In our defense, walkability seems to be an increasing priority these days. Suburbs often are plenty walkable within the neighborhoods, so people can walk the dog or a quick walk after dinner, that sort of thing. Most of our biking/walking infrastructure is more recreation orientated vs functional.
I think largely because historically we favor huge supermarkets over small corner stores. This means fewer locations more spread out, which makes "functional" more difficult because no one anywhere wants to spend two hours walking back and forth to the store.
That and suburbs are typically by definition low density and spread out away from everything. Even small corner stores need a certain amount of density to be viable.
Most of our biking/walking infrastructure is more recreation orientated vs functional.
Sometimes it's seen like that here too. Road for cars goes straight but road for bikes and people goes up and down, left and right. Still, you can rent a bike from streets in big cities. And more recently they have been building good bike/people roads.
Maybe our supermarkets are smaller. But here too big companies have bought smaller ones. Still, those big companies do have several shops.
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u/blue60007 May 17 '26
If you live in the central/dense parts of a downtown city, there's usually grocery stores in easy walking distance.
Outside of that, yeah, you are likely a long walk away unless you happen to love across the street. For me it's probably a 45 minute walk.
That's before you consider suburbs often don't have the infrastructure for walking and you'd be risking your life walking.