Being a Brit, who walks to the corner shop, or even supermarket if I just need a few bits, I tried walking a few times while in the US. The US makes it hilariously impractical. Pavements (sidewalks) will just randomly stop. Crossing the road is sometimes a crime, depending on state! Even convenience stores are inconveniently far away.
You've spread your infrastructure out so wide in some places that walking becomes more like a hike. It's little wonder that you end up driving for anything beyond going next door. :)
The biggest problems exist in areas that don't have any pre-car infrastructure. Our density is fine (if not ideal) in the older east-coast cities, but anything that was build up in (or after) the 20th century is a disaster.
The challenge is that the most walkable areas I've been to are the ones that are thoroughly inaccessible by cars. Building a city to be accessible by cars (and trucks) inherently sacrifices walkability due to the lost density created by larger roads.
I'm curious what a modern city would look like where we were willing to drop the hard requirement of being navigable by Land Rover -- if we were to build something akin to historic Rome or Barcelona using modern technology.
San Diego was not intended to have pedestrians at all as far as I could figure. Most striking was how much space it took up when flying in compared to population. Then you'd see minor residential streets with road an pavement wide enough to be a 4 lane highway.
I don't know how zoning works in the US, but I guess that's the explanation for all the shops and bars being miles away from where people live? Or is that another car-related choice?
Yep. San Diego is largely a post-car creation. Philadelphia is a city of rather similar population, but is basically the same size as it was in 1890[1]. San Diego, on the other hand, grew almost 10-fold from 1890 to 1930, then again from 1930.
I don't know too much about zoning processes, aside from that in the mid-to-late 20th century, mixed use zoning wasn't in fashion. My grandfather was a suburban mayor in the '60s, and when he talked about zoning process, he said it was: "Well, we drew a box and put the residential here, and the commercial district here" -- and San Diego was built up at a similar time, so I expect a similar process existed. A decent representation of this process is SimCity -- that the entire notion of mixed-use zoning was absent is certainly a reflection of 20th-century urban planning.
"Librande: Yes, definitely. I think the biggest one was the parking lots. When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don’t think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.
Manaugh: You would be making SimParkingLot, rather than SimCity."
I live in a San Diego neighborhood built in the 20's along a street car line. It's about 3 miles from downtown.
(Edit: the streetcar is long gone, though there's a bar called Station nearby and a few other hints of its former existence).
It's not bad for SD, but the streets are wide and drivers blow through stop signs constantly. I can, at least, walk to several great bars, a small Target Express, and a few other amenities.
It's low to moderate density because the homeowners fight all new construction tooth and nail (I go to the planning meetings). There isn't a single bike lane in my community. Any time someone suggests building something they are told they have to build massive amounts of parking, so nothing gets built.
Of course, their charming cottage homes (which would be illegal to build now) are $700k to ~$1.1million, so it's great for the landowners. Not so much everyone else.
The people who live and vote here are mostly owners, so they have a very strong interest to fight any new construction, increasing the scarcity of their asset, and its value. I can't see how this changes so long as any area which is composed primarily of landowners can vote to make sure nobody else is allowed to build there.
It's pathetic here. Where I live, in the suburbs, there are people who rely on public transportation, but I honesly don't know how they pull it off. I tried it, at different points in my life, and it takes all day to do simple tasks. Right now I'm without a car due to emission failure, on a perfectly running, stoichiometric 14:7 to 1, four banger small car, and I'm stuck. I need to get my vechicle going today.
For myself, I use a car, and a bike every day. I drive my vehicle into the city, and park where I legally can. It seems like it's shrinking monthly? I then take my bike out and peddle to a job I detest. A job site that changes monthly.
I don't have an answer, but bicyclists should be given some perks. One--don't require a motorized vehicle as a job requirement, unless the job requires driving. I've seen too many employers slip that one in casually. It's usually some guy exploiting the minimum wage.
Two--If your riding a bike to work, lay off the strict dress code. A little?
Three--Give the bicyclist a credit on their taxes, if they don't have any motorized vechicle. (Guys like me wouldn't qualify. I'm not giving up my driving privilege until they pry the wheel from my cold, dead hand.)
My parents house (that I used to live at) was a mile from it's mailbox at the end of a long private dirt road. I would walk to get the mail every afternoon (I was homeschooled) to help clear my head and to get some daily exercise.
I have to admit that we drove our trash to the dumpster where we lived in Pittsburgh. It was an apartment complex. We lived at the extreme east end, while the one and only dumpster was 0.3 miles away at the extreme west end.
He's not. It's very common in rural Texas, and even in some cities where the USPS has implemented mail cluster boxes for 12+ households. Yours might be inconveniently far away from your home.
I worked on a cattle ranch one summer in high school in West Texas and it was easily a 15 - 20 minute drive to get to the mailbox on the highway (the ranch was 11 miles from end to end, all rough dirt roads and gates every quarter mile or so).
Walking to get your mail in 105+ heat and back would have taken(no exaggeration) almost all day.
You've spread your infrastructure out so wide in some places that walking becomes more like a hike. It's little wonder that you end up driving for anything beyond going next door. :)