Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Spoken like someone with too much time on his hands! Some of us don't have time to pop over to the store, bank, pet food place, etc 5 times a week or more.
I'm not sure why doing errands on foot must involve so many extra, constant trips. Some the errands I do (or did) on foot were not really out of the way or extra trips.
Going back to the OP, one of the best indicators of how walkable a place is is how many people are actually walking. It's not really a walking city if no one walks.
Young single males aren't the only ones with free time. Most Americans spend several hours a day watching TV. Most of those people are not young single males.
Well, to repeat what you said to me:
Quote:
Originally Posted by stateofnature
Who are you to say what is "too much time" for another person? It's up to the individual to decide what is a good use of his or her time, not you.
I'm not sure why doing errands on foot must involve so many extra, constant trips. Some the errands I do (or did) on foot were not really out of the way or extra trips.
I was responding to someone who said "If you don't have a car and live in a walkable area, chances are you won't need to do all your tasks in one trip. Everything is close by so you can just walk to whatever you need when you need it."
That's what touched off this firestorm, got everyone's back up.
That is IF you live close enough to an branch of an bank that you have an account in(which for various reasons you may have money in an different bank) and IF you feel safe enough to walk or bike away from the bank(I live close to one but the only way I would use the lobby after dark is with an bullet proof vest on and back up.)
That sounds a bit extreme. How much money to you carry on you at any given time? Besides you can just as easily get robbed in the parking lot of the bank.
It is pretty easy to bank with someone near your home.
Yeah the single part makes an huge difference. Young kids say under 6-7 can't really keep up with an adult walking and the amount of food/clothes and other items goes up. There isn't the I need to get the kid to or from the baby sitter by X time nor are these guys blue collar factory workers who could wind up working overtime or odd hours when the bus isn't running or young women leaving said factory who need to catch a bus alone at 2 a.m. and walk five blocks in the dark home. It is also much easier not to buy in bulk when you don't need to, have 2-3 kids and bulk buying saves both time and money.
Then you take a car. A walkable community means there are options, it doesn't mean walking is your only option like it does with car dependent communities.
I was responding to someone who said "If you don't have a car and live in a walkable area, chances are you won't need to do all your tasks in one trip. Everything is close by so you can just walk to whatever you need when you need it."
That's what touched off this firestorm, got everyone's back up.
To some extent this is true, but only if you live in a very walkable area.
I mean, I live right now in what's considered to one of the most walkable neighborhoods in the city of Pittsburgh. But given most of what's been opening up in the neighborhood has been bars, fancy restaurants, or high-fashion boutiques, there's relatively little for us to walk to as the parents of two small kids. Off the top of my head using Google Maps, here's some things my family walks to with some regularity (e.g., at least 1-2 times per month)
1. French Bakery (4 minutes)
2. Local playground (4 minutes)
3. Local card/stationary store (8 minutes)
4. Bank (9 minutes)
5. Bike repair shop (9 minutes)
6. Closest local market (12 minutes)
7. Single family-friendly restaurant in the neighborhood (14 minutes)
Note what's not on the list - a supermarket. The neighborhood has one, but it would take 20 minutes to walk there. It's also not a good supermarket (even old-timers don't like it) and it's hidden up behind a hill that's hard to traverse on foot. We have a CVS which is closer, but it has a huge parking lot in front of it with plenty of room, so when we need to go to CVS we just drive. The market we can walk to is small, and closes at 7PM, so shopping there except on a weekend is pretty much out of the question.
Now, before I had kids, there was a lot more for us to walk to, even though the neighborhood had less amenities at the time. There are plenty of bar/restaurants with great food that either openly block all minors from entering or give you the stink-eye if you come in with kids. More recently we got a single-screen movie theater in the neighborhood, and it plays old movies all the time we'd like to see, but the screen times don't align with kids, and we found our 5 year old daughter found the PG movies they showed as a matinee to be too scary.
Anyway, to digress, while I am not car-dependent for work commutes, we are car-dependent as a family for most of our shopping/dining needs, even though we theoretically live in one of the top five most walkable neighborhoods in the city. Pittsburgh isn't an incredibly autocentric city either - it's not up to East Coasts standards, but beats any city in the South or any city in the Midwest (barring Chicago). I think you need to have real high levels of density in the modern era for true walkability - basically having a full-service grocery store right within your commercial district.
^^Good points all, especially about the grocery stores. I was referring more to errand-running, going to the bank, maybe the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions, a card shop (or grocery store, or pharmacy that carries cards) to buy a birthday card, etc. Of course, an "errand" trip often includes the grocery store.
I note also conspicuously absent from your list is any kind of clothing/department store. When we had little kids, we went to those places a lot.
That sounds a bit extreme. How much money to you carry on you at any given time? Besides you can just as easily get robbed in the parking lot of the bank.
It is pretty easy to bank with someone near your home.
Well, you don't usually go to the ATM and just pull out $10. I usually get enough to last a while. It's a pain to set up a new bank accounts b/c you've moved.
I don't see the connection. I never said watching TV is a bad use of time or people who do it have "too much free time." My point is simply that the amount of TV watching in our society shows that young single males aren't the only people with enough leisure time to go walk to the store if they wanted to. And the emphasis here is "if they wanted to" - I am not saying that anyone is wasting their time by watching TV instead of walking or anything like that.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
