[ducharmdev]

The problem is, a lot of our cities are fundamentally hostile to pedestrians. Even if you're actually close enough to walk to a grocery store (most are not), you may be afraid to cross streets with numerous lanes of speeding cars without dedicated crosswalks. In my city, it's common to hear stories of bicyclists in hit-and-runs; it doesn't exactly make people comfortable with walking and biking around their city.

[midoridensha]

This is because Americans, by and large, do not demand better infrastructure from their leaders, don't vote for it, and don't actively move to places that are better for walking/cycling. Americans are perfectly happy to move to some far-out subdivision that's not walkable to anyplace, just because the house price is a bit lower; then they sit around and make complaints like yours. Put your money where your mouth is.

With the pandemic, we saw lots of Americans move from these walkable places to completely un-walkable places in Florida because they were working from home now, and could afford a bigger house there.

American cities are the way they are because that's what Americans want, and that's what they buy. If Americans really wanted to live in walkable places, they'd refuse to move to or buy homes in places that aren't walkable. That's just not what we see.

[ducharmdev]

This comes across as out of touch. The house differences are not just "a bit lower" - for many it can mean the difference between being able to purchase a house at all.