You described pretty well my almost-suburban New England spot. I walk everywhere, because there's stuff everywhere. There's a guy down the street who built an a

You described pretty well my almost-suburban New England spot. I walk everywhere, because there's stuff everywhere. There's a guy down the street who built an add-on to his house and his wife runs a convenience store out of it. It's great. The problem is that there are (particularly American? I don't know) pathologies around ejecting from the idea of a community that you see in even those relatively tight-packed suburbs, and what you describe, while great, flies against that. My parents (who are themselves not really the sort of folks you'd expect in an urban core, ha) didn't last in Iowa very long. They moved back to New England and while they live on like three acres now, they're friendly with all their neighbors in a way even I'm not in my relatively approachable community.