So I've lived in a number of cities and seen many variations on this. In Perth, Western Australia, there are pockets of this but the extraordinarily high cost

So I've lived in a number of cities and seen many variations on this. In Perth, Western Australia, there are pockets of this but the extraordinarily high cost of real estate (true across all of Australia since the early 2000s), which existing property owners are keen to protect, slowly kills local businesses. Particularly in popular cafe strips where all the businesses that made the area popular get priced out and commercial property owners would rather sit on empty property for years than notionally devalue that property by taking less rent. Anecdotally I've heard all the WFH with Covid-19 has been a boon to local businesses. London as a general rule was (it's been 10+ years since I've lived in London at this point) good for this. It never seemed like no matter where I was (within Zones 1-5 anyway), I was ever that far away from a Tesco and a high street. NYC is of course excellent for this, at least the more central areas. The more outlying areas tend to resemble more typical Northeast suburbia with 2 car households and the like. Northeast commuter towns tends to be good for this around the actual train stations although some stations weirdly have nothing around them at all (eg Manhasset). Most US cities tend to be terrible for this to the point of not even having sidewalks and you might be 10 miles from the nearest shop, even in a large city (eg Las Vegas seems to be like this). It does seem like public transportation really helps here because it seems like the northern suburbs of Dallas, for example (at least those on DART), have recognizable downtowns such that they more closely resemble tri-state commuter towns. Large lots really seem to kill any of this. Like there are parts of the Greater Atlanta area where a "normal" lot is 1 or even 2 acres. This is an amount of space that is simply incomprehensible to any European. Even an Australian. And of course the US has Walmart, which has been a pretty effective way of killing all the small businesses in local neighbourhoods.