Hi, thanks for this response! I think actually it's #2 that is the big one. See, I live in Istanbul province, in a European quarter rather up north by the Bos

Hi, thanks for this response! I think actually it's #2 that is the big one. See, I live in Istanbul province, in a European quarter rather up north by the Bosphorus, so nowhere near the city centre, but when I go to the centre of my quarter, I can easily do all of the things you list there in about half an hour, the time spent at each place included, only by walking from one place to another. And my quarter is part of a comune (tr: ilçe) with a population of slightly more than a hundred thousand people (the province itself counts upwards of 15 million people). I guess what is different between here and the usual US city/suburb is that there shops and stuff are more laid out, where here instead they're congregated in the central areas. So once you're there often you can get all the things done, and catch the bus back home. Also, because urban trains and busses are frequent enough, we seldom need to think about the wait times. Except for the villages you can get hold of a bus in at the worst case about ten minutes everywhere. I do have to walk quite a bit to the bus stop, but that's because my part is like a little instance of a suburb between the Belgrad forests and the strait, thus scarcely populated and an exception to the general situation with the bus network. But after a 10 minute walk to the main street, it'll take less than 5 minutes to get a bus or minibüs (a private/cooperative alternative to the council's busses, pricier but more frequent) to the closest metro station. But I guess the general density of the population helps keep all this network in service, and get it to be built in the first place.