[lotsoweiners]

I live in as suburban of an area as you can imagine with master planned communities and what not. I can still walk to 3 grocery stores, multiple bars, fast food restaurants, fast casual restaurants, coffee shops, medical offices, convenience stores, and loads of other services in under 15 minutes. The suburbs built in the 90s and 2000s are not the dystopia people make them out to be.

[jjav]

Very much this.

My neighborhood was built in the late 90s. Single family home small town suburbia. I can walk to just about anything I need in daily life. Within 10 minutes walk there are 2 supermarkets, movies, many restaurants, variety of services, library, parks, theaters, doctors, and more.

If we count cycling, I can bike to 99% of what I could need in life. (Problem in practice is lack of safe bike parking but that's not a distance problem.)

Most places I've lived in the US in my adult life have been similar. The exception was once when I lived in a very rural area and had to drive 10 minutes to the nearest supermarket.

I don't understand these threads that talk about suburbs where you have to drive an hour to the nearest convenience store. I'm skeptical that such places exist. Where are they?

[vel0city]

https://maps.app.goo.gl/xEkHB8ZQiCUAZH7T6

https://maps.app.goo.gl/KmSjG465pkAGJia19

https://maps.app.goo.gl/DvCv5oMbhfXRDVAR6

https://maps.app.goo.gl/14duytarnCn8UPR37

They're kind of all over the place. It seems to me non-walkable suburbs are the default from the places I've lived and visited. Unless you're either living near the town square of a small town or adjacent to the downtown area of a big city it's probably not really walkable.

An hour to a store is probably hyperbole for most places, but I definitely have friends where it's like 5+ minutes to drive from the middle to the edge of the neighborhood of only single family houses, and then you're just on a street in nearly the middle of nowhere with no shops right outside just other neighborhoods full of houses.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/GB7SPqHZoDeRE7eX6

https://maps.app.goo.gl/zEA7sBQ6Jxccc2fFA

https://maps.app.goo.gl/oZRNZ3Td2NDqH8nw7

[jjav]

The claim at the top of the thread was "essentials being a 30-45m drive away".

I clicked on each of those links and asked for directions to food shops and in every case google maps gave me a route less than 10 minutes drive.

So I remain unconvinced that suburbs with "essentials being a 30-45m drive away" are somehow a common thing. You need to go pretty far off into the boonies for that to be the case but then it is no longer a suburb.

[vel0city]

Ah, 30-45m drive, yeah. A lot of these places will still be within 15min or so to a lot of amenities, probably 20min most to most things. There are still some that are pretty way out there, easily 20+ minutes to most real amenities. A couple I can think of close by:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/fc2DS3dMQrDJK3na9

https://maps.app.goo.gl/AnygKw17WmFxHkc58

https://maps.app.goo.gl/kppAZYyDJuJZBGtD6

But a 10 minute walk to most of those amenities is also pretty uncommon. You look up walking directions for most of those places? I'll be amazed if there's a real grocery store within a 10 minute walk.

[jjav]

Two trains of thought; I was reacting to the OP line of "People would rather stay marooned in the middle of an endless desert of houses with essentials being a 30-45m drive away", which I maintain is a nearly impossible scenario.

(Because everyone needs food and other essentials, so if you have "an endless desert of houses" somewhere, that's a lot of people, so inevitably very soon there will be stores nearby.)

The other point is whether you can walk to them in 10min (or 15min as lotsoweiners above said). I don't claim you can always walk to shops in 10min from suburban houses, it is easy to find cases where it's further away (but far far far closer than "30-45m drive away").

But, you can also easily find suburban places where you can do it, and those places are all over, there is nothing rare about them. The idea (which often comes up in these topics on HN) that it is impossible to walk to stores/restaurants in the US outside of Manhattan & SF, is nonsense. If you like to walk (I do) just pick a suitable spot.

A few examples where I've lived: next to Pruneyard in Campbell, a bit further south in San Jose around Cambrian, and in Cupertino not far from DeAnza College. In all of these it was easy to walk to a supermarket in 10min. All of these are in Silicon Valley, where the story goes you can't walk anywhere but I was easily walking to stores.

[vel0city]

I agree, I totally missed your comment was related to the 30+min concept.

> But, you can also easily find suburban places where you can do it, and those places are all over, there is nothing rare about them

I agree, you can find some housing stock like that in most housing markets. It's less rare than finding a unicorn, I agree. But they're also often not a large chunk of the overall housing market.

It sounds like all those experiences are in Southern California. That's pretty dense compared to a lot of the places I've lived, even though I wouldn't call it extremely dense. It's also a place that while still having a lot of notable NIMBY stuff going on it tends to be way more amenable to pedestrian and bike infrastructure and city design. Weather also leads to more and more people willing to be outside. You should expand your study to other areas, not every place in the US is Southern California.

Look around the rest of North Texas for a good example. You can find pockets where it's decently walkable. Plano and Richardson and some parts of Dallas can be pretty bikeable. But Frisco? Little Elm? Arlington (outside the college campus)? Aledo? You can live at the edge of a large neighborhood and still have it be walkable/bikeable. But then there's still the rest of the neighborhood where it's going to take a while to walk to the edge.

Look at Kansas City, KS [0]. You'll find tons of neighborhoods like this. Not exactly walkable, like much of the metro area. Once again, sure, pick a house at the edge of this neighborhood and it's okay, but that's not the majority of the housing stock. Once again, sure, you'll find some neighborhood around that is relatively bikeable, but percentage of hosing stock it's pretty rare. Not unicorn rare, but still pretty limiting on the housing market. Can you find houses that are walkable? Sure. Is it in your budget? Does it meet your other needs? Is it close to your work? Are the schools still pretty OK?

[0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/L7vRMc4v4ouS9uuh9

Go to St Louis [1]. See it's pretty much the same story? Most of this suburban housing stock isn't walkable and is not very bikeable.

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/CLZDVKjdVkwj92sq6

Can you find some place walkable and bikeable in practically any decently sized metro area in the US? Sure. It's it even a quarter of the overall suburban housing stock in that metro? Probably not!

[hattmall]

Where in suburbs are you a 10 minute walk of all that? Even living in a major metro city center it's a push to get to all that in 10 minutes. A 10 minute walk is like 1/3 mile at most. An hour drive is unlikely but 20-30 minutes is no exaggeration with traffic. 90% of suburbs in Atlanta are like this, with zero traffic it could be a 5-10 minute drive to the closest shopping center.

[idontwantthis]

Not all are but most are. I too live in a single family zone surrounded by commercial zones in walking distance and it’s fantastic! But most of my city and its surroundings are not like this and you would need to drive to get anywhere. It’s really an almost perfect spot that I’ve found.

[seanmcdirmid]

It really depends what region of the USA you are in. The south? Ya, things are hard, walkability was never emphasized because of harsh weather. The west coast or northeast will be more reasonable, the intermountain west is more hit or miss.

[smugma]

Where are these two places?!