I agree wholeheartedly. I was primarily commenting on people who live/work in my area, yet drive almost exclusively including distances of 1 mile or less.
Add in peoples’ desire to move to locations where they are dependent on their car for everything. Or businesses locating far from public transportation.
I have often thought that unless I lived in a very rural area, I would want to be able to walk/bike SOMEWHERE, if only to a gas station/convenience store for a loaf of bread or the newspaper. Personally, I dislike the subdivisions that are JUST far enough out that the residents drive EVERYWHERE. I think a certain degree of pedestrian traffic confers many benefits upon a neighborhood and its residents.
When I lived in the city, I’d walk to the grocery. I’d walk to the vet. I’d walk to the park. I’d walk to school or to work (when I lived within two or three miles - eventually I moved more than three miles and it became too time consuming).
Then I moved to the 'burbs. I’m more than three miles from the nearest grocery.
The other think is that when I lived in the city, I lived alone or with one other person. Walking four blocks to the store to pick up a few days groceries and carry them home wasn’t a big deal.
Now I live in the burbs and have kids - even if I lived in the city, the amount of groceries I can carry is a days worth. And with kids, I don’t have time - when they were little grocery shopping even once a week was a huge deal - now I’m squeezing it in running to baseball (six miles away) and gymnastics (five miles).
We do walk (or bike) to piano lessons most often - three blocks, taught by a neighbor.
When Frank Lloyd Wright worked for Louis Sullivan in Chicago, he’d walk sixty blocks to and from work every day. It obviously didn’t compromise his success.
When I lived near Wrigley Field, I’d walk as far south as Hyde Park and as far north as Evanston. I could choose architecture walks or lakeshore walks, or follow the greenbelts.
I have not owned a car in 6 years. In that time I have lived in Tbilisi, Wellington, Dubai and Prague. Dubai was the only place where we could not walk most places and used taxis. Elsewhere we simply walk. I am guessing on an average day we walk 5 miles or so.
When we lived in the US, I could see the grocery store from where we parked the car, but it was impossible to walk there (well we did it once to try) because of a highway interchange and no pavements (sidewalks). I think most Americans will drive if they are going more than 100 yards.
In many times, it is actually not the person’s desire to move to locations where they have to rely on cars for everything. The job growth in those places tends to be much higher. I wouldn’t have picked Dallas, but the economy here is much better than most other places.
Our last vacation that we took this May put 7300 kms on our car. We drove about 6 to 8 hours every day for 10 days, driving from Calgary to Chicago and back. I’m realizing that taking long car trips is a skill that you can develop - you get almost Zen, sitting in a car and watching the world go by. Canadians do drive long distances frequently, though - we kinda have to.
I’m not familiar with Dallas, but even if you have to drive for work, don’t you have some flexibility in choosing where you live with respect to everything else you do?
I’m assuming that even in Dallas there are homes that are within walking distance of stores, libraries, schools, etc. That is what I was referring to - the number of people who choose to live where they not only must drive to work, but also for every one of their personal/social needs.
My favorite example of what I consider this insanity is when people hop in their car to drive to a mall or track to walk! Of course, a good number of commuter subdivisions don’t even include sidewalks…
When I was in high school I would occasionally walk home, which was about six miles, in order to save bus fare from my allowance so I could buy books. I thought nothing of walking fairly long distances then.
For a while, I had someone insist on driving me home from our bus stop because no one could stand the idea of having to walk all the way.
It was under a mile!
I think the lack of sidewalks is a self perpetuating problem. No town is going to build or maintain sidewalks if no one is walking, and many people won’t walk if there are no sidewalks… I have a pet theory that as a society, by not installing sidewalks, we are (maybe without realizing it) collectively giving ourselves a handy and believable excuse to be lazy. Avoiding walking when there is a sidewalk looks lazy; avoiding walking when there is no sidewalk simply looks like you’re being careful.
I’ve never thought ill of people who won’t walk, but I’d rather not get the lectures from people about how I shouldn’t walk so much.
When Brainiac4 and I moved out of our starter home (two small bedrooms in South Minneapolis) and into a home we could raise a few kids in, we looked for a year to stay in the cities - St. Paul or Minneapolis. We liked the vision of ourselves as “urban people.” Our needs were:
At least three bedrooms
Updated kitchen
Updated wiring
A yard (not a large yard)
A decent neighborhood
Livable floorplan
Walking distance to “stuff” - if we were going to live in the city, walking distance to stuff was important.
We found we couldn’t afford it - and we made OK money back then. It would cost us twice as much for half the house to live in the city. Had we waited a few years, our income would have allowed it - but at that time it made no sense at all.
So we moved to the 'burbs. When the kids go off to college, we will move back to the city.
I have plenty of friends who stayed in the city. Many of them have no kids. Others have kids, but spent a lot on their homes - and a LOT more on remodeling them. One hasn’t gotten around to remodeling theirs yet, so has one of those homes with the stupiest floorplan known to man - but is in the city in a nice neighborhood. One lives in her parents’ old place - her parents moved - so she basically got a great home for far less than the market price. Oh, and Dad is a woodworker with friends in the construction business - its been well maintained. But its in a marginal neighborhood.
Now even the neighborhoods in the city with their corner grocery stores and nearby libaries are not always close to anything - the corner grocer and neighborhood libraries have been closing. The house I lived in that had so much that was walkable, none of that is there anymore - the little coffee shop, the corner grocer, the drugstore, the bowling alley - all gone.
Sorry, but I don’t buy it. First of all, your “needs” certainly could seem like “wants.” And your 4:1 price diff sure seems out of line with what I experienced in the Chicago area.
When I first moved to Chicago, I bought a 3-bdrm split-level suburban house for $100K. I could have bought a 3-4 bdrm bungalow in my parents neighborhood (NW side of Chicago) for the same price or less. Not in the hottest areas of town, but blocks from public transportation, and walking to all kinds of shops and amenities.
Of course, we chose to go somewhere less crowded, with better schools. So we moved to the suburb where my wife worked, to a home where I could walk to the train. We didn’t move out to the middle of a cornfield where we could have gotten more house for less, but woul dboth have had to become road warriors. In my mind, these are all choices. Hell, once my wife got her job in a suburb, I narrowed my job search down to jobs that would allow me to use the commuter train. Choices.
And your choice was for immediate gratification. You wanted the kitchen and wiring updated, rather than living with something less for a while, even in a location that afforded other benefits. Why? Because you chose to commute, and emphasizzed other things as more important. I’m not saying your choice was bad or wrong, but you it reflects your priorities, plain and simple.
Of course they are really wants - we could survive in a Yurt and raise llamas. But neither you or I choose to live in a Yurt (have you ever had llama milk?).
In my neighborhood, yes many of those services are in walking distance. However, I’ll usually hit them all on one quick car trip. The library is right next to the grocery store which is right across the street from the gas station which is next to my hair stylist.
I live in the burbs and the only places I could walk to are: Pizza Hut, donut shop, gas station, convenience store, barber, etc. Nothing I want to go to.
I work at a library and you walk in on the 3rd floor. You can go 2 floors down, 2 floors up. I only take the elevator when I am lugging the big heavy cart o’journals from the 5th floor to the 2nd floor. People will wait for the elevator with me on the 5th floor and get off on the 4th floor. It’s ridiculous.
I go to a gym to get my primary exercise. If I could find/had time, I would love to do co-ed softball or volleyball or something. Hopefully it will be something I can do after I’m done with school. My boyfriend and I take walks/hikes often, weather permitting. I never look for a close parking spot when I shop unless the weather is nasty. I also try to go to the zoo and Forest Park and stuff when I can and walk around more. If I enjoyed doing those things by myself I would probably do them more often, but at least I get to the gym pretty regularly and eat decently.
I would love to someday live in an area where I can walk to more places. If I could walk to the grocery store, some decent shopping, and bars/restaurants, I’d be in heaven.
But yeah, people are lazy. They don’t want to walk anywhere. I catch kids on campus taking elevators in classroom buildings all the time - and I know some of them and know they have no sort of illness or disability that prevents them from taking stairs because I’ve made them take stairs with me before and no problems reported. I hate elevators and only take them when I have to. I also miss living on a big college campus when I had to walk probably a mile+ a day. Probably the main reason I didn’t gain any weight those years. I’d hike up five floors every day for certain classes, and kids would take the elevator. Don’t get it.
And yet, you guys are MUCH better drivers than we. Much, much better.
I love Holland and the Dutch people. I’ve spent time in Amsterdam on business and have walked all over the city. Once I was visiting a friend in the Singel and stayed until about 2:00 am. I left to walk back to my hotel at Leidseplein thinking “this may be a really dumb thing for a small woman to do”, but decided I was being paranoid. Sure enough, as I walked along I saw dozens of other people walking, and even saw people ice skating on the frozen grachts. It was major cool for me to feel as safe walking through a big city at 2:30am as I do in my own suburban neighborhood at 2:30pm.
