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> Nobody complained because why would you want to walk miles to the closest grocery store anyway? I've been guests at a few different suburban neighborhoods i
by audunw 7y ago
> Nobody complained because why would you want to walk miles to the closest grocery store anyway?
I've been guests at a few different suburban neighborhoods in the US. I realize that some of these are so big and remote that it really is too far to walk to anything significant, but those I visited did have grocery stores and such within a walkeable distance, but that's not always the case, and still there's not much if any sidewalks. One did have sidewalks, but using it to get to stores was a detour compared to other roads. The other did not have any sidewalks. I walked anyway (didn't have a car) and I felt like people looked oddly at me for doing it.
In Norway, almost all suburban areas have wide sidewalks now, even if grocery stores and such are far away. Kids generally use sidewalks for biking, and many kids bike or walk to school, even for a mile or more (3 for my high school, although there was school bus that I used in winter). People take walks from just outside their house to.. wherever. There's usually some park or just a patch of woods within walking distance. Maybe a shared playground or soccer field for kids.
There are generally walking paths between houses at regular intervals, so houses don't act as impassable walls. If there are steep slopes and hills, there's often stairs you can walk down.
I'm really astonished that Americans don't do it the same way. My mother in law house could've been a 5 minute walk from a lovely beach and supermarkets and cafes if there was just a path/stair that went down a slope from their house between other properties. Instead it's a 30 minute+ walk, along a long and winding road with an extremely narrow sidewalk, where a 100m stretch of the road for some inexplicable reason is missing sidewalk altogether (if you ask for directions on Google Maps it'll avoid this stretch, which gives you a 1 hour walk instead)
- mumblemumble 7y ago> I'm really astonished that Americans don't do it the same way. Americans tend to have strange ideas about walking. If they think about it at all, they tend to think of it as something that's only done in extremis. I've discovered, for example, that, when I travel for work, it's generally useless to ask hotel staff if they can recommend any restaurants "within walking distance" when I'm staying in a suburban area. They will always say that there aren't any. Even when there are several within 500 meters of the hotel. When I am visiting the main office (also in a suburban area) I stay about 1.5km away from the building. I choose to walk to get between there and the hotel. It's a lovely walk, all sidewalks, through a quiet neighborhood. My colleagues consider this to be very peculiar behavior. If someone recognizes me while I'm on the sidewalk, they'll stop, express concern, and ask me if I need a ride, and I generally have to assure them multiple times that I'm OK and I just prefer to walk.
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y agoIs that rue of all "Americans" (U.S. citizens) or is it just specific kins off places, like some suburbs? I have seen plenty of footage of people walking around large US cities. And what about rural places? Surely theree's nothing stopping people from taking long walks on the countryside if they live out in the boondocks, etc?
- CydeWeys 7y agoIt's definitely not true of larger cities. Here in Manhattan more than 3/4ths of households don't even own cars, so yeah, there's lots of walking.
- mumblemumble 7y agoI find it's mostly a suburban and rural thing. Though, even large US cities can be quite suburban in their makeup. I found Phoenix to be surprisingly difficult to navigate on foot, for example. There is recreational walking, but it can be odd. I have family members who live in areas without sidewalks, and they do regularly go for pleasure walks, but such outings tend to start with a car ride. Because the nearest place where space has been made for walking is several miles away. Walking on country roads generally isn't pleasant. The roads are narrow, the traffic is fast, the drivers are discourteous and/or texting while driving, and the only place to put your feet where you're not in danger of being hit by a car is often a drainage ditch.
- entropicdrifter 7y agoCities out West in the States tend to be less dense because they were founded by people who generally had horses/wagons already to get there and because they were founded closer in time to the invention of the automobile, so their infrastructure was less solidified by the time it was introduced and thus they've adapted more to cars with a broader sprawl and less vertical buildup. Of course this isn't true of all cities in the Western US, but as a general trend it holds up.
- jellicle 7y ago
- AaronM 7y agoIn the US it is illegal to ride a bicycle on a sidewalk in most places
- Jamwinner 7y agoYup. Bikes are 'cars' unless being walked. That includes crosswalks.
- nybble41 7y agoThat depends very much on the location. In my area, for example, bikes are allowed on sidewalks if there is no bike lane.
- zeroonetwothree 7y agoIn practice though it's almost never enforced.
- nradov 7y agoMany jurisdictions explicitly allow younger children to ride bicycles on sidewalks.
- stefs 7y agothat's true for many countries in europe too, but we do have a lot more bike paths and drivers are generally more considerate towards cyclists than they are in the u.s. with my road bike (i.e. no suspension) i usually prefer the road over adjacent bike paths (which is legal in my country), as the roads are usually in better shape.