build walkable communities

Not a strong example of walkable communities, it's quite pathetic in fact. Is this satire?

I think it has to be satire.
- If it's not satire, America has apparently regressed to a median state of "mentally challenged".
“Walkable” to a gas station is a strong indication of satire.
- Could be like my neighborhood and that's the closest 'general store' around. Of course unlike there we've got an actual grocery store and other services not much farther but you get the idea.
More walkable than some places. At least there is a side walk.
- Sidewalks and 15-25mph speed limits go a long way. Would be nice if there was little community stores for staples embedded in the neighborhood, but that's a foreign concept in American suburbs
I mean it's the US, could be true.
- yeah we have sidewalks but they come with bullets and racists.
I can't think of any reason someone would post this without a hint of irony, but nowadays it's impossible to tell for sure
- The tiny dot and 3.7 miles distance is a blatantly obvious use of irony.
This is ... imo, not satire.
It is simply an example of the opposite of a walkable neighborhood/community, literally framed at such an angle as to capture the ludicrousness of it.
It is an illustration of the absurdity of car-brained NA city design.
But it isn't exaggerated.
These kinds of developments, neighborhoods, are absolutely everywhere in the US, they are very common.
Even the use of 'walkable' may noy be satire: If there are sidewalks the whole way, well that would actually be uncommon, and many US policy makers and local city urban planners would actually, seriously, class this as walkable.
I am guessing folks from more civilized parts of the world are reading this as satire, because this seems unfathomably, beyond belief stupid.
... Welcome to America, we hate it here.

Every community is walkable if you walk enough.

Sidewalks would be neat though.
- No kidding. I was on a bike ride yesterday through some areas where entire subdivisions, in fairly medium/high class neighbourhoods, had no sidewalks. Retired folks were taking their nightly stroll on the side of the road. I guess kids don't get to play outside there, either.
- West coast in the US doesn't really have this problem. I travel for work and it's fucking insane how much the rest of this country will make crosswalks with no way to reach them.
Walking down highways is not advisable
- Which is why racists love putting highways through minority neighborhoods.
- Heh. I used to commute by bicycle, about 5 miles each way, but a stretch of it was on an 8-lane interstate. Up a steep grade in the morning, maybe 4%, with semi trucks blowing by at 60 mph. Down the same slope in the evening, 40mph past cars backed up at the light at the end of the exit ramp.
Some are more deadly than others though
- Not just the danger of walking on a road where huge trucks drive at high speed, but also trying to avoid the roads by walking through fields or backyards and be shot by the property owner. In much of Europe there is some form of right to roam. Which means there are walking and perhaps biking trails throughout and the owner of any property has to allow people to walk there. They often even have to maintain the trail.
  Near where I live there is a beautiful trail through a couple of farms. And the farmers are very welcoming, fencing off what is dangerous, but keeping a nice trail to walk. They have signs explaining what kind of things they grow and what animals they keep. And warning never to feed the animals, as they get plenty of the right food and stuff like bread etc. usually isn't very good for them.
  The US is so different, where a person simply walking and enjoying their surroundings is seen as a dangerous invader which needs to be killed.

hi European here!

what the fuck?

i'm here complaining how it's hard to walk to a big shopping mall or an ikea and you're out there without even a small grocery store around most corners? how do you lot do that? i'd seriously just starve to death if i couldn't get up, walk for 5min, and buy food for a whole meal (or a frozen pizza)

We drive
Everywhere
- In a way that can't really be described to Europeans. If you live in a suburban area, people think you're weird if you do anything other than use your car to get anywhere for any reason. Almost everywhere in the US is designed around the idea that you have a car and you use it every day.
  This is about my city:
  [full article]
  And it's absolutely true. Our buses are mostly useful for driving to a Park & Ride/Transit Center and then to work and back. That's about it.
This does exist in major US cities, especially the older (by US standards) ones. I'm in San Francisco, in a "good" neighborhood, and restaurants, groceries, bars, and multiple forms of public transit are all a short walk away. This is very different in car centric suburbs/cities though.
- The contrast between eg Manhattan and Los Angeles is wild. First time in LA I went out walking, looking for a restaurant. The footpath vanished and suddenly I was on the edge of what seemed like a freeway. Relatives in Santa Monica were horrified to learn that I had taken a bus from my hotel downtown to visit them (it was perfectly fine).
I live in the EU but used to live in the US. In a nice part, too!
I lived like 400m from a small store. Never drove once. Insanely dangerous to walk on such a busy road with no sidewalks, no crossings, etc.
I walk a ton and bike ~80-100km/week now and don't think twice about it.
They all want to live in a detached single home (is that how you call it?), so not enough density for a store to make profit. Glad I don't live there tbh.
- Single family home is the common term here.
  I'm starting to think I need one myself because Americans are generally such loud fucking wankers that you need both a detached house and yards to get any peace.
  Another thing is that the US is so car brained that nearly all attached homes (even townhouses in the city) have a garage somewhere. In my current condo, there's alleyways with garages that face each other. The amount of fucking noise coming from the garage alleys make it impossible to sleep for lighter sleepers.
As an American I need you to understand that what you're saying sounds like a deep parody here. We have some major cities that are comfortable to live in without a car, but they're few and far between.
To us a grocery store is a place you go to rather than swing by real quick. Its changing in some cities, and I've even lived in a suburb with walkable groceries, but its really not the norm.
- o_ o
  i have no words honestly. i wasn't even talking about cities, so far all European cities i've visited were walkable, i was thinking mid size towns and even villages. Basically if your place of residence can't be missed if you blink as you drive by there's probably at least a grocery store in it, and more frequent a general store with most basics you'd need in a day-to-day life next to groceries
We tend to shop for days worth of food at a time.

Too many people dont recognize satire.

Considering reality do you blame them? This is hardly satire, just sarcastic pointing out (US) reality.
- Yea. The Onion has been out-satired by reality lately, I'll give you that.
Why don't the just build a new liquor store in the middle of the new houses? That solves it all

This has clearly got to be satire, but the issue with "walkable communities" is the zoning. You need commerce close to those houses - a coffee shop, a bakery, small supermarket, dry cleaner, small doctor's office, a couple of restaurants, etc.

Not a huge strip of stores, just a few every other block.

Ditch the school buses, and instead create actual bus routes that the kids, but also everyone else, can hop on and off to get around.

100% satire or comedy. 3.7 miles is not "walkable". That's 7.4 miles round trip. 2-3 hours of walking.
I presume US schools have to buy/rent busses and pay bus drivers? Specifically to drive kids to/from school?
Instead of the council (or whatever) subsidising routes that connect new builds to schools, and giving under 16s free bus travel.
- Yes, in the smaller cities and towns where things tend to be more spread out. The is not reliable public transportation.
  Big cities like NYC and LA don't normally bus children to school. They are usually close to the school and can walk or take public transit.
- It's complicated and different districts do different things. Plenty of kids did take the city bus to my high school (there was a vastly reduced fee for minors and plenty of subsidized programs for free or cheap monthly passes).
- Very mixed. Just for my kids ….
  walked to elementary school
  car to middle school (because they classified it as walkable but it was very long plus had to cross two major streets)
  car to high school - private school several towns away. School was Actually on the subway … the other direction
In my Australian town of half a million people (Canberra) our public transport is practically all buses, the same buses do the school services. We're pretty car based but still I have 3 commercial places within 20 minutes of walking, covering medical, groceries, two butchers, hairdressers, a few independent restaurants, a few chain takeaways. Our nearest pub closed years ago, taxes on alcohol got too high for people to meet a few times a week at a pub

Ah yes, they can walk to (checks notes) a gas station. Makes sense.

I believe he might be doing a comedy
To be fair, it has my next pack of smokes, beef jerky and beers, not just gas.
- I used to live in an apartment complex right next to a circle k. I did 60% of my spending there and it was great.
I often walk (checks notes) over 5km just to get to a convenience store.

Lol this has gotta be the satire

If this is satire, well just know that this still exists in the United States.. I've seen this nonsense. It's like they don't even bat an eye. Like car culture is so ingrained in our society that people look at us probably like we're freaks. And it affects how we operate as people.
Of course it's satire. I'm kind of shocked how many people don't recognize it as satire.
Nope. My city is both trying to make the old streetcar suburb neighborhoods walkable again while also annexing places that are miles of road with nothing but sterile housing along it.
When develops buy some farmland, plunk a bunch of terribly build single family houses on it, sell it all off, and walk away the people who bought the houses find out that they're not in a municipality. They wanted a house and low taxes and their own yard, but there's no schools, fire dept, police, real water services, or road maintenance. So... They start begging to be annexed into the city to have the old downtown's taxes pay for their services.
It looks good on paper to add land and population, plus shiny new roads don't cost much for about 15 years, which is longer than most city council members stay on the council. It's someone else's problem when the bills come due. Our city council have been pushovers for decades and just keep adding shithole tax burden neighborhoods to the city and it's all starting to die fast.
- The post is satirically calling this walking, not that the situation itself is satire.

America is such a living hell that like I don't even want to participate in a revolution. It's just going to be a libturd or right-wing-hog revolution anyways. I really think a lot of my social ills, anxiety and depression just comes from the world I live in. I truly believe I am a product of my environment. I would leave the United States in a heartbeat with just the clothes on my back. The only time I've ever been happy is when I was able to commute on my bicycle. Ever since COVID, people have been driving like fucking jackasses. And now I live in an area that I can't ride my bike no more. I have never been so depressed in my whole fucking miserable life. Like a scientist, I want to see if it's me or my environment. I think America causes physical and mental illness. I sometimes think if it were up to me and I wasn't allowed to leave the United States, but I could die in a nuclear explosion and just completely wipe off USA from the face of the earth. I say to myself, I would push that fucking button for future generations, for the world. The world is capitalistic and the Yankee has a lot of leverage, a lot of places in Europe start adopting the Yankee way. It terrifies me, knowing that American culture like the disease that it is Spreads like a plus-filled rash. I am very unhappy. These feelings compile over time. And you're in such agony. You try to figure out why. And then eventually it clicks. America is a piece of shit.

You can move out of America, try. I’m an American living abroad for decades now, and left with nearly zero cash and made a great life abroad.
Plot twist though, everywhere still has problems, just different ones, and the US’ bullcrap affects everyone everywhere including you no matter where you are. (Have why I still care and pay attention to it).
On the subject of this post, I live in a super walkable city, Shanghai, and do everything by bike (amazing, world class bike lanes), walking, subway, taxi, bus etc. and don’t have or need a car, it’s awesome.
aight

Only a couple of hours to get a snack! You'll burn off the calories as you get home!

When I played The Sims 2, the first thing I'd do is create a small public lot where everyone could get all their needs met and buy food and a cell phone (since starting characters didn't have one). There were some oddities, since Sims get dirty quickly, I'd replace sinks with showers, and would make sure coffee was available everywhere.

Eventually, sims could walk from their home, rather than investing in a garage and a car or taking a cab.

Can this be done in sims 3?
- No, that when the American government intervened to make cars mandatory in the Sims

I'm not sure if this Mason guy is being serious or not

Ok. I live in a car centric city but never have lived where I couldn't walk to a corner store. Even out in the suburbs when I was a kid, we could walk to the store, the library too.

Not to say there aren't house farms in the exurbs, ringed by impossibly wide and fast roads. But it's not so prevalent that you can't avoid it.

I agree on zoning - there's an empty lot a couple houses down, and another on the river, wouldn't it be nice if I could build a pub so people didn't drive to the bar? But truly, there are 3 gas stations/corner stores within a mile of our house, 4 barbershops, restaurants, 2 laundromats, a tattoo shop, a pharmacy, all without crossing any road with more than 2 lanes and 25mph speed limit. We just got a taqueria too, it's so good! I just want a neighborhood bar because I hate hate driving somewhere for a drink!

4 blocks is walkable distance. Build 20 houses then leave space for a park and a stores. It doesn't take a genius!

No, it takes someone who hasn't sold their soul.

Satire and on point.

Walking is alien to the vast majority of suburbanites and rural people. Walking ~6 miles round trip is a little over 2 hours at a modest pace.

And bring local pubs to America! Turn one of those shitty little McMansions into an Alehouse every eight square blocks and you've just solved drunk driving!

Not alcoholism and domestic violence though
- Pff, like anyone considers those to be "problems" /s

Do American suburbs not have the concept of a "corner shop"? Somewhere you can grab some basics by walking there in 5 to 10 minutes?

No because they’re quite literally illegal in most neighborhoods. This is starting to change but developers don’t want to do anything different or innovative so they’re still rolling out the same moronic plans we have for the past however many decades.
They basically only exist in more urban areas, not suburbs. And, as someone else mentioned, they mostly sell garbage.
No. They exist, but they basically only have beer, cigarettes, chips, and candy. No actual food.
They're also very badly overpriced.
Yes we have that concept. We just don't often have that reality.
They don’t. It sucks.
Most are gone. T a combination of being zoned out and people being willing to drive 30 minutes to a big box store instead of walking 5 to a corner market nuked most of them.
I have a map of where they used to be in my city 100 years ago. (We do transit advocacy and need data on city history.) They used to be every 400m or so across the entire city, but now? Only a few remain.
Yes. We have these, they are generally at gas stations! But as I said earlier, I have never been more than a few blocks from a corner store. They are not groceries though. Beer, diet coke, the Wawa by me has also reasonable food and fancy coffee. But if you need flour and produce, no. It's only stuff you eat without cooking, ready to go things.
The Walgreens does have more regular stuff, cat food and tape, shampoo, etc. So may be closer to what you are thinking of. There is one of those near me also, but one vs. 3 gas station shops.
- They also tend to be at least 30% more expensive than a proper grocery store, so it's really wasteful to not drive and get a week's worth of food at a time.

Where are the bike lanes? Is this 1950?

I walked 3 miles today and carrying groceries in a plastic bag fucking exhausted me

They have to go 7.4 miles just to buy an energy drink and come back

You'd think the people living in this 'walkable' neighbourhood would end up starving and being underweight ... when in fact they all just end up overweight with diabetes and heart disease

"Why does everyone want to live in pre-existing postwar suburbs? what is the magical x factor that makes people want them?? "

I think it is a few things and mostly centered on raising a family. I also think its lame but these are the reasons as I see them.
They tend to have good schools
They have front/back yards for children to play
The buildings are physically separated so the chance you hear your neighbors is low
The neighborhoods are much more quite
The neighborhoods have low crime
- ....
  Did i really need to add an /s? I thought the quotation marks were a clear enough indicator.
  People want older suburbs because they're planned to be walkable
- Modern house features

Sidewalks check! ✅

don't take them for granted in the States

I live in an apartment building. The liquor store is on the ground floor.

I'm neighbors with my gas station/liquor store combo but the bus service makes almost the whole town in my reach.... Furthermore I can't think of a single place that isn't walkable if you're willing to cover the distance at least here. City limits hit and pedestrian access stop.

Furthermore I can't think of a single place that isn't walkable if you're willing to cover the distance at least here. City limits hit and pedestrian access stop.
You can walk on dirt, can't you? You don't need a sidewalk. Just be willing to walk 30 miles in the dirt. 🤷🏻‍♂️