At the same time, is it too much to ask for a sidewalk? That’s the thing that bothers me the most. Many suburbs seem built to be actively hostile to walkers, rather than just inconveniently sprawling.
> At the same time, is it too much to ask for a sidewalk? That’s the thing that bothers me the most. Many suburbs seem built to be actively hostile to walkers, rather than just inconveniently sprawling.
No it is not, suburbs with sidewalks are better suburbs. They should all have them (on both sides) and it should be a code requirement.
But suburbs with a deficit of sidewalks are not "Horror Movie[s]," like these obnoxious urbanists, who are apparently creeped out by the existence of parking, want to propagandize them as.
There's a difference between random, unincorporated urban sprawl and a planned suburban town. You are describing the former. The latter has infrastructure, sidewalks, town square or city center, and government services.
Many neighborhoods assume cars for everything. Even local parks have giant parking lots.
However some cities get it. Things like a parking lot by the park, but surrounded on 3 sides by dead end streets, that allow bikes and pedestrians directly into the park. Combine that with some paths in the park and the pedestrians and bikes have a lower distance than the cars.
Combine that with green belts (again with dead end streets up to the green belt) and you have highly desirable housing that allows bikes use the green belts to make for pleasant bike commutes, dog walks, and makes having a small home/yard MUCH more pleasant. It lowers the average temperature of the city, makes things less convenient for cars and more convenient for bikes, pedestrians, and public transit.
At the end of the bike path (usually a major road) put in a bus stop and a bridge for the pedestrians or bikes that want to keep on going.
It's really not that hard, but cities can be friendly to bikes and pedestrians and still usable by cars. It does work, it can substantially move the needle on the percentage of commutes that happen without cars.
I'd much rather have 0.15 acres with a local park that connects to a greenbelt where I can bike to work than 1 acre that I have to maintain myself and forces me to drive everywhere I go. I've noticed that decent bike/green belt networks (where you can commute on bike without spending most of your time on busy streets with bike lanes) are often the most desirable city in the area.
A good one I saw was a neighborhood separated from a shopping center by a wall. If there was a gate you could walk 100 yards to stores. But because the wall you had to walk 7/10ths of a mile.
Suburbs can be built with sidewalks and bike paths.
I'm in a suburb in Australia where I can walk across one road to get to a small local shops or about 15 minutes safe walk from a reasonable sized supermarket.
I can ride on bike paths for 15 km to my job as well.
There are some places in the US like this. I used to ride on bike paths to work near Washington DC.
I'm in a wealthy suburb of Salt Lake City where I can walk to the nearest grocery store, or take my kids to school in a cargo bike on miles of protected bike paths. It's wonderful, but it's also much more expensive to live here than in suburbs without those sorts of amenities. I'm a bit of a sucker for online urbanism (I've spent a lot of time in the Netherlands and it's hard not to want that sort of infrastructure here in the US) but I always feel a bit icky about how "strong towns" basically mean rich towns in the US.
So how is grand parent "against" side walks? In fact I totally welcome it and if you look at places like Australia the public transport is jointly amazing too - that too "radially" from downtown. All without sacrificing or demonizing suburb dwellers.
No it is not, suburbs with sidewalks are better suburbs. They should all have them (on both sides) and it should be a code requirement.
But suburbs with a deficit of sidewalks are not "Horror Movie[s]," like these obnoxious urbanists, who are apparently creeped out by the existence of parking, want to propagandize them as.