the supermarket map discounts a some of the very good corner and ethnic groceries that serve specific neighborhoods, which are a worthwhile and important (and imo better) segment of the grocery market. and some of the "no restaurant" locations definitely contain restaurants.
Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk
201–210 of 398 posts
Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk
#202Do 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
It depends where you live. I used to live in Belltown and did not have a car, this was just fine. But Belltown is right downtown so your choices are either very expensive newer buildings or older buildings that are somewhat affordable but kinda decrepit. But I'm now in the odd Queen Anne/Westlake border area and I think a car is pretty necessary, and if I were in the aggressively single-family zoned places like Magnolia it would be even more so.
Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess is that most USA urban neighborhoods in, say, 1960 (or 1930), met the 15 minute criteria. Still, I'd guess you'd be right that it would be enormously expensive and difficult to bring this back. But it was once this way, and it was human decisions that made it not this way. If we want it to be this way again and start, it can be eventually.
I think it's possible that we lost this because, while people do genuinely like it, they like quiet, space, and privacy more.
Most of the noise I hear from my apartment in a medium-density neighborhood, like 95% of it, is just car traffic. Big noisy trucks and people on Harleys, people honking at each other as they try to leave a parking lot, all that. Building spread out unwalkable areas creates way more noise than the opposite. What is true, however, is that this design was mostly created for the benefit of suburbanites who live in isolated communities with no readily accessible amenities besides a road into the city. Their peace and quiet comes at the expense of mine, and especially at the expense of lower income communities which often exist in the noisiest, most car-heavy parts of the city.
Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk
#204Great work!
I live in West Seattle and tbh the maps for West Seattle look pretty solid, especially when you factor in the significant reduction in housing costs. I remain more people don't live here!
Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk
#205Earlier 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.
If they are talking about the intersection I think, a roundabout would not work because some inputs are major road offramps, others are side streets, and the intersection is basically super narrow as all of them merge together. There just would not be enough space!
Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk
#206Earlier 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.
here's an aerial video of the queen anne 7-way https://vimeo.com/124481186 (it's sped up, i recommend 0.5x speed)
Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 addi…
Yeah, I would add: for a small shop the delivery van doesn't necessarily need to be that big either. I know a lot of shops that get supplied primarily by vans that are not much bigger than a transit van.
Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk
#208Do 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…
Exactly, I have a $2k bicycle for daily use and a $1k jeep for getting outdoors. No concerns about leaving that at a trailhead overnight.
Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk
#209As 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…
It's really much safer than it used to be to walk anywhere than it was in the 80s or 90s... Sometimes you have to be street smart and maybe walk across the road to avoid some sketchiness, but by and large violent crime and muggings are not really a thing. I walk to the grocery store nearly every day, the most potentially lethal part is crossing the street (because of cars) by far.
Re: Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk
#210>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?
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