You don't have to drive 5 minutes to buy a bottle of water in Belltown. You can do that in a 5 minute walk, and there are multiple grocery stores within a 5 minute drive.
However I think the real takeaway from the parent comment is that US cities are not designed for pedestrians[0].
Even the newer buildings being built right on Denny and Queen Anne Ave N in Belltown are entirely the creation of zoning, as they are height capped and forced to subsidize parking (which rents for $0.XX per sqft a month) over usable space that rents for dollars a square foot. Most of the people living and working in that area are using transit, with 70% not driving: https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/docs/2014TrafficRepor...