And yet, there's virtually nothing within reasonable walking distance from my house, and there is no commercially-zoned land nearby that would allow someone to open up a coffee shop/corner store/restaurant/pub/whatever. Literally no community-oriented locations anywhere nearby.
In the summer, it's possible to bike to Safeway, but summer doesn't last all that long and then there's a pile of snow on the ground again.
If they want a seat at the table, they've got to get better at what they do.
It's disingenuous to lay that fully at the feet of urban planners though there's only so much they can do via the tools that local governments provide budget and political support are both limited in a lot of cases. Also just because there's the space provided for commercial spaces to open doesn't guarantee you'd have the coffee shop/corner store/restaurant/pub/whatever you're asking for.
That's a political problem, not an urban planning problem. There is a massive gulf between what academics who study cities say should be done and what can actually be done withing the constraints imposed by politics.
