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I've lived without a car twice and each time I had to account for weather, but honestly you might not appreciate how mild Redmond is. It "rains" almost every day but it's rarely stronger than a drizzle and doesn't go on that long. There were only a couple times a year that I thought it wasn't safe to take kids out, and those times were due to smoke.
In college I would do most grocery shopping at a Target that was reachable by a bus, but once a Wegmans was open I walked there despite it being what Google says is a 50 minute walk. I would regularly jog down there anyways just for fresh air. It wasn't an imposition to stop at Wegmans, fill up a reusable bag and then walk back. It didn't strike me as impractical or difficult.
My point is that someone designed a neighborhood (Redmond Ridge) in such a way that, despite having a car, I elected to walk 90% of the time. And this is a nice balance between surburb and city and more neighborhood planners should try to emulate this design.
I am not someone who does well in "real" cities. I find them exhausting.
It doesn't necessarily follow that it's practical to go completely without a car.
It seems like instead of contradicting my position, you are claiming that for some people in this suburb, it's possible to get by without a car most of the time. Which is something I don't dispute. Simply put, I am getting the impression that you are arguing past me.
Do you dispute my position? In other words, are you claiming that, in fact, it's practical for a typical suburbanite to live in Redmond Washington without a car?
No, most people would need to own a car or have a friend with a car or at some point use an uber. I don't dispute that. Though I think the same would be true of any city as well, and delivery options/remote work has flattened the difference considerably.
My entire point was and is "I think this neighborhood is one of the ideal examples of urban planning and wish there were more neighborhoods like it."
Thank you.
I would have to disagree with this. If you live in Manhattan, it's not necessary to own a car and a lot of the time it's cheaper and easier to go without a car. To be sure, once in a while you may need to use a taxi or a ride-share service but that would be very unusual and when you do need such services they generally arrive very quickly.
By contrast, in the suburbs, if you tried to substitute taxi services for owning a car, you would pay such a heavy price in terms of money; time spent waiting for your ride; etc. that as a practical matter you may as well just get a car.
Let's say I'm in Manhattan, I purchase a condo or something, and want to paint the walls. How do I get 5 gallon paint buckets from a hardware store to my new abode?
I'm tempted to point out that the hardware store will likely deliver or that Home Depot stores in the NYC area have light trucks which can be rented for a modest fee.
But there is a threshold issue here, which is that your typical condo buyer in NYC doesn't do his own painting. He hires a painter.
Actually that's not totally true, there are surely guys in NYC who buy condos, fix them up, and sell or rent them. If that's your thing, then as a practical matter you need a car. But that's not your typical NYC resident.
The same would be true of suburbia so I don't see the point.
Ok, if that's too implausible, what if you're in Manhattan and have young toddlers. You need a gallon of milk a day. How do you get the milk from the grocery store to your apartment? How often do you go shopping to be able to reasonably carry a gallon of milk plus whatever other food ingredients you need to keep your young family fed?
Well you were the one who asked, so presumably you know what your point was. I'm certainly not claiming that in the suburbs a car is a practical necessity because you might need to transport a bunch of heavy stuff from Home Depot. Rather, I am claiming that it's a practical necessity for leading an ordinary suburban lifestyle. Things like going to the gym every morning; getting groceries a couple days a week; getting a new light bulb.
That's quite a lot of milk. But anyway, you walk to the corner market. So for example, from my parents' apartment in Manhattan, it's a 2 minute walk to a bodega which sells basic things like milk. It's a 5 minute walk to a Whole Foods.
I don't know but it's pretty common to see the supermarkets full of young people in the early evening. I assume what's happening is that people are picking up groceries on the way home from work. So presumably, if necessary, it's possible to go every day. Essentially none of these people are driving to the supermarket.
I once lived in a condo that was next to a grocery store, it would also be a 2 minute walk max. I shopped 2-3 times a week. Back then, if I wanted milk or anything else that couldn't fit in my cloth shopping bag, I'd drive anyway. And that was without dealing with five flights of stairs, are you including the time it takes to walk upstairs in the calculation?
At my current place, it's a 20 min drive to the grocery store anyway, so a 20 minute bike ride isn't particularly more inconvenient.
From this conversation I have mostly learned that people who live in cities and people who live in suburbs don't understand the most basic facts of each other's lives, yet somehow we both live so that's something.
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