What can you get to within a 15-minute walk of your house?
A recent YouGov survey asked Americans what they think they should be able to get to within a 15-minute walk of their house.
Of these choices, I can currently walk to all of them from my apartment, aside from a university (no biggie, I’m not currently studying, although there is a Tafe within walking distance), a hospital, and a sports arena.
How many can you get to with a 15 minute walk from your house?
#fuckcars #walkability #urbanism #UrbanPlanning @fuck_cars #walking
Why are bars so low? Do Americans like having to use a car when drinking?
Apparently it’s important that they can walk to a petrol station though.
American here, the gas station is our version of the local corner store. Most places you have to drive to get to it but where I live there is one right at the entrance to the neighborhood and lots of adults/kids do walk there. I would sorely miss it if it was gone.
I agree with this, but also want to point out that gas stations are a poor substitute for a corner grocer or bodega. They are simply too large and require too much land for the function they are serving. Zoning rightfully mandates that they can’t be on the bottom floor of a larger building due to the dangers posed by gasoline and they require lots of space for cars to park.
Essentially, we have forfeited a lot of valuable space to dispensing gasoline and significantly diminished the best features of corner stores by making them serve both functions. I would be curious to see what would happen if gas stations were forbidden from serving anything other than gas in high density areas. I would assume there would be much fewer of them, and each one would be optimized for efficiency to take up as little space as possible. We would also likely see the reemergence of neighborhood bodegas and corner grocers to fill the gap.
Gas station is a somewhat colloquial form of bodega/corner store in the US. Often corner stores without gas stations will still be referred to as gas stations. Sometimes they’re also called convenience stores.
Wait really? I’m from a big city and I’ve never heard “gas station” refer to a place that didn’t sell gas at all. Huh, TIL
I definitely don’t refer to it as a gas station if there’s no gas, but… I may very well refer to the convenience store attached to the gas station as a “gas station”. Like “I’m gonna stop at a gas station and get some coffee”, even if I mean any convenience store, gas or no.
It’s like a rectangle-square situation
I’ve noticed it’s less common in the city and more common in rural areas. I live in SF and people here don’t call them gas stations unless they have gas, but in the Central Valley this is extremely common.
I grew up there and I always forget how much more “proper” I speak at home vs where I grew up. My partner sometimes struggles to understand what I’m trying to say a lot of the time when I slip back into it when speaking with my family. Gas station is just one of the many overly generic terms. Another one is “Vallarta” which doesn’t necessarily mean the chain grocery store Vallarta, but a Mexican grocery store usually selling produce and with a meat counter.
Yeah I know of a few 7-elevens that are just the store, no gas, but would still be thought of as a “gas station”.
I live maybe 10 minutes walk from a gas station, it’s the size of a small grocery store, it has lot of staple groceries and a mini restaurant in it that makes pizzas, sub sandwiches, coffees, ice cream, and a full breakfast menu. Plus donuts every morning. Our gas stations often take the place of 2/3 businesses rolled into one.
I live by a QT for those Americans familiar with STL’s favorite gas station
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If you ever drive through rural America, you’ll usually at least see one or two crosses, often on telephone poles, on rural roads. People, often teenagers, die pretty regularly in rural America because of drunk driving.
Some people like it. Some people are just numb to it. It’s just insane to expect people not to when bars are the only social space in a lot of these towns, and those bars are not accessible by anything but car. There is no such thing as a taxi for most of the US (space wise, not population wise).
That was the one that stood out to me, too (especially the dichotomy between “bars” and “restaurants”). It maybe explains a lot if NIMBYs are actually just moralizing puritans being dishonest about their motives.
This stuck out to me too. This is one of my top items for a 15 min. city, not because I visit bars frequently, but because when I do visit, or when my neighbors visit, I’d like it to be a car-free trip.
I’d wager not a single example of a 15-minute city exists or has ever existed throughout all history without a bar in range.
Probably don’t want to live near drunks, or the piss and vomit that exists after a weekend.
Living near one, I don’t have these issues
That and the noise, bars can be pretty loud
Tbf we’re talking about within a 15 minute walk, not inside your building. There’s a bar 5 minutes away from me and I can’t hear the noise there unless I’m literally standing next to it.
Same, I have a bar a few lots from mine, and it only gets bad a few weekends a year.
I have neighbors that blast music while having super smoky fires and getting piss drunk, though. They are much much worse than the bar. Hands down. Because I can’t have windows open about half the time without my house smelling like smoke (a smell that gives me migraines).
The website has a British version that doesn’t include bar/pub as a choice at all. Does include liquor store, though. Thought that was odd
Some things go without saying.
Why would you need to ask if a pub should be in a 15 minute city. Its like asking should a house be in a 15 minute city? Should electricity be in a 15 minute city?
Maybe they want to drink at home
@Vash63 @ajsadauskas they drink piss-weak beer and if you have more than two somebody will accuse you of being an alcoholic
Lol, local breweries have completely saturated the American market. I barely know anyone that drinks traditional retail beers anymore outside of sports and/or music venues where outside drinks aren’t allowed.
Why do you need a gas station in walking distance?
Do the 32 percent not know what a bus stop is?? Why would you want a bus stop farther than 15 minutes away???
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars One thing you can get within a 15 minute walk of some US homes is arrested!
(My grandma went for a walk in a Miami suburb. The locals thought that someone walking (rather than driving) was obviously suspicious so they called the cops. Because my grandma was white and female and elderly, rather than black and male and young, they stopped to talk to her rather than just shooting her. They then spent several minutes trying to get her to admit that she was walking because her car had broken down - they just couldn’t get it through their heads that she was walking because she wanted to walk.)
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@Zugumba @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars On my one trip to Texas my host said we were going out to dinner. So at the hotel we got into a car, were driven out of the hotel car park, up the ramp onto the motorway, along for one junction, down the ramp, and into the restaurant car park.
And when I looked around I could see that the hotel was in fact next door. Each was surrounded by a vast nearly empty car par. We could have walked from one to the other … except of course there was an impenetrable fence between the two car parks. 'cos nobody would want to walk, would they, when they could drive, so why leave a gap in the fence?
And then … there were all sorts of weird hoops to jump through before we were allowed to buy alcohol to go with our dinner. Of course if we’d been able to walk from the hotel we could have drunk as much as we liked without worrying about being sober enough to drive back.
They saw an elderly woman walking on the street, and they didn’t shoot her on sight?
I hope those officers were fired on the spot for not following standard protocol!
I used to live in South Carolina and recently moved to Chicago. Despite there being many more police in Chicago, I’ve actually had less of a feeling of police anxiety because I don’t drive here. The cops are on the roads pulling cars over. They aren’t in alleys and side streets following pedestrians (at the same rates, anyways). If walking and cycling are normal and built for, police are less of a problem, imo.
Am I the only one impressed 16% of people dont want a grocery store nearby?
They’re probably picturing the typical American grocery store: giant warehouse-like building, massive parking lot, tons of people coming and going. It would be a bad idea to put one of those in the middle of a neighborhood.
I have two similar sized supermarkets near my house and a huge Costco about 45 minutes walk away here in London. And it’s great!
But I think that the main difference is that my big Sainsbury’s near me is surrounded by restaurants and parks, it has a nice children’s play area outside, lots of benches, etc. And all these nice things are separated from the road so you don’t hear or smell cars while sitting on the bench and reading a book.
What I saw from US photos were huge concrete fields. Yeah, I wouldn’t want a big supermarket in this fashion near me.
I’m just confused about the people that want a gas station. Y’all are walking to get your gas?
But maybe it’s to get a pack of smokes which tends to be only sold at gas stations where I live. But I dunno about this poll.
Lots of gas stations have a food menu now and things to grab late at night or when you don’t want a full store.
Am thinking they are thinking of convenience stores. It’s faster to get a drink or cheap food there.
Gas stations in my area tend to have better food than the grocery store’s deli. If you want something quick and good, its the way to go for us.
So it is american version of shopping mall. Symptom of city planner’s skill issue.
I was thinking about that and wonder if they are concerned about additional food waste cause by having so many more grocery stores. Off the top of my head, I’m not coming up with another reason.
Probably afraid of getting shot at.
16% said “should not” to a grocery store? What?
I feel like there should be a separate question for the “I don’t want anything near me” rural choice, since those might be making the rest of the responses misleading.
They are probably carbarians whose only conception of a grocery store is a supermarket surrounded by a moat of parking. I wouldn’t want one of those next to me either
Even then, 15 minutes is quite a radius. I wouldn’t want to be a 3-minute walk away, but a 15 minute walk is like ~8 blocks.
Granted, that probably necessitates other homes being a lot closer than 8 blocks, so I suppose this just becomes a micro-scale NIMBY-ism. So I suppose you’re probably right.
That said, there are lots of places where you have massive grocery stores at the ground level or underground in high-density urban environments, so you can get massive scale with high walkability, if you’re willing to move past single-family homes (which we must… I say despite wanting a single-family home for my family.)
Not wanting a parking lot moat next to them is one thing, but not even wanting one within a mile and a half just flat-out doesn’t make sense.
Some people don’t want anyone near them. Not even a small mom-and-pop grocery store.
But what if your only experience with grocery/retail/bar s these huge loud noxious monstrosities. We’ve super-sized almost everything, and many people probably have no idea it can be different
Some people might genuinely prefer a humongous superstore, and the parking lot culture that comes with it.
In the UK, you see tons of “corner shops”, which are just overpriced grocery stores where the owner pretends to be serving the community, but is actually putting his daughter through private school.
In contrast, the Sainsbury’s down the road hires actual suffering locals who you know from high school, the parking lot is full of teens blasting music and worried parents teaching their children how to drive – i.e. there is an actual community happening there.
Yeah, the actual closest one to me, very easy walking, is more properly called an INconvenience store. It has what looks like a surprisingly large assortment of overpriced food, but never again after I saw green bacon. They clearly make their money from the twin scourges of lottery and smoking. Then it comes down to the full sized grocery has much better hours, prices, selection, even if I usually drive there
One of the grocery chains in our region actually tried a real NYC style bodega, and it was a fantastic addition to the community. Unfortunately it never quite caught on and was killed by COViD.
@jeffhykin @ajsadauskas My brother and his neighbors are fighting a grocery store in their neighborhood because of “traffic” (it would be negligible). Instead they drive 10 minutes each way thru - traffic.
Car brain - wanting your neighborhood to be undesirable so people won’t want to come.
It’s worse: they don’t want anything next to their homes that might be associated with working class because it would lower the price of houses.
Absolutely. I imagine there would be a significant correlation between those who want to live in an urban area vs a rural area and what they want within 15 minutes.
Im confused about (from the poll)
- bar… if this is not walkable you are promoting drunk driving. (even if its not your thing)
- what do you need to walk to the gas station for? or is this being used also as a corner store?
This poll shows a population not really taking the question seriously.
Why should a gas station be more accessible on foot than a local pub?
How is bar so low?? Do people want drunk drivers? Because that’s how you get drunk drivers
Public transportation checking in here
Depends on where you are from. For a lot of Americans, bars are super loud places that play music super loud until 2am. The concept of a “bar” has so many different applications, I think most people think of a noisy place that they’d have to deal with.
Because of car culture you often get big groups of bars all near each other, which feeds the stereotype of loud ass bar with loud ass people outside of it.
That sounds a bit more like a nightclub.
I’d never want to live next to a nightclub, but living next to a tavern or pub would be fine.
Honestly… They can all be called bars where I’m from (Central US). It’s very annoying not knowing what you’re walking into sometimes.
Sports bars also tend to be big noisy monstrosities, and it’s what many people like to go to, but would not like to be near. I also think you’d get different results distinguishing a pub/tavern from other types of bars
They probably forgot to sample Wisconsin.
Wisconsin honestly doesn’t want bars close to houses because the bars are all sequestered together in a small area so the noise can’t reach the houses
F to the poor souls that live above the bars in those Main Street buildings they use as bars now
sequestered together in a small area so the noise can’t reach the houses
Actually its so you can go from one bar to another to chase the vibes or something. I don’t drink much so I really don’t know but the town I live in actually closes the road that all the bars are on to vehicle traffic at 10pm to protect the drunks stumbling between bars
That’s a great idea. This is the approach I saw in New Orleans as well, except of course I was warned to never leave the French Quarter while stumbling drunk, due to the high crime rate there. It was fantastic walking from Jazz band to Jazz band, bringing your drink with you!
Spain has bars everywhere, and it isn’t hard at all to find someone with an horror story about living above or next to one.
I feel attacked
Aww, I’m sorry! I meant it with love.
Being someone who moved to Wisconsin, the number of bars everywhere is a bit surprising when ya start noticing it.
There are two places where people get drunk most often: bar and home. Guess which one creates most drunk drivers.
And guess what’ll happen if there is one <15 mins walk from your house? You won’t drive to a bar ever again.
People have a real magical thinking about fifteen min cities and this is a good example of it, people don’t just want to go to the nearest bar as if they’re all interchangable they want to go to a bar that suits them with their friends who might well live more then fifteen min away
True, but … I’m an example of this, where the bars I prefer are farther than walking distance. However I could walk to 3-4, and a percentage of people probably do.
One of the things to remember about walkability is it’s always a numbers game. It can’t be everything to everyone, but the point is to make it most things for most people most of the time. I may drive to bars, but I only go rarely and my goal is a nice meal, a nice microbrew, and a great conversation. I care a lot about the quality of food and beer and am not interested in getting drunk. You may have different criteria
Yeah but it depends on where you at, you can find lots of cities Europe that has tons of bar in a 15mins walking radius, so you can choose whatever you want. But yeah small towns might have only one or two that you might not like much. And also, EU countries has the ultimate cheat activated at almost all times, a good functioning public transportation…so you don’t have to take the car… (fuck car dependency )
Also true
Not everyone wants to get drunk regularly, and having a bar close by could potentially bring drunk people in your neighborhood. Most of the bars in my city are clustered in commercial complexes, which are usually quiet empty after regular end of business hours.
I think you’re confusing a simple bar and a downtown bar area. I have a bar a block from me, no noise, low key. Neighborhood bars are generally more go and grab a beer locally, but you don’t get massive crowds.
Very different rules too, they have a lower noise tolerance compared to a bar area. It’s something that’s honestly really nice, a place for locals to go watch the game or have a beer, and be able to walk home. It’s honestly a luxury that we have it
Yeah, I lived right next to a bar as a kid and this has never been an issue. The only times it got loud, it was planned in advance and the bar owner actually asked my parents permission before doing their thing. This happened like once a year, the rest of the time, I didn’t hear a thing.
Suburbanites, terrified of the smallest amount of convenience my man
Lmao bring drunk people to your neighborhood
Gas station above elementary school?
What’s the point in being able to walk to a gas station anyway?
I don’t think I’ve ever done that in the 30 years or so that I’ve visited them.
But don’t walk to the bar. You definitely want to drive there.
Most gas stations also serve as small shops. I can understand the desire to have one nearby when you don’t have the language to describe a bodega or corner store.
Yup here in Canada the gas station or “co-op” is the hub of a small town. It’s where you get your mail, groceries, snacks, smokes, pizza and sandwiches, farm supplies, and lean up against the counter and drink coffee and chat with the neighbours and staff. Oh yeah and they have gas, but you’d better move your truck before you pour your coffee or the next guy who needs gas is gonna be pissed at you.
I have spent far more time socializing at gas stations than bars. See the example “Corner Gas”
Note that aside from the “park” which you could call “everywhere around here”, I am 2 hours of highway travel away from everything on the list. Except the gas station, which is a half-hour drive on gravel/dirt roads.
Needless to say I can see how fuckcars appeals to city folk, but there is no other practical transportation system for us farmers who live way out here. Without a vehicle, you will actually die. I like to go visit my city friends and walk to the bar, though :D
Yeah the concept of a gas station isn’t going to go away. Maybe it might be a “charge station” or something like that, but an electric car still has tires that might need air, still has a windshield you might want to squeegee, and people are still going to want to get some snacks and smokes or whatever. If anything it’ll be more of a thing since an EV takes longer to charge than gassing up. Probably the Corner Gas setup with a diner next door will be very popular… get a bite to eat while the car recharges.
Just seems like the oil companies are being weirdos for not installing some charge stations at their gas stations right now.
Chargers are starting to show up on the major highways and in the cities and large towns, but it’ll be awhile before they show up in the countryside (if ever) thanks to the chicken and egg issue. It’s a waste of money installing one, because nobody ever brings an electric car out here. And nobody brings an electric car, because without a charger, they don’t have the capacity for a round trip.
I actually went the opposite way and bought a diesel Mercedes for my city trips. Reliable, comfortable, and so efficient that you can go for 1000km without stopping for fuel.
I even have an electric car, a little runabout I use at the farm with lead acid cells. I could make it to town, but without being able to charge it there, I couldn’t get home (30 km lol lead acid sucks).
It’s not exactly a chicken and egg problem when you can charge an electric car at home. People that need a fast charging station are going to tend to be people that are living in an apartment building with a parking garage that doesn’t have charging infrastructure and people taking longer trips. Which is why you see more need for them in cities and along highways.
I even have an electric car, a little runabout I use at the farm with lead acid cells. I could make it to town, but without being able to charge it there, I couldn’t get home (30 km lol lead acid sucks).
Newer battery technology has significantly more range. Not sure what point you’re making about older technology not being able to do what newer technology can.
Charging at home is what makes this specific situation chicken and egg. Since the gas station is the only thing close to our homes, a charger there is useless to us. It only services people who would come from the city, people who wouldn’t be able to make it home without charging, much like how it currently works for us making trips to the city. Without a charger though, they can’t even think of making that trip or they will be stuck.
I’m not really making a point about my little car, except that I love it and I wish used lithium batteries were more available in Canada so that I could install a set that would get it to town and back for the mail. It’s one of the first street-legal electrics ever produced and I’d love to keep it going. 1978!
I guess if there is a point it’s kind of a microscale version of the Canadian issue - in rural Canada, every trip is a long trip. I can’t think of many places that I go that wouldn’t require fast charging to complete the round trip, especially in winter.
Yeah, gas stations kind of covers the convenience/grocery store need. I like the ones that feel like the store is the main business, and gas is the side hustle.
Probably people don’t want to live near a bar because of the other side effects, like drunken people and noise issues. But yeah walk it transit to the bar is the way
15 minutes away? That’s almost up to a mile!
I have 8 or 10 bars within 5 minutes walk and there’s zero noise or other detectable influence. I get more inconvenience from the churches 3 minutes walk away.
I didn’t say they were right, but I can imagine that’s why a lot of them put that.
There’s a local bar near me that was trying to get a zoning variance to replace their surface parking lot with outdoor seating and a bunch of people who lived nearby showed up to complain about “noise”. It’s pretty ridiculous we require parking for a bar at all to be honest.
I never seen a bar with huge bells inside, though it might be interesting experience “Yo the bells are ringing, time to go get drunk”
What’s the point in being able to walk to a gas station anyway?
I imagine “gas station” also includes the convenience store that’s often part of it
You definitely want to drive there.
Do you drive FROM there?
I’m probably like a 5 minute walk, so I make the trip to my gas station mainly for drunk munches or to re-up alcohol. Mainly the 7-11 part of the gas station.
So, wouldn’t “Convenience Store” be a better category? My 7-11 is the second closest convenience store: it does NOT include a gas station but is closer to one, and more important for walking
They didn’t have likbez(illiteracy elimination)
As someone in the UK, I already live within a 15 minute walk of most of these.
Is it really that bad over there? If you’re not within a quick walk to the shops, or the doctors, or school, tram and bus stops, opticians, dentists, etc, how do you and the kids get anything done?
Who would intentionally move somewhere like that? The first thing we do when looking at moving to a new place is see what services are within walking distance, to get an idea for how worth it living there would be.
If you’ve got to walk 30+ minutes just to get to the shops? That’s an arse ache you don’t want.
Who needs a gas station within walking distance? One need a gas station within 15-minutes driving.
They double as 24/7 corner stores, at least here in Europe, so it makes sense.
Sure, but “grocery store” is already on the list - so I feel that’s covered.
Most grocery stores aren’t 24/7.
It seems weird not to have “convenience store” on the list.
I’d want a big grocery store with fresh fruit and veggies and a full selection within a 20ish minute walk. But, I’d want a small 24 hour (or at least late night) convenience store within about a 10 minute walk.
@merc @blind3rdeye maybe “convenience store” is covered by “gas station”?
It shouldn’t be. Conceptually those are very different places, even if most modern gas stations also incorporate a convenience store. The reverse definitely isn’t true.
Grocery stores aren’t open at night. Also, it’s usually a lot faster to get stuff from a convenience store than a grocery store. If all you need is some snacks or toilet paper, it’s nice to have a way to quickly get that done.
I’m in Europe as well and I have gas stations that double as corner stores but also standalone corner stores so it doesn’t make so much sense to me.
I’m guessing the thought process is “well if my car is out of gas, that’s the one place I’d actually have to walk to.”
I guess that’s a baby step toward understanding the need of human-scaled infrastructure.
Gas station beer runs after the liquor store are closed would like to have a word
I walk to the petrol station to fill up my lawnmower can. Other people might to buy overpriced snack food
I didn’t think of that. But anyway I’m anticar and antilawn so…
But are you anti-overpriced-snack-food?
Actually, I’m am ! because those are often overwrapped in useless plastic packaging and I try to do zero waste. I should try to by a bit more pro-thing rather than anti-. Would make my life happier.
Oh I fully agree. It’s a job, I don’t have a lawn.
There are lawn alternatives that still need some forms of mowing. I have clover but mow it back a couple times a season.
Mow your lawn with biofuel. Behold, the GOAT of Lawncare!
Actually I hear contrary to popular opinion goats are fussy eaters, they just sample everything. Maybe go with the Sheep of Lawncare.
I have an electric mower, personally, just an old (relatively) hand me down.
You should upgrade to a sheep. You get free fertiliser, and when you’re done with it, you can eat it.
Unless you’re vegan. Then you have to pay it a wage.
This literally made me laugh out loud, that was a good one. ❤️
Electric lawn mowers are better, imho. Fewer parts to break/maintain. Granted, the cable isn’t ideal, but it’s really not a big deal, you just mow out front where you plug is in two sections.
That’s fine for a bland, flat, empty US suburban section. For complex weedeating jobs it’s not very practical.
@blindsight @biddy Battery opperated is plenty good for most situations too. Up to the point where a ride on is probably the right choice, but I presume battery ride ons are/will be a thing.
The fact that only 68% of respondents say a bus stop should be within a 15 minute walk of your house and only 32% say a bar says a lot about the SEC and age of the sample pool.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars There’s a couple of weird things missing there I would definitely include, like a doctor’s office, a library and a gym.
I’m in a city in the UK and a lot of those are in 15 minutes walk from me. Some, like a hospital, university, cinema, shopping mall and sports arena and I think a bank I’d have to go into the city centre for, but that’s only about 30 minutes walk, 10 minutes on the bike, or a short bus or metro ride. I’m generally pretty lucky in my location.
Do people really use the post office or bank that often? If I’m walking into either of those, odds are something has gone catastrophically wrong that day.
