Ask Lemmy

I live in the suburbs of a decently sized but not super large city in WI.

• Convenience store: 120 m
• Chain supermarket: 2.6 km
• Bus stop: 5 m
• Park: 450 m
• Big supermarket: 3.1km
• Library: 1.5 km
• Train station: 58.9 km :(

Just to give the other side. I live in a big city in the US.

• Convenience store: .2 miles, 320 meters

• Chain supermarket: .5 miles, 800 meters

• Bus stop: 300 feet, 90 meters

• Park: 0.2 miles, 320 meters

• Big supermarket: 0.4 miles, 640 meters

• Library: 0.9 miles, 1.4 kilometers

• Train Station: 0.3 miles, 480 meters

Far.

I live in NYC. It's one of the few large places in the US that's dense and not completely car focused.

Convenience store: 5 minute walk to several

Supermarket: several within 10 minute walk

Pharmacy: several within 10 minutes on foot

Library: I think there's two within 10-15 minutes walking

Restaurants: several within 10 minutes on foot

Subway: about 5 minute walk. There's also a bus stop there.

Very large park: 15 minutes or so

I never want to live somewhere where I need a car again. Someone I was talking to at a party the other day was like "I love having my car it's so much freedom" and I'm like aside from needing to fuel, maintain, insure, and store it I guess.

• Nearest market: 600m
• Nearest big supermarket: 5.2km
• Nearest bus stop: 5km
• Nearest park: 1km
• Nearest library: 1.6km
• Nearest train station: 26km

Having a small market so close is a massive improvement from my previous address, where the only option was a big supermarket 3.9km away.

It depends what region your in.

City: depends where you live, i.e. how close to "downtown" you are. A lot of stuff is walking distance, but not everything. You could walk to school and get some basic food or a pharmacy. Probably need a car/bus for work or larger grocery trips.

Suberbs/town, you might be able to walk to convince store or to school/library, everything else is going to be a car or about a 30min walk. That being said, sometimes you're "deep" in the suberb and the nearest convince store is a 20-40 min walk.

Rual/farm: you need a a car to visit your neighbors. Nearest grocrey is a 30 min drive away.

I'll chime in since I'm in Canada, which is sadly just US delayed by 20 years.

I can walk to a convenience store with high prices in about 5 minutes or 360 metres and little else. It's all residential beyond there until a 25 minute walk or greater and everything is spread out. The main shopping centres you might want to walk around are an hour walk away. To reach the store I actually shop at for reasonable prices, it's a 12 minute drive or a 7400 metre walk (a miserable one with spotty sidewalks)... just for fun, it's about 45m by bus BEST CASE but realistically you will take an hour unless you hit the exact right bus at the exact moment it pulls up.

Nearest grocery store is a little over 3 miles. Libraries about four and a half miles. Nearest passenger train is about 200 miles away. I think there's a bus stop about half a mile away but I don't know if it's a full-service one.

I live in a semi rural area. My closest grocery store is 10km, but it's down the interstate, meaning even if I wanted to walk it, I couldn't. Without using the interstate it's about 15km.

My closest convenience store is only 7km, but the road i live on is not safe for walking (lots of blind curves, no sidewalks)

My nearest bus stop is 60 kilometers away, in my nearest city.

Nearest library is about 4 km past the convenience store, so 11ish klicks

Nearest train station is give or take 300 kilometers. We don't really have any train service here.

Straight line distance from me to big Ben, give or take 6,500 kilometers

Let's give it a shot. I live in the suburbs of Lincoln, Nebraska, which is an average-sized college town in the US (about 300k residents):

• Nearest convenience store: 1.1 miles/1.7km (we often do walk there, takes about 20 minutes)
• Nearest chain supermarket/big supermarket (they are often one in the same here): Target @ 1.5 miles/2.4km
• Bus stop: 1.3 miles/2.1km
• Nearest park: 0.6 miles/965m
• Nearest public library: 3.5 miles/5.6km
• Nearest train station: 9.1 miles/14.6km (we don't really use trains much at all in the US, though)

I used Google maps to get these values. I'm using Google's estimated walking distance and will also include Google's estimated walking time.

• Convenience store
  • Distance: 800 m
  • Time: 11 minutes
• Chain supermarket
  • Distance: 1.1 km
  • Time: 15 minutes
• Bus stop
  • Distance: 230 m
  • Time: 3 minutes
• Park:
  • Distance: 450 m
  • Time: 7 minutes
• Big supermarket (Walmart)
  • Distance: 1.7 km
  • Time: 23 minutes
• Library
  • Distance: 2.7 km
  • Time: 37 minutes
• Train station (local light rail)
  • Distance: 3.1 km
  • Time: 43 minutes

I'm in Utah somewhere south of Salt Lake City (the state capitol). The numbers aren't great, but they're far better than some places I've lived here. As a kid, I remember biking for 20+ minutes to make it to a small supermarket.

EDIT: as others have said, my paths can be quite bendy at times, but it's different than many suburbs in the US. Salt Lake City (and, by extension, most of the valley that it's in) is built on a fairly rigorous grid system. We have lots of straight roads with large blocks (in some cases, it can be 1-2 km between lights and crosswalks). We don't have too many ratfucked suburban mazes, so the walkability problem here is primarily due to sprawl and a dearth of crosswalks.

Here are my walking distances in Seattle:

• Convenience store: 150m
• Chain supermarket: 30m
• Big supermarket: 1.6km
• Bus stop: 10m
• Park: 100m
• Library: 150m
• Train station: 2km

Straight-line distance to Space Needle: 4.3km

It isn't just that things are too far to walk, it's that American car companies have made it part of our culture to own and drive, and it's unpatriotic to do otherwise. That causes a severe lack of public transportation and sidewalks and bike lanes. So because of all this, I have to drive a mile through my neighborhood to get to a 7-Eleven that would be a quarter mile if I walked.

• To the nearest convenience store: 1.3km (small supermarket)
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 2.25km (Trader Joe's)
• To the bus stop: 321m (busses 30 minutes apart)
• To the nearest (public) park: 1.1km
• To the nearest big supermarket: 2.89km (Safeway)
• To the nearest library: 1.3km
• To the nearest train station: 1.8km

Straight-line distance to Golden Gate Bridge: 11.6km

I live in rural Ohio and I drive about 40 miles (65 km) round trip a day just getting to and from work, and that's pretty average for a rural area.

The nearest grocery store and back is about a 15 mile (25 km) round trip.

In the rural areas, which account for most of the land area of the US, things are far enough apart that it makes it impossible to survive without a vehicle.

Based on the small town where I grew up:

• convenience store: 2km
• nearest chain/big supermarket: 5km
• bus stop: what bus?
• park: 10km (but there are hiking trails within 1km)
• train (metro) station: 5km
• library: 5km
• long distance train station: 20km
• my dad’s daily commute when I was growing up: 140km (that’s 140km each way, 5 days a week. 1200km of commuting each week. He did this with a combination of car, bike, and train. It took him about 3 hours each way.)

Note that a lot of the roads don’t have sidewalks so even if you want to walk it can be kinda dangerous depending on time of day.

Based on cities I’ve lived in:

• convenience store: 300m
• chain supermarket: 800m
• bus stop: 500m
• train (metro) station: 1km
• park: 1.5km
• library: 1.5km
• big supermarket: 2.5km
• long-distance train station: 2.7km
• my current commute: 3km

The cities tend to be a lot more walkable, but you still need to take the car or train to get to things like by the bigger (and cheaper) supermarket and other stores. The train is slow and unreliable (sometimes it’s faster to walk than take the train) so cars are much more popular.

I live in a walkable neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia. I have grocery stores in walking distance but usually drive to nicer ones for big hauls. I drive to the gym. I could bike there but there’s no bike lanes and steep hills. Everything else on your list is just a few blocks away.

Nashville TN suburbs and here are my walking distances:

To the nearest convenience store: 6km
To the nearest chain supermarket: 11km
To the bus stop: 6km 
To the nearest park: 4.1km
To the nearest big supermarket: 12km
To the nearest library: 13km
To the nearest train station: 25km

I live in New York (city):

• Convince store: several within 1-2 blocks
• Grocery store: 1 block away
• Train station: 3 blocks away
• Park: less than a block
• Library: Very short train ride (4 stops) and a bit of walking (15 minutes) (there is a closer one but that requires a bus and considering New York traffic busses aren't the best).
• Statue of Liberty: Roughly 2 hours by train

As you might note, the busier and more dense a city is, the closer things can be yet the longer it takes to get somewhere per unit of distance. Unless you walk. Sometimes you're out in the burbs and something's 10 miles away but it'll take you less than 10 mins to get there.

My refrigerator is annoyingly far from my desk chair.

Things around me aren't that far per se, but you have to cross a 45mph road (where people regularly drive 55-60 because it's designed like a highway) along several sections of unconnected sidewalk if you want to get there without a car. The sidewalks are 4ft wide at most and have no separation from the car lanes so you have to walk with cars whizzing by just a couple feet from you. There's also no shade.

For reference - it takes 5 minutes to drive to the nearest grocery store 1 mile away, but walking it's 31 minutes with the unpleasant conditions I mentioned. So I've never walked there. I could bike and it would take 10 minutes, but biking along cars at 50mph doesn't sound fun. I also live on a bike path, but it doesn't go to the nearest grocery store so the nearest one along the bike path would take the same amount of time as if I walked to the nearest one (25 minutes). That one is 3.5 miles (11min) by car or a 1hr walk.

It varies wildly depending on where you go. I think the worst-case scenario in terms of car-built cities would be someplace like Phoenix, Arizona. Visiting that city, I gained an appreciation for what it must be like to have a physical handicap that affects your mobility, because being in Phoenix without a car is comparable to having a disability. You cannot go anywhere on your own two feet in any reasonable length of time. It's the kind of place where you need to find a Walmart to buy a loaf of bread. The closest thing to a corner store is going to be a gas station.

I went to College about 65 miles west of Chicago (or about 1 hour driving). One weekend some friends decided to take a road trip to Maine so one friend could confess their love to someone. They left Friday after classes ended and drove nonstop, took one hour in Maine for the friend to get shot down, and then dove back. They didn't get back until late Sunday night. That's about 1300 miles and with a few bathroom/food stops 24 hours each way.

Depends heavily where you live. Rural places can be an hour drive to the closest grocery store. For me, I live about 5 minute drive from stores and my work. But I cannot feasibly walk to where I want to go, there is zero sidewalks in my area and cars go at least 35 mph on the slow neighborhood roads and 50 mph on the busier main roads (less than 3 minute drive to get to either one). Bus and train infrastructure is basically non-existent so not an option. My only option is risk my life on a bike on the shoulder of the main road (since theres no bike lanes) and hope the weather isn't bad or I have to drive a car .

Take a look at a population density map of the US. A lot of the places that don't light up are agricultural. If for some reason you have never seen a real farm before and always wanted to then by all means come on by, but we call them "flyover states" for a reason. All the cool tourist destinations are in the glowy bits.

I assume you were asking for tourist reasons anyway. If you were just asking for curiosity sake, it depends where you live. I live in the rural part of Illinois and it only takes 15 - 20 minutes to get to a supermarket by car, but walking there is completely out of the question. Especially with the hills. Oh God, my feet hurt just thinking about it.

Here in London, using a car is pain and suffering with single-digit average speeds due to intense traffic jams

Nearest convenience store is 200m Chain supermarket is 200m Bus stop is 150m Library is 50m Park is 500m Train station is 800m

NYC makes everything easy

Highly dependent on where you live. Some places are very sparse, others are pretty dense.

Depends on the place like everyone else has said.

• To the nearest convenience store: .3 mi
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 1.1 mi
• To the bus stop: .3 mi
• To the nearest park: .5 mi
• To the nearest big supermarket: 1.1 mi
• To the nearest library: .5 mi
• To the nearest train station: 30 mi

Depends.

If you live in a very rural area it can be more than an hour by car to some of these things, 50 miles or more, other items may not exist at all like public transportation. Inter-city public transportation is all but imposable for smaller locations, difficult and lengthy the greater the distance and size differential in locations.

I used to live in a metro area. Everything was within 10 minutes walk except medical care, but walking to the subway would get you to top tier medical facilities in about 15-20 minutes. Getting to nearby “bedroom” communities was also pretty easy thanks to a commuter rail.

I now live in a suburban area that has OK bus service but it’s not very convenient to where I live at all. Everything is within a 10 minute drive, and unfortunately a car is necessary due to the lack of sidewalks in many places. It does have light rail to a major metro area, about two hour’s ride, and then you can access the metro area major transportation network to all nearby areas and further away. Probably about as good as it gets in the US.

Nearest store of any kind - 1 mile

Full serve store - same

Library - .75 mile

Bus stop - 1.2 miles

Small park - .5 miles

Large park - 3 miles

Access to light rail - 4 miles