need the infrastructure to let you do so.

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

#225

Post by whateveracct »

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

There's a lot of fun places a 20-ish minute drive from Seattle. It's definitely worth it to have a car. And Tacoma is only 45 minutes away.

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

#226

Post by shidoshi »

teucris wrote: post #114

Incredible analysis! As a Seattleite I can say the conclusions here are very close to accurate, with the key additional note being that distance is not the only thing that defines walkability. Seattle has some of the most confounding civil engineering I’ve ever seen, and I’ve lived in five cities and visited dozens more. Here are some things that make a pedestrian life near impossible in my neighborhood: - two high-t…

The QA 7-way is nightmare fuel. I hate it. I hate going through it every-single-time I'm forced to.

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

#227

Post by Spivak »

costcofries wrote: post #99
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'm not American but I really agree with this comment. Each time I do go to America, everything just feels very.. American. Lots of concrete, big vast spaces of industrial, roads that seem far too wide and just overall very, overwhelming and big. Just my personal observations of course.

America really lost the cultural victory here. In pretty much anywhere else in the world a place's unique atmosphere, customs, architecture and way of organizing would be generally respected even if to an outsider it's unfamiliar or odd.

You see this idea everywhere, it's not "corn is one America's staple crops and the use of corn syrup which is sweeter and more abundant than cane sugar gave Americans a preference for the very sweet" but "Americans with their unrefined pallets, unhealthy diets, and obesity crisis put heaps of sugar in everything."

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

#228

Post by muricula »

Arelius wrote: post #221
teucris wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But in contrast, the QFC on Broadway in Capital Hill for instance, has no above-ground parking lot. And is very walkable.

There's actually a parking lot above the QFC. There's also a solid ramen place and a drugstore up there.

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

#230

Post by sandworm101 »

ryukafalz wrote: post #223
sandworm101 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> ...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…

Reminder that it only takes about 6 minutes to bike a mile, or 8 if you go at a leisurely Dutch pace. You don't need cars to go far enough to have quite a few options, you just need the infrastructure to let you do so.

Lol. Maybe is Seattle or SF. Biking in unplowed snow/ice is far slower, when it is even possible.
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