Comment by gspencley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gspencley | Hacker News Reader

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> Have you ever had a friend return from a vacation and gush about how great it was to walk in the place they’d visited? “You can walk everywhere! To a café, to the store. It was amazing!”

Honestly, no.

I live in a medium sized city in southern Ontario, about a 3 1/2 - 4 hour drive from Toronto. I just came back from spending a week in Toronto and although everything was walking distance, and we did walk everywhere, the week-long stay was not at all enjoyable.

There are people who love big cities. They love being able to walk everywhere, they love the "excitement" and the ability to experience a wide and diverse range of activities and food etc.

And then there are us introverts who find it extremely uncomfortable to be in places that are so crowded.

I enjoy walking as a solitary activity. I'm not lazy, I'm not averse to doing physical activity. But I really really really dislike walking anywhere that has a sizeable population density. I've heard that in the USA / Canada, the average "personal space bubble" that people find comfortable is around 1.5 feet. For me it's closer to 6 feet. I find that trying to navigate busy sidewalks is overwhelming and anxiety-inducing.

I've heard a lot of city-loving younger people talk about the pains of owning a vehicle. I didn't get my driver's license until my early to mid 20s. At the time I had a young family of 4 (my wife and I plus two small children) and, although I might be biased because I live in a built-for-cars North American city, getting our first vehicle gave us so much freedom and independence that it was life-changing in a positive way. I realize that if all amenities had been within walking distance then maybe not having a car wouldn't have been such a hindrance, but when I think back to being in downtown Toronto recently, I couldn't imagine navigating that population density nightmare while also pushing a double-stroller.

To me, and maybe this is more psychological / emotional than logical ... but a car is my personal isolation bubble that gives me much needed personal space while travelling. Though I also must admit that leaving the house is a special occasion for me. So yeah, I'm not typical and city-life is just not for me.

There are plenty of small walkable cities in Europe, I just came back from a trip to a 300 inhabitants town, everything was walkable, albeit you had to walk 20min to the next city to get to the bigger things like banks and big stores but that was easily doable as you could use a clean hiking path through the woods or a very nicely maintained sidewalk. Get yourself a bicycle and the 20min walk becomes a 5min ride

And rest assured, you won't see much action or social interactions on the way

That's really cool. Usually when discussions come up about "walkable cities" the discussion is around major urban areas and city planning.

Though you mentioned banks as something that is still pretty far away. A few years ago I was self-employed, collecting old-fashioned checks (it was slow moving to digital) and I had to frequent a bank once every week, two weeks at most since I had to deposit checks that were in USD and my bank in here Canada couldn't yet do that via an ATM. My nearest branch was walking distance but I still chose to drive because it was a 20m walk, 5 - 10m bike ride or 1 - 2m drive. Since it was such a big chore to have to go there in person, I opted for a car more often than walking or biking.

I think that at least some of what drives these discussions is congestion and parking in major cities. I can't stand driving in downtown Toronto. But in my mid-sized city I really don't mind driving 5 - 10 minutes vs having to double or triple that to walk or bike there. Add the benefit of personal space and a trunk to carry groceries in and I can't see any benefit (beyond maybe environmental impact) to a "15 minute" city in a medium-sized city where traffic congestion is not really a thing and a short car ride will halve your 20 - 30m round trip.

City advocates claim that North American suburb existence requires you to plan your grocery trips and buy lots at a time, vs the "benefit" of city life where you can run to the store to grab milk if you're out of it. The idea of going to a crowded grocery store is such a chore that I welcome any strategy that gets me going there once a month or even less if at all possible. The idea of running to a grocery store, even if it were a block away, for a single item or two is nightmare fuel given that the trip could be avoided all together with the smallest bit of planning, whether walking or driving. So how do I accomplish buying a month's worth of groceries if I have to walk there? Whereas, if I have the choice to drive or walk, I can decide how much to buy at a time and how often I want to go. Big win for cars.

Another drawback to the "15 minute city", from an extreme introvert's perspective, is that the closer things are to your home, the closer PEOPLE are to your home. It actually bothers me if I'm sitting on my couch reading a book and I can hear people walking by on the sidewalk. When everything is close by, so are people. I really like living as far away from people as I reasonably can. A vehicle becomes a necessity with remote living.

Walkability isn't just important in big cities; you can have it in smaller towns, too. I live in the suburbs of a large city, but my town has a small "main street" area with shops and restaurants that I love to walk to. I also have the anxiety around crowds (especially post-pandemic), and my town is the perfect balance of freedom to walk places and space to breathe.

When I think about walkable vacation spots, I don't only think of cities either. I think of small beach towns where even though it isn't populous, things are close enough together to explore on foot.

So I guess one question I'd pose is: if you could have that personal space without the car, would you still prefer the car and why? And given the negative externalities of the car, are there other ways those needs could be solved?

> So I guess one question I'd pose is: if you could have that personal space without the car, would you still prefer the car and why?

That depends on context. I would say that I would prefer to always have the ability to drive a car even if I were to choose to walk more often than not. Reasons for this: bad weather, needing to get somewhere while ill, feeling anti-social and not wanting to risk running into anyone, needing to get around with a minor injury, needing to transport a large or heavy items.

I know that we're talking about walking vs driving, but public transportation will inevitably enter the picture when it comes to physical or mobility issues. I would like to travel to Europe one day because what I hear from Europeans is that their cities are night and day compared to North American cities when it comes to not only walkability but public transport. Here in North America, I would rather walk on a crowded sidewalk than use public transportation for no other reason than being in what feels like a "tin can" full of strangers is nightmare fuel for me. At least on a crowded sidewalk I am outdoors.

> And given the negative externalities of the car, are there other ways those needs could be solved?

Sure. To the extent that "negative externalities" are something that we need to care about, let's use technology to reduce those negative externalities without having to give up the things that make our lives better.

>I've heard that in the USA / Canada, the average "personal space bubble" that people find comfortable is around 1.5 feet

"comfortable" is a stretch. But yes, I won't think much of an unassuming person 2 feet away from me. School desks are about that much spaced out when reaching behind or in front of you (close enough to tap the back of the person in front of you), so I suppose that's how we form our bubbles.

> "comfortable" is a stretch. But yes, I won't think much of an unassuming person 2 feet away from me

I envy you. Unless there is an obvious reason that more space is impractical / impossible, my thought in such a situation is "Why do you need to stand so close? Please get away from me."

Places are crowded because only small parts of the city are walkable and most ppl go there. When it's dense evenly, youll get hot spots in the center but the other parts would still be nice and walkable just not crowded

Logically, the more dispersed people are the less concentrated they are in any one area. Obviously. That said, Toronto is extremely walkable. Maybe not as much as certain European cities (I honestly wouldn't know), but everyone walks everywhere in Toronto. My wife and I had a dinner reservation with friends one night and we chose to Uber instead of walk because my wife wanted to dress up and wear high-heels. Big mistake. The walk would have been 25m, the Uber trip took over an hour. Toronto even has the largest indoor walking path network anywhere in North America, it's something that Toronto prides itself on and was motivated by our cold winters. The point being, you don't need to walk on sidewalks on roads. You certainly don't have to drive (and most people don't). And there are paths all over the place that short-cut through buildings, parks and court-yards etc and avoid busy roads.

And still, you can't find yourself anywhere in downtown Toronto where you're not trying to dodge people or get one second to yourself without having people constantly around you anywhere that you look. Though my definition of "crowded" likely differs from people who don't mind being around people as much I as do. Our friends told us that we would despise New York given how bothered we were by the amount of people in Toronto.

So I'm skeptical that there is some high-population-density major urban centre where crowds would not exist on a level that makes me feel uncomfortable. At the same time, I'm happy to say that cities, in general, just aren't for me. Fine to visit from time to time when there's some special occasion (comic-con, concert, trip to Vegas or what-have-you). But not a place that I would want to live no matter how "walkable" they are. For my preferred, secluded & remote lifestyle, a vehicle is a necessity.

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