> Would someone prefer to walk over to the neighborhood grocery store to get their groceries or drive 5 miles away to a big-box retailer? I bet if you actually polled people you'd get 90%+ preferring the former.
Would they? Because I have actually had it both ways and I much prefer driving to a huge supermarket. Prices are lower, quality is better, selection is better.
> But you can clearly see that this isn't society's actual preference, because walkable neighborhoods across the country built before cars were prevalent usually have higher property values than the suburbs in the same city.
Per acre of land, sure, because you can cram in tons of apartments in the same area that one house would take up. That doesn’t mean more people actually prefer to live that way.
It is nice to be able to walk to school or church or whatnot, but when it comes to commercial retail, my experience is that suburban car-bound freeway mayhem is pretty fucking great. From my current suburban house in Texas I can reach almost any retail or commercial business I need within 5-15 minutes, and those are full size, full service retailers. Instead of a “neighborhood grocery store” that’s barely one step above a convenience store, I can go to H-E-B and get almost any kind of food I can imagine for extremely reasonable prices. Instead of a neighborhood hardware store I can go to Home Depot or Lowe’s. Either one. I used to live in an apartment in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, close to an actual supermarket (which kind of sucked), and even then I had nowhere close to the same access to retail. Maybe the biggest point in favor of walkable neighborhoods was that it was relatively cheap and easy to go to bars, but at some point I realized I could save money and drink with my wife at home (especially if we can drive to a cheap big-box liquor store!)
I do understand the appeal when it comes to things that are more community oriented than commercial. For instance, I understand that Orthodox Jews tend to live within walking distance of their synagogue because they can’t drive on the Sabbath, which means they live within walking distance of everyone else who goes to their synagogue, which means they can have physical communities. And that sounds really nice. But for the typical secularized, atomized American, what’s the point? Living cheek to jowl with total strangers and learning to ignore homeless people fucking sucked and I’m glad that part of my life is behind me. And the reason most of this country is built out the way it is, is that most people actually feel the same way.