Walkable communities don't mean stores on every street. An example would be the residential neighborhoods of Tokyo. There are plenty of quiet streets with hom

Walkable communities don't mean stores on every street. An example would be the residential neighborhoods of Tokyo. There are plenty of quiet streets with homes, which are generally a mixture of single-family and multi-family units. Commercial businesses tend to be clustered around train/subway stations (which Tokyo has an extensive network of trains and subways) or along arterial streets, which tend to support higher-density land uses. I lived in a company dorm room in Kawasaki (just across the river from Tokyo) for eight months and was never once was awakened in the wee hours of the morning due to noise. In fact, the neighborhood was very quiet despite it being far denser than any American suburb I've been in.