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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

#231

Post by eastof »

ruined wrote: post #206
goostavos wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

here's an aerial video of the queen anne 7-way https://vimeo.com/124481186 (it's sped up, i recommend 0.5x speed)

I pity all those coming from the right side of the screen (I believe that is southbound but I avoid that intersection so I haven't driven through in a while) at ground level that's the scariest direction to come from.

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

#232

Post by sandworm101 »

com2kid wrote: post #219
Zagill wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> Building dense cities that can be accessed by bike and on foot would have the same effect. I love density, but, in my experience this is not true. London doesn't have a large competitive market of grocery stores. Neither does Boston or New York City. Density means higher real estate prices, that means grocery store sizes go down, and the barrier to entry goes up. Yes you can get more small specialty shops (which is…

The Costco's are a result of bulk buying, which relies on motorized transport and easy at-home refrigeration, both very American things. The more European tradition of buying food multiple times per week is odd in America outside of a few downtown cores.

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

#233

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#234

Post by eastof »

calt wrote: post #171
goostavos wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like it used to function as something of a roundabout, and America forgotten how to navigate yielding to traffic coming from a relative direction (i.e. people already in the roundabout from your left) instead of someone always having the right of way, or the weird turn-taking stress of an all-way stop.

No, this area has a ton roundabouts, this was just poor planning. Supporting your point about Americans not knowing how to use them though, I see many people cut these roundabouts in this neighborhood. Meaning they will just turn left directly instead of actually going around. This is super scary when they're going fast and you're coming from the street they're turning into.

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

#235

Post by superfrank »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #56
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…

All of the grocery stores in the core of Seattle are exactly like that--urban centers with underground parking. Some even have apartments on top of them so you could live above the store if you desired.

I wouldn't say all. In the downtown core, most are (some in the ID are not), but once you start getting out of the more urban neighborhoods, it's hit or miss. West Seattle, North Seattle, and South Seattle all have plenty of supermarkets that are large one story buildings in the middle of a big parking lot.

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

#236

Post by sandworm101 »

Zagill wrote: post #188
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…

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 a…

But where is the calculation for all the effort to distribute food to all those tiny shops? It is comes in via truck/van often at night. Central large stores, with customers buying in bulk, means fewer trips. The total carbon/energy in the system isn't as simple as saying "walking is better". It may be that a monthly trip to fill a pickup with food is more green than thirty daily trips to the corner shop by foot. Environmental concerns and modern lifestyle trends don't always line up nicely.

I Costco baker told me once that they used less preservative in bread than small bakers. Costco has such a high turnover that they don't need bread that can survive a whole day on the shelf. Same too with their vegetables that spend far less time in transit than they would getting to a tiny farmers market.

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

#237

Post by WeylandYutani »

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 can choose between 5 supermarkets in a walking distance. And they are all busy.

America is just not denselly populated enough to really make it worth your while to build a supermarket ever 3 miles. Too much empty space so people refuse to live efficiently.

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

#238

Post by ackfoobar »

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

Depending on the boundary of the city, it might not be an apple-to-apple comparison.

I wonder if NYC will rank higher if Staten Island is excluded. Not that I have anything against it, just that judging from the heat map it is less walkable than the rest.

It's similar in Canada too. Toronto is the megacity (1998 amalgamation) including some suburbs; Vancouver does not include Richmond; Montreal has weird holes like Westmount.

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

#239

Post by WeylandYutani »

dullcrisp wrote: post #222
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…

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.

I have a weakness for fresh food so stocking up once a month doesn't appeal to me.

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

#240

Post by Zagill »

sandworm101 wrote: post #236
Zagill wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

But where is the calculation for all the effort to distribute food to all those tiny shops? It is comes in via truck/van often at night. Central large stores, with customers buying in bulk, means fewer trips. The total carbon/energy in the system isn't as simple as saying "walking is better". It may be that a monthly trip to fill a pickup with food is more green than thirty daily trips to the corner shop by foot. Env…

100s of people driving individual cars to get to a grocery store is absolutely less efficient than a couple dozen box trucks delivering food to smaller localized stores. Not to mention, we can electrify those delivery trucks and negate a lot of the carbon emissions. Even if you electrify all of those cars you still have the massive environmental impact of building and maintaining the roads and parking lots they have to use. Individualized auto transit is a blight. "Modern lifestyle trends" not lining up with environmental concerns is usually more of an issue of modern lifestyle trends being unsustainable.
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