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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

#271

Post by ghaff »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #266
ghaff wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of what we consider "elite" US cities were losing population well into the 1990s. While I don't think the WFH trend is as widespread as people in some bubbles think it is, it's probably an open question whether the latest young college-educated cohort will move into cities for a while like some of their predecessors did.

Young people want things to do. I'm right on the divide between Millenials and Gen Z (the MillenialZ generation, if you'll forgive my poor portmanteau skills) and many college students I knew during covid have done one of the following: - secured a remote job and settled down in their college city - as a remote worker, followed a significant other or close friend to a city where they have to work in person - found a…

Fair enough.

Certainly the fact that I would have needed to commute to a job that was an hour outside the nearest major city (where I went undergrad) influenced the fact that I just went to live near my office when I graduated grad school. It was mostly the same with my classmates who also worked way out in the burbs/exurbs.

If the commute weren't a factor, I'd probably have at least considered living in the city--at least while I was still renting. (Of course, urban prices weren't nearly as relatively high as they are today.)

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

#272

Post by patja »

eastof wrote: post #234
calt wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seattle proper has no proper/modern roundabouts.

It has hundreds of traffic calming circles which are often confused with roundabouts, but are not in the same class. Roundabouts have dividers at each entry/exit point which are lacking in neighborhood traffic calming circles.

https://wsdot.wa.gov/travel/traffic-safety-methods/roundabou...

Technically you can go any way around a traffic calming circle you want to, because they are too small to accommodate delivery trucks going counterclockwise. It is highly recommended to go counterclockwise if you can, but not legally required. They have no more legal significance than a speed bump.

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

#273

Post by bluGill »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #33
duxup wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a personal preference thing, you pick where you go based on that. Just a bit less essential than say groceries.

I suppose it's all a personal preference thing to some extent -- at least if you have a car to get you further away for whatever it is. But true, different people at different points in their lives, income levels, social positions, and preferences will prioritize different things. The OP list seems pretty good for improving quality of life for a big round population of people at different stages of their lives and so…

While you don't need those things, the more that is within a 15 minute walk, the more likely you are to walk there.

I've seen people who have drove to a neighbors house even though the walk from where they parked on the street was longer than just from their door to door (cutting across the lawn). They did it because that is their habit: they have so few places where they can reasonably walk that it never in occurs to them to walk the few times they could. (the above case was an extreme that they laughed about when they realized it, most people wouldn't drive that trip, but the thinking makes perverse sense)

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

#274

Post by bluGill »

galangalalgol wrote: post #42
duxup wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a personal preference thing, you pick where you go based on that. Just a bit less essential than say groceries.

Grocery, pharmacy, schools, and a public transit stop, only after those would I rate restaurants or coffee shops. This isn't some moral statement about making your own food, outsourifood preparation to a professional makes sense from a specialization standpoint if you can afford it, but if you can't and for daily life, being able to get food and medicine seems a bit higher.

I include public transit time in my 15 minute city. However you have to always include the worst case: just as your arrive at the stop the vehicle closes its doors and leaves.

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

#275

Post by bluGill »

Pxtl wrote: post #87
jrochkind1 wrote: post #7

Earlier 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.

Imho it was pre-war when it peaked. You look at rust-belt cities that were designed to be suburban but transit-oriented and you see a good balance; 3-bedroom houses where everybody has a back-yard but not necessarily a driveway, and the cities were irrigated with street-cars. Minor arteries would have corner stores and there were local shopping districts.

Those pre-war suburbs often featured larger lots than what modern suburbs do. (not exburbs which get very large).

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

#276

Post by patja »

philwelch wrote: post #168
User23 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bussing in the USA was a civil rights innovation to integrate schools. At the time neighborhoods were still racially segregated, so neighborhood schools were overwhelmingly the race of whatever the local neighborhood was. The only way to have integrated schools was to send many kids to a school in a different neighborhood, hence bussing.

That’s distinct from just having school buses. Most school bus service does not exist to desegregate school districts.

You are correct. But Seattle's history with desegregation bussing had a major impact on the nature of the schools in Seattle today. It was very common for students to spend a total of 90 minutes each day being bussed across town rather than walking 15 minutes to their closest school. It gave birth to a thriving ecosystem of private schools that still dominates the social fabric of the city today. Over 25% of all students in Seattle are in private schools, with that figure being much higher in the wealthier North Seattle neighborhoods.

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

#277

Post by bluGill »

ghaff wrote: post #75
mikeyouse wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just 10 miles, it's 10 miles and being a low income tract which they define as average household income below 80% of state median or >20% households in the tract being below the poverty line. So trying to measure where the poorest areas have the most limited access.

I'm guessing the income criteria is satisfied in a lot of rural areas however.

How are you defining rural? The people who live in small towns in farm country, or the farmers living on their farm. In general farmers are not poor, but the people who live in the towns around them often are. It takes a lot of money to run a farm, you have to be great at business as you will have several years in a row where you lose $100,000 - over the long term though things work out to making a lot of money on farms.

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

#278

Post by gen220 »

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…

From NYC, within a 15 minute walk from my door:

- Whole Foods

- Key Food

- 2-3 specialty grocers (think italian importers, etc.)

- gourmet grocer

- two butcher shops and a fresh fish shop

- CVS (yes, they sell groceries! spooky)

- 2-3 bodegas that sell shelf-stable goods, as well as a small collection of fruit and vegetables

If you go expand it to 15 minute bike, the world is truly your oyster, but the primary one that pops up is Trader Joe's.

The most remarkable part of this description, is that it identifies at least 4 or 5 different neighborhoods in NYC, those are only the ones I can think of off the top of my head, and I haven't been close to everywhere.

There's a lot of things to knock about NYC, but it's easily the most walkable city in the US, that I've seen.

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

#279

Post by bluGill »

piva00 wrote: post #28
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…

> But a grocery store? What's difficult about that? Just convert a house. I feel that the American view of a grocery store is one of those mega-Walmartesque stores with infinite aisles of stuff, rather than the more common small-scale grocery stores we are used to here in Europe. At least on my trips to the US I don't recall seeing many small-scale grocers in neighbourhoods, it was either stores like CVS or going to…

Those large stores are where most people buy food. The margins for food in them are very low, but they make it up by volume. Smaller stores cannot compete on price or selection, and so even if there is a small store close Americans will make regular trips to the large store that has everything at a low price for most food. There isn't much room for the small stores anymore.

There are pros and cons to the above. Do not claim what you are used to is better: it is different, not better or worse. Odds are you have not spent enough time using both to make a real claim. even if you have, odds are your stage of life is different enough that you cannot compare.

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

#280

Post by Dig1t »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #190
eptcyka wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

idk about conspiracies, I'm not talking about that. Here is an unbiased article describing the scheme:

https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23073992.traffic-filters-w...

"People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and into other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year. This equates to an average of two days per week."

This is enforced with surveillance cameras.

I am saying that enforcing movement like this and adding bureaucracy to drive through certain places is a solid step in the direction of authoritarianism.

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