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A reason many Americans dislike changing to denser walkable towns and think everything should be made for cars is because they've never experienced easy walks for everyday life. Maybe they walk, take transit when car is inconvenient but easy walks are unknown to most of us. 1/
Most of us either drive everywhere or when driving isn't option, have hassles of walks/bike/transit. There aren't short easy walks, outside a few CBDs or precious denser n'hoods. Even in dense cities like Chicago and NYC, the pedestrian infra and experience is..not great. 2/
Example of easy walk: I own a car, have underground heated parking spot. I live 3 blocks from Egg and I, which has lots of car parking. I'm not a hearty Minnesotan. I'm pretty lazy and into comfort. And yet..3/
..after years of getting take-out there, there has been no weather that would make me drive rather than walk there. Because: short, easy, pleasant walk. So not out of principle, just walking seems better option 4/
There is just is so little of this type of density where most daily things are such short, easy walks away, or at least, to transit that comes quick. Or when it is dense enough and has rapid pick-up transit, we still have too many cars, too little infra to have nice, easy walks.
We do get people to walk when driving and parking is too much of hassle or cost. But we don't have much of the short, nice easy walk options. We could get there by building, in high demand places, denser (row houses, 4-6 plexes, 4-6 story apts/condos) around commercial clumps.
Even StP Grand Ave level of density, just one street of not-very
-dense mixed use, next street of mostly SFHs and some apartments, gets us to short, easy walk zone.
-dense mixed use, next street of mostly SFHs and some apartments, gets us to short, easy walk zone.
