Ask Lemmy

I live in a suburban area of Columbus, Ohio.

• To the nearest convenience store: 1.5km
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 3.7km
• To the bus stop: 450m (this bus runs once per hour)
• To the nearest park: 1km
• To the nearest library: 5.5km
• To the nearest metro train station: 195km in Cleveland, Ohio (Columbus is the largest city in America by population that has no passenger rail service)
• To the nearest intercity train station (Amtrak): 162km in Sandusky, Ohio (This comes through once per day at around 3 or 4 am)

You also mention you can get somewhere within 10 minutes of walking. A lot of Americans will refuse to walk that far. For many people in the country and the suburbs, the bulk of the outdoor walking they do is to/from their cars and to get the mail.

It's hard for Europeans to understand, but nearly all American cities are built around the concept that everyone has their own car and drives everywhere to get around. Even things that are 5 minute walks, Americans will get in the car and drive to. Mass transit (again in most cities) is coded as "for poor people who can't afford a car", so it's always difficult to use and is much slower than having your own car.

Just for fun, I decided to check my distances against yours

Here are my walking distances:

• To the nearest convenience store: 1.13km
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 2.74km
• To the bus stop: 33.8km
• To the nearest park: 2.41km
• To the nearest *big* supermarket: 17.7km
• To the nearest library: 2.41km
• To the nearest train station: 24.14km
• Straight-line distance to Nashville’s “The Batman Building” (closest approximation to a large unique cityscape building): 67.76km

To give some comparison, here are my distances. Important to note that I intentionally moved somewhere in my town with walkability in mind.

To the nearest convenience store: 280m
To the nearest chain supermarket: 1.7km
To the bus stop: 260m
To the nearest park: 240m
To the nearest big supermarket: 2.4km
To the nearest library: 1.2km
To the nearest train station: 85km

Access to a bus stop doesn’t really matter either as it usually is faster to walk than to wait for the bus to arrive, unless it is long distance in which I would just drive.

One thing that deserves special note is the US, aside from being more spread out in general, has a lot more sprawling suburbs with downtown areas.....if you live near the downtown, then everything is walkable, but maybe 20% of a towns population in any given suburb will be that close, and thats a generous estimate.

As an American who has lived in the EU, walking / biking like you can do there just plain is not possible for MOST of the US. As other have mentioned, if you live in a major city, or in the center of a suburb, then it may not be so bad.

On a similar note, this sprawl is the same reason that public transport on the EUs level isnt viable in the US....there would need to be too many stops and too many routes to get decent coverage, and when you math it out, having cars is the most economical decision for most of the country.

Here are my walking distances:

• To the nearest convenience store: 1700m
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 1700m
• To the bus stop: 640m
• To the nearest park: 800m
• To the nearest big supermarket: 1.7km
• To the nearest library: 3.1km
• To the nearest train station: 35.4km

Straight-line distance to Big Ben: 7514km

Kept all the units identical to yours for ease of comparison

I can probably offer some insight, as my in-laws live in Wimbledon, some of my family live both near and far from DC/Baltimore, and I live in the Netherlands.

My London experience is on par to yours. Everything is walking distance and the things that aren't are accessible by public transit fairly easily.

The Netherlands imo is even better planned and connected than the UK. The convenience store is around the corner from my townhouse. Two large chain supermarkets are just a 3 or 7 minute walk depending on which is preferred (the 7-min one is pricier but better selection) and there are more a few more minutes walking. The bus stop is 3 min away, train is a 10 minute walk. Parks and bike lanes all around.

DC is also very walkable and similar to London. Bike lanes. Everything is accessible and public transit is pretty good. Lots of convenience stores, small grocers, and even some larger chains. A few metro lines even go far out to the suburbs. I like the building height limit, which makes the city feel more open. Rock Creek Park is massive and you feel like you're in the forest.

Once you get to the suburbs there may be a convenience store a 10-20 minute walk away, or a grocer if you're lucky, but generally this is when you'll be needing a car, as public transit becomes scant. Many Americans are walking averse; my husband and I are the odd couple that parks at the back of the lot when visiting Costco instead of spending half an hour hoping to get a spot by the doors. Most stores will be in plazas or strip malls.

My father lives out in the country. He loves having acres and acres of no one around. His house is an island. There's one 7-11 in his tiny village. He's lucky it's a 5 minute walk from his house. If I want to get groceries when visiting, the nearest store is 8 miles away (a leisurely 4 hour walk; 10 minute drive). Oftentimes there are no sidewalks; mostly long stretches of road with big shoulders. I don't think there's public transit there; I've never seen a bus. There are farms everywhere so parks need to be driven to, however, they are pretty big with lots of room for activities.

It's likely not too different from comparing London to Dartmoor. Much of it depends on where you are (population density). Some areas have great public transit and access to services, others don't.

It kinda depends on where you live. I live in the suburbs near a few large metropolitan areas and I do have a supermarket within a 10 minute walk of me, and a bigger supermarket a 30 min walk away, but there are definitely places where you need a car to go shopping cuz theres no sidewalks or all the roads are like 45mph+ and really only designed for car transit.

I've got family who live in Texas and they say that there's lots of places that are drive thru, like banks and dry cleaners and stuff.

I had a coworker at one of my previous jobs transfer to our US branch from the UK and he said that a lot of his friends were asking him if he was gonna visit Disney World, since he was moving to "just outside of New York City" (read: Pennsylvania, lmao) He said a lot of them were shocked to realize that its like an 18 hour drive from NYC to Disney World in Florida.

Another thing about that job, there was no realistic way for me to get to it by public transit. It was a half an hour drive, but about 3 hours of combined public transit + walking and needed me to take two trains and a bus.

Houston tx, sprawling urban hell. in a swamp. I'll only give a few

My most common doctors office: 16miles, 26 km My best friend: 30 miles, 50 km Bus stop: 2.5 km Grocery store: 6 miles, 10 km

Keep in mind this is a major metropolitan city with 4 million people, fairly hefty public transport, and is surrounded by other smaller cities. From center it's like 15-17 miles to the next edge. There's a smaller city inside of Houston called Bellaire lol.

Rural American here. We drive 30 mins to the nearest bigish city to do all of our grocery shopping every weekend.

Here are my walking distances:

• To the nearest convenience store (gas station): 800m
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 1600m
• To the bus stop: 640m
• To the nearest park: 213m
• To the nearest *big* supermarket: 4.3km
• To the nearest library: 2.7km
• To the nearest train station: 1.4km

Straight-line distance to Big Ben: 5890km

To the nearest convenience store: 2.3mi / 3.7 km

To the nearest chain supermarket: 9mi / 14km (not actually a chain store, it's a small grocery in a small rural town)

To the bus stop: lol, I don't think any of the cities near me bother with that, nor would they be useful to me

To the nearest park: 5mi / 8km (lake, about a 5 minute drive)

To the nearest big supermarket: 14mi / 22km

To the nearest library: 9mi / 14km

To the nearest train station: 51mi / 82km (and this station doesn't service any location I couldn't get to faster than driving, even across country. Because AMTRAK is shit. I know because I've done it before)

This is in central CA, not far at all from the Capitol, Sacramento. For being the 5th biggest economy in the world our capitol is pathetic

I moved from a UK city to a town on the edge of Dallas.

There was a crossroads with a strip mall. grocery store, dentist, food places etc, about 15 minutes away, but it was often too hot to walk. Anywhere beyond that was too far to walk.

Everything was so spaced out there. All the shops were surrounded by big parking lots. It was hard to even perceive that I was on a street with shops, at first, because everything was so far away from the road.

Now I live in a quiet street in suburb of LA. There's a main street about 10 minutes away. So within 20 minutes walk I can visit restaurants, grocery stores, etc. Even a British supplies store to get real chocolate. Bus stops, library, doctors, dentist, opthalmologist, and a hospital, too.

But if I want a big department store, I'm driving 15 to 30 minutes.

The broader LA area doesn't really have a center, just clusters of shops and malls at bigger crossroads. It seems endless. I could drive 50 miles to Newport Beach for vacation and never be outside a city.

Library: 5 or so miles

Convenience store: 1mi

Supermarket: .75mi

Bus stop: .25mi*

Train station: 20-30mi

Park: 2mi

*This stop may be commuter times only .. the stop exists but I never see the buses. Next closest is at supermarket.

I've been more in-city and the only thing nearby by a gas station. Everything else was 1mi+... Nearest supermarket being 6-7mi.

Distances in North America tend to be measured in hours of driving at highway speeds (usually 65mph/105kmh, but sometimes extra time added going through cities). Houston, Texas for example you can get from one edge of town to the other in an hour, plus up to an extra hour in traffic. The transit options in every metro area are different. The only thing is that people in suburbia are in the middle of a maze that would take 25 minutes on foot to get out of to the nearest convenience store (corner shop). A habit of going every other day for light shopping trips on the way from work is less common and often limited to retirees and non-working parents. What's more common is doing a large cartful of shopping from every week to even once a month, and fitting it all in your monster SUV or pickup truck.

That said lifestyles can vary across the US, suburban vs rural, like New York, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles will each have their own characteristics with how far things are, how far they feel and, how developed transit is. Between cities, transit is rather disconnected without a car, you have minimal and inconvenient coach bus services and trains that might show up 3 times a week.

America is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to America.

2.2 Km to nearest chemist / convenience store.

In a suburb of Boston, my distances would be very similar to OP, except the bus stop is much closer and I don’t have that nearby chain grocery.

But my brothers are all about 10h drive (my visit this summer was over 1,200 miles round trip) and my mom is 14h drive

I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. My neighborhood isn't the best for walkability -- there are definitely better areas in this city in that respect.

To the nearest convenience store: 1.5km To the nearest chain supermarket: 1.9km To the bus stop: 140m To the nearest park: 480m To the nearest big supermarket: 5.8km To the nearest library: 1.9km To the nearest train station: 800m

Straight-line distance to Big Ben: 6450km

Oh boy. I used to live in Houston, TX, a city notorious for being car-dependent...

I will present three sets of numbers. First is where I first moved to in Houston, in a supposedly highly coveted, super walkable area home to mostly medical students... Second is the place I lived before I moved out (and I used to boast to people how accessible the place was, by US standards). Third is in Chicago, close to city center ("The Loop").

And FYI I only lived in places that would be considered to be within the city, so these might be as small as they can get...

• To the nearest convenience store: 900m | 750m | 170m
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 700m(used to be 4.2km) | 450m | 220m
• To the bus stop: 160m(never seen anyone there though) | 350m | 71m
• To the nearest park: 950m | 1.5km | 1.6km
• To the nearest big supermarket: 700m(used to be 4.2km) | 450m | 450m
• To the nearest library: 1.2km | 450m | 1.0km
• To the nearest train station: 7.0km | 3.8km | 2.5km

Fun story about the first location! Everything seems so walkable on paper (close to park, close to highway), until you realize that there was no fucking supermarket anywhere within walking distance... H-E-B only opened a store closeby after I moved there. However, even the super-close grocery store is across the highway and I almost never see any sane people walk there so... For parks I am only counting ones that are good enough to be tourist-worthy, otherwise the latter two locations have pretty easy access to lots of green space

And if you are asking about public transit that are not bus/train: respective distances are 1.4km | 1.0km | 280m. The last number in this series is basically how I chose where to live...