[crispyambulance]

What you're describing actually has a name, "streetcar suburb".

Regardless of whether a streetcar serves the neighborhood, it is characterized by a town center (or "main street"). Retail, commerce, schools, and 3rd-places are nucleated near the main street. Distances are short, like you describe. It is in many ways an urban center and functions like a city. They're often just outside bigger cities and have multiple transportation options to get to the bigger city. These were the first suburbs but these days they're very much considered a part of the city at least symbolically or by name.

In the early naughts the "New Urbanist" movement among urban planners and architects sought to transplant this form of urbanism back to American suburbs. It was marginally successful but seemed to lose steam. The most relevant thing that remains from that effort was what is now called "complete streets" initiatives and measurements like "walkability score".

Many of the old streetcar suburbs still exist, and so do many new urbanist efforts. You can find these places if you look for them. I live in South Philly, but there are places outside Philly that are still streetcar suburbs. Walkability scores are almost as high as the big city, you can get to work in the city with a reasonably fast commuter train (septa for PA, patco for NJ). There's also office parks that are relatively short distances from these burbs-- Tech folks are vastly more likely to work in those than in the big city (which, sadly, is dominated by lawyers, hospitals, class-A corporate, retail).