[kenperkins]

Seattle is complex in this regard as the elevation changes between neighborhoods are an additional dimension. If I was living at the base of Lower Queen Anne and the "facilities" meeting the 15m criteria was at the top, that's not something I would consider a viable walk.

[karaterobot]

Was thinking about this too. A 2D distance map doesn't do it justice, really, because it ignores the non-trivial hill in the middle of your route.

The other thing about Seattle is that you can have a grocery store nearby, but still not really have access to it if you're lower income. We have a lot of premium stores, especially in walkable neighborhoods. When I was a student I lived in Wedgwood, and I had 2 grocery stores within a 5-minute walk: the PCC, and the Metropolitan Market, both places where a week's groceries were about 2-3x as expensive as they were at the nearest Safeway, which was more than 15 minutes away.

Not faulting the creator of this article, as it's an okay rule of thumb, and it's hard to include details like that in a model.

[beoberha]

I own a home very close to the PCC you’re talking about and only ever go there if we forgot something in the large weekly grocery run we do at the QFC. Met Market isn’t really an economical option either, but we do love their pre-made food options for when we don’t feel like eating leftovers.

[karaterobot]

The way I describe Metropolitan Market to people outside Seattle is that it's a just a regular old neighborhood grocery store where you can choose from multiple varieties of foie gras. But it did have some cool stuff in it too, you're right about their pre-made stuff.

[bialpio]

> (...) that's not something I would consider a viable walk.

Why not? As long as it's truly a 15m walk? The metric should take into account that the speed is going to be reduced when walking on a steep incline, otherwise it's a bad metric...

[bears-n-beets]

You might change your mind if you saw how steep Queen Anne Hill is, haha

[marssaxman]

I used to walk up and down Queen Anne with a backpack on as pre-conditioning for climbing trips!

[bialpio]

Is it steeper than Spring St roughly from the waterfront to the library? ; ) In any case, if it's a workout to walk the distance in 15m, then it's not really a 15m walk. I can cover way more ground in 15m if the assumption is that I'll be out of breath when I'm done... :P

[darknavi]

Who doesn't like a 15 minute high intensity work out to get some eggs?

[bombcar]

Half the roads on Queen Anne are just literally staircases.

A 15 min walk down and up stairs in a skyscraper would count but few would want to do it on the regular (and those who did wouldn’t need to worry about leg day).

[com2kid]

> Seattle is complex in this regard as the elevation changes between neighborhoods are an additional dimension.

And then there is the socio-economic history of elevations in Seattle. tl;dr Historically poor people (and minorities) lived at the bottom of hills, rich people at the top. To this day, you can literally see houses get nicer as you go up hills.

There are also neighborhoods with a hill in the middle where one side of the hill was historically poor, and the other side well to do. My dad used to tell me that when he was a kid, him and all his friends knew not to go to up the hill where they didn't belong.

[Izikiel43]

You see this in Magnolia neighborhood, the east side is where all the renters live as that's where there are buildings, the further west you go, the more expensive it gets.

[harshalizee]

Well, today I can't afford to buy anything on either side of the hill on QA. Equality achieved! I'm only half kidding though.

[jgust]

What's the difference between walking and hiking, elevation gain?