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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

#61

Post by browningstreet »

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…

Many urban areas in the US all have lots of local, smaller, specialty, and neighborhood grocery stores. It's not a novelty for those who live in those areas. And they're not 7-11s.

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

#62

Post by mikeyouse »

ghaff wrote: post #52
mikeyouse wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clever - they use SNAP benefits as a proxy (you can buy what they call staples; fruits/veggies, bread, meat & fish, milk, etc but no hot or prepared food: https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/snap/SNAP-... ) but they map to all of the stores who accept SNAP and combine that with a map of supermarkets from a Nielson directory. They then map the number of census tracts and compare against that…

Being more than 10 miles from a real market of some sort in an actual rural area seems a pretty low bar. Population density is certainly lower but 10 miles isn't very far if you need to drive to the next town over.

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.

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

#63

Post by coldpie »

spacemadness wrote: post #45
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.

My hope is that if not Gen Z then the following generation will push for American cities to get their act together and become better for people to live in. It is going to take a lot of political will to make it work as the entrenched older generations want things to stay the same as always and/or cannot envision a different way of living. A walkable city with car free zones seems like a fantasy and that is a real sha…

It is truly shocking how much damage the car has done to our cities and lives. Here in the Twin Cities, we have three enormous concrete canyons completely dividing up the city[1], destroying any chance at walkability or density for miles. All for the sake of people who don't even live in the cities to drive 30 minutes in their personal luxury steel cages from their suburban mansions to spend 30 hours a week here and then buzz off again. We lose so much to cater to the surburbanites and gain so little.

We have a real opportunity to fix this by removing one of them[2], but we're too terrified of change to improve our own lives. So the concrete canyon called I-94 will remain, poisoning the heart of our cities, for at least another four generations. Sigh.

[1] Comparison of the Twin Cities before & after the freeways were built: https://twitter.com/SegByDesign/status/1623376761722490881

[2] https://www.twincitiesboulevard.org/

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

#64

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

spacemadness wrote: post #45
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.

My hope is that if not Gen Z then the following generation will push for American cities to get their act together and become better for people to live in. It is going to take a lot of political will to make it work as the entrenched older generations want things to stay the same as always and/or cannot envision a different way of living. A walkable city with car free zones seems like a fantasy and that is a real sha…

It’s difficult on a few levels I suspect, because genz will be fighting the previous generation and maybe the one before it too, all the homeowners that will fight tooth and nail for their investments to remain (plus any genz that benefits from the status quo, the inheritors of landlords)

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

#65

Post by allturtles »

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…

This comment seems to be based on a misconception of what "supermarket" means. These days supermarket pretty much == grocery store. The grocery stores that existed before supermarkets (with limited selection, probably no meat department, maybe no self-service, maybe no prices listed on the items) don't exist anymore. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarket.

edit: this is in a U.S. context, I don't know how these terms are used in other English-speaking countries

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

#66

Post by dublinben »

duxup wrote: post #23
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…

Yup, kids busing to school is very common in the US too. I agree about a bus stop. Heck even suburban schools around me are trying to stop everyone from dropping off their kid with their car in person. It's just a hassle / traffic.

That’s the inevitable consequence of the local decisions that have made it dangerous or impossible to walk to school. Many school districts then see an opportunity to save money by charging families to ride the bus.

Ergo, massive traffic jams of parents individually driving kids to school.

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

#67

Post by [deleted] »

logifail wrote: post #3
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…

> a High School (This is going to sound like we're playing Sim City 2000) but don't forget to add a hospital (a proper one, with an emergency room), a fire station, a police station... > a grocery store Are there many neighbourhoods which don't already have some kind of grocery store?

[deleted]

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

#68

Post by gameman144 »

Ialdaboth wrote: post #14
actionfromafar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoning laws are too strict. Buy a home and convert it to a grocery store? No can do, in many places.

Zoning laws are a great way to implement social segregation without explicitely saying it too loudly, I guess that's the reason they are so popular in "free" and "open" societies.

Zoning laws are just a great way to implement whatever priorities people have for the places they live and access.

Want to prioritize walkability to shops? Zoning is a great way to make that happen.

Want to prioritize keeping noisy things away from residential areas? Zoning is great for that too!

Want to make a socially segregated city? You can absolutely do that with zoning!

Zoning is a super great tool, it's just that the things it optimizes for are sometimes misguided (or in some cases straight-up harmful).

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

#69

Post by tobiasdorge »

petetheheat wrote: post #59
hiidrew wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

SF top neighborhood: Tenderloin. ...starts to question list.

Based solely on the metrics of the site, walkability, bikeability, proximity to transit, based entire on map data… sure! The reality on the ground of course suggests walkability is… not great. Better than having a car there though.

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

#70

Post by duxup »

dabbledash wrote: post #36
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.

I think it's possible that we lost this because, while people do genuinely like it, they like quiet, space, and privacy more.

Is there something that tells us that those traits are specific to white people?
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