I was often told that small town USA is as much car-dependent as suburbia, but when I look at the map, almost each of these small towns have grocery store, post office, bank, drug store etc. (everything you need on a daily basis) within their area, so I assume it is better if you prefer walking over car?
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Small towns can be quite walkable, the issue is that you still need a car to get there in the first place.
Depends on the age and location of the town.
Smaller towns in the North East that were well established before cars can sometimes be enjoyed without a car.
However most any modern amenity, like a big grocery store, will be on the outskirts of town and you’ll really need a car to enjoy them.
But in general yes, small towns are more walkable than sprawling suburbs.
Depends. America is built with driving in mind. Especially in the south. Small town can range from a compact community to people living sparsely around a general area with undefined boundaries. My town has a town area and a surrounding wooden area that a good portion of the population lives in with their own stores and the occasional gas station. When almost everyone lives in the woods the only viable option is to drive unless you want to take your chance with the wildlife. In town walking is an option but you have to know the area pretty thoroughly because walking aimlessly would be a bad decision to make.
Think less compact city more broad land per home.
New England has a lot of walkable small towns. The only problem is most people live outside of the town center.
That said the last place I lived was close enough to walk to the grocery, drug store, bars, restaurants, shops, post office, bank, community trail, farmers market, etc.
Now I can do all that as well but it is a good 25 minute walk to get to the downtown area, not bad but not like how close we were before.
[This town](https://kstk.org/modules/local_news/uploads/Image/PELICAN%20arial.JPG) very small and very walkable. Theory checks out
Older small towns typically have a small walkable historic downtown district oftentimes surrounding a courthouse and adjacent to an old train station. Typically, at some point in the 20th century a modern grocery store was built, but it is typically further out away from downtown in a shopping center. For the people that do live in the small town, they are somewhat walkable. However, the majority of the people who live in rural areas don’t live in those downtown neighborhoods, but are dispersed out on farms, ranches, and open land. Rural Americans are far less likely than rural Europeans to live in villages. Even if the train still runs through the small town, it doesn’t stop for passengers anymore. Access to things like specialty stores or specialists medical professionals will require driving into a larger city.
As others have mentioned, the secret to the whole “walkability” for a town/city/suburb etc in the US has to do with age (especially in relation to the car and Post WW 2 suburbanization), location, and role the town played in its region.
They can be, but the reality is that most people do not live in a walkable distance to those town centers and thus need to drive into town first.
They certainly can be. The towns in my area have everything you describe concentrated in a downtown area. I can send a package, get a haircut, buy groceries, get a beer, catch a movie, get dog food, an ice cream cone, go to parks, drop off dry cleaning, etc. I live about 20 miles from town though, so I do have to drive to get to downtown. Drop your [Street View here](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.2805558,-83.490669,3a,75y,100.4h,88.89t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRmoySiONstD9c2moLOThpg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192) and you’ll see.
It’s normal for there to be some stores on the outskirts of town also, that’s where WalMart or Dollar General will drop their location for the convenience of those that don’t live “in town”.
You might see all those places close like that, but are there sidewalks? I’m within walking distance of everything in my city, but many areas do not have sidewalks so I would be walking in the street. When you walk to the grocery store you don’t buy as much so you’re going to have to make a few trips each week. I work 4 to 5 days a week. It’s easier to just drive my car the 1 mile, 1.6 km, to the grocery store and buy enough groceries to last 1 week or more.
>when I look at the map, almost each of these small towns have grocery store, post office, bank, drug store etc. (everything you need on a daily basis) within their area
This describes where I live perfectly. Every single amenity you’d ever need on most days plus a library are all within two little shopping centers directly across the street from one another.
Here’s the thing though. I live about 6 1/2 miles from all of that.
You’re looking at where the *businesses* are in smaller towns. Where are the *people*?
Places I can walk to in my town (10-15mins): my town center, Grocery store, pharmacy, post office, bars restaurants and cafes, local theater, the municipal building, library, police and fire, barber shop, various other shops, public park and woodland trails, bus stop, trolly station and church.
Things I can technically walk to but are a 30 min walk: train station as I live on the north side of town and it is located on the south side of town.
I also never walk to the grocery store, I’m not hauling a weeks worth of food to my house.
Walkable, kinda but it’s misleading. Yeah you may have a grocery store but you are limited to one or two brands of products and they always are almost expired because it’s the last stop on the truck route. So you’ll need a car to go over to the bigger town for any ingredient more complicated than dry pasta or canned goods
The big one is that you’ll definitely need a car to get to work. Outside of the owners of small retail businesses, most small town residents drive 30 or more mins to work every day
If you are lucky enough to land a job downtown, then yes. If you work at the dairy farm or snowmobile dealership in the boonies, you will need a car.
They are if you live/are staying near the center of town. The problem is that there are limited housing available in that area to live in. The same is true for large cities, for the most part – though there are obviously more large apartment buildings.
No they aren’t really walkable. You more than likely need a car to get there, it wouldn’t be uncommon to live a 10 or 15 minute drive away from where the businesses are. Also, it’s very cold here for half the year most places.
Uhhh… Yes and no. Yes because the “town center” will be small and close together. If you live *and* work in the town center, you can probably walk most places in your day to day life.
But our towns weren’t built like European cities, with dense housing inside of city walls. Our heritage comes from homesteading and family farms. Most people who live in a small town will be spread out over a huge area *around* the town center, on farmhouses and small single-family plots of land, relying on ~~cars~~ pickup trucks to get around.
Yes. Depends on where it is, though. Some areas are spread out and depending on the season, the weather conditions mean they may not exactly be walkable.
Meanwhile, a city like Portland can be walkable.
I’m not sure how important size is here.
Some cities/towns are walkable and others are not. It really just depends on the individual community.
I also think the term “walkable” is starting to become meaningless with delivery services, ride sharing, etc.
I’m from a small town in the Midwest. I grew up a couple blocks from grocery stores and other types of stores. My family never walked, and nobody I knew walked to stores.
I’ve also lived overseas in Europe and Asia,and in both residents would walk given the same distances. Walking to the market was more a part of the culture when I lived overseas.
But, Americans generally don’t. The only people that might have walked to stores in my town were extremely poor people who didn’t have a car. But, there wasn’t much poverty in my small city. So, I honestly seldom saw anyone walking to do errands or grocery shopping.
New York City and other large cities that are accustomed to people walking would be different. But, in general, people in small towns don’t walk to stores.
Depends on how the town is laid out really. For example I’ve been to lots of small towns that have populations of less than 10K but are still not walk-able because they are still sprawled out. Just because there aren’t a lot of people doesn’t mean they were built in a dense manner for some reason.
It depends on the town. I grew up in a town of around 3000-5000 people (it grew a lot over those decades), and although we lived on the edge of town, I could walk or bike to all the shops, bank, post office, courthouse, school, etc. Most of the other small towns I’ve seen are reasonably walkable.
But I’ve been to other small towns that were really spread out with a few busy roads that would be very hard to cross as a pedestrian, or sometimes even to walk along, since they didn’t have sidewalks or even space at a safe separation from traffic.
The stores are localized but that’s not where everyone lives. So you can walk from 1 place to another more than likely, but from walking there to home is a 20 minute drive
I live in a 13,000 person town. I walk to work every day.
I can walk to a bar, pizza place, pharmacy, haircut, gas station, post office, bank, library, family dr practice, 3 churches, and a seasonal ice cream shop in my town. BUT it’s not the bank I have accounts with (that’s 40 minutes away). The store is small, so if I want options or cheaper items, I need to drive 20-40 minutes for a bigger place. My drs are all 20-60 minutes away. My pharmacy is 40 minutes away because it’s too much of a hassle to ask 3 drs to change my pharmacy, not do it right, and hound them until they do it right…again. Especially when I’m going to be in the bigger town once a week anyway for groceries. (We moved from the town my bank/pharmacy are located to this much smaller town).
My parents’ *postal address* says they live in a small town. In reality, they live in the hills 20 minutes from town.
Now the town I grew up in? Library, post office, gas station that closed and reopened multiple times. General store that sold candy, subs, and ice cream but no staples. There was a bank, but it closed before I graduated. 2 churches (neither Catholic, so that was a 20 minute drive every Sunday). The closest real grocery store, bank, and pharmacy were 20 minutes away. (Less than 500 people live/lived there)
Depends… in 1976, my small “hometown” would have been very very very walkable. Numerous places were within walking distance from the local Mom & Pop “grocery” more a meat market but it had other grocery items. Even the local Krogers (closed now due to greedy landlord who figured Krogers would pay whatever they asked, wrongo!).
Several drugs stores local mom & pop places that had been there for decades… a sort of local chain drug store they had like 4-5 stores in the various towns of the area.
Sure you could have walked there, *if you wanted to*..
In 2022, nope. Krogers is gone. The one remaining chain store is semi walkable for maybe about 30-40% of town, roughly… Many of the other places of 1976 are gone. Some newer things have come in to replace similar, but mostly not.
Most of the shopping district for the area is in another town which will definitely take a car to get to. As there is no use of light rail on the tracks in the area, no busses etc. And its a good 15-20 miles to there. Over winding back state highways, or the major 4 lane divded highway.
In the past 40-60’s it would have been even more walkable for many things from work to shopping to banking to doctor.. That declined as the late 60’s-70’s killed off the jobs in the region..
This is Small Town America that just has not got the last scoop of dirt put on it, sadly. Sigh…
The centers of small towns can be walkable from shop to shop, but most people don’t live close enough to walk into town from their home as rural small towns tend to be very low density.
College towns and tourist towns are the definitely more walkable than most suburbs. Other small towns might have a cute downtown but, as many people pointed out, most people don’t live very close to that downtown.
In general American life, even in cities, in not very public focused compared to life in Europe or Latin America. I remember going to what were considered small villages in Eastern Europe and the lifestyle felt more “urban” in some way than even in some parts of U.S. cities. People were walking around, old folks were sitting on park benches, there was a bar and a cafe and a bakery and people were meeting away from their homes. U.S. life is very focused on the home and even lots of social encounters happen at home. This is the heritage of homestead/plantation culture.
Depends. Many older small towns are walkable, especially if they have a historic downtown or commercial district.
Particularly in the Eastern US.
However, a town has to be large enough to support having a grocery store and a good variety of shops downtown.
Even then you’ll probably still would want a car since not everything will be all downtown.
However, this isn’t universal. Plenty of small towns that are very suburban or where the historic core was demolished for suburban development.
Like just compare the Village of Kenmore with the Village of Depew just outside Buffalo. One is extremely walkable and you could get away without having a car. The other has lost its historic buildings and is no longer walkable.
Most suburbs were built after the single family home car-centric lifestyle became enshrined in law. If they were built before this, they might still retain some walkable areas, but have since expanded to become unwalkable.
Depends on the town. I lived in a small town of 2500 people in the Appalachians that covered a decent chunk of land. Town was extremely walkable. In fact several towns in that area were. The only issue was walking between towns was damn near impossible. Then of course the towns didn’t have all the stores to meet ones needs. Then of course I’ve seen other small towns that walking would be fairly dangerous.
What you’re describing is a walkable *area* within a city. Having a walkable area in a city is very common. Every city I’ve ever lived in has a walkable downtown area where most of your basic needs can be met. It’s getting to that *walkable* area that is the issue, as houses tend to be spread out such that only a few people have houses close to that area.
Depends on the town, there are thousands
but look where the houses are. You’ll have less than 50 homes w/ in walking distance of those places which for a town of 500 that’s close to 1/4 of the population (assuming 2 adults per house). Even then those people will likely have to leave to a bigger area for things not available in a small town. For example if I wanted to watch a movie in a theater I had to drive 45 min to a larger city (same goes for doctors, dentists, furniture, appliances, tools, and tons of other stuff). There was a bus but it was nearly impossible to do a back and forth trip in a day.
I live in a town that is officially 0.75 sq miles and has a population of about 5,600 people where everything is walkable. I have a grocery store 2 blocks away, tons of restaurants and bars, coffee shops, a library, some boutiques, post office, parks with trails, even a 5 & 10 type store with all sorts of miscellaneous items. We do even have (although it’s not the best) public transit that I could use to get into a major city or to a local mall if I wanted to.
I also don’t work in town, so I need a car to get to work. I also need one to most entertainment type places (movies, bowling, etc) and discount/big box stores (Target, Costco, TJ Maxx type places). We do have an elementary school in town, but the middle and high schools require some form of alternate transportation.
I think the biggest distraction is that, while you can have all your basics nearby in a small town, you still probably need a car to get to everything you’d want or need to get to. In a city, you usually don’t need a car because the public transportation is usually better than in the suburbs, so even if things aren’t walkable, you have a way of getting to them without a car, with is less common in the suburbs and small towns.
This can relate to how old the town is and how old the housing is. After WWII especially, the trend was to build out, far away from business centers in order to allow for larger yards and more space. More recently people have been rehabilitating housing stock near downtowns to increase walkability.
“Suburbia” is just small(er) towns located near/outside a large city. There is no real difference between a suburban small town and a rural small town in terms of layout etc, in my experience. It’s more what’s around it (i.e. is it another suburban town immediately nearby, or is it farmland with a 10-20 minute drive to the next small town?). Pretty much every suburban town I’ve been in still has its own little historic district/downtown area, some houses immediately around it, and then sort of fanning out from there into less dense neighborhoods around the edges mixed with small farms/larger properties.
Tons of people don’t *want* to live within walking distance of a grocery store/bank/drug store/etc and will always choose to live a bit outside downtown anyway.
Here’s the thing with every small town I’ve lived in. Yes, generally all the businesses and amenities of the town are grouped together in a relatively small area. BUT, that’s not usually the main residential area. People live in a much larger spread out area that kinda surrounds the “downtown” area. There just aren’t that many people who live in the close-in space. We live miles often from that area. Add in the seemingly random nature of sidewalks and highly variable extreme weather, and walking is no good for lots of the year. Don’t underestimate how much the weather affects how we travel.
I live in a very walkable hamlet in upstate NY. And by live in, I mean it’s only a 13 minute drive to the hamlet from my house. But once I get into town, I could easily park and get to everything by foot if I wanted to.
The towns themselves are walkable, but the vast majority of their traffic and business comes from people who live within a large radius of that town. The average small town in my state serves as a hub for people within about a 20-30 miles radius. As such, small towns are even more car-centric because you can’t get to them with mass/public transit because it doesn’t exist.
This hasn’t been my experience for the most part. In a lot of smaller towns, land is cheap and people live on very large lots. They’re often so far apart that you’d really need a car to go from place to place. That’s not so much the case with downtown areas of smaller towns, which tend to be more compact.
I’ve lived in a few suburbs in my day and I have found them to be pretty walkable for the most part.
Laughs in Midwestern small town.
I think it is more accurate to say that *parts* of small towns are walkable. Typically retail + dining/bar.
Not really.
You’ll look at the map and see the small “main street” area that has all those things near each other.
Now ask yourself, where are the people? Where do people live? In most small towns there’s usually a fairly dense area that’s walkable that has a lot of stores and restaurants and offices. . .but population growth in the last 70 years or so has been entirely built around the idea of cars, so neighborhoods built around cars are where most people live, and it isn’t practical to walk from a home in one of those subdivisions to the “main street” area.
I grew up in towns like that. You still need a car.
Honestly the biggest factor is when the town was built. In my area there’s some old suburbs that were incorporated in the 1800s and they’re totally walkable in large parts. If you go 10 miles west though all you see is 100 foot wide 6 lane roads and strip malls. Those are more recent developments.
I live in a small town. My grocery store and my bank is a 40min round trip on foot. Church is a 20min round trip on foot. The drug store is 12min and the post office is ten. And all that is in good weather.
Sometimes I’ll walk for exercise but typically when it’s over 30c or under 5c (and it can get well below 0c) I’d much rather drive.
Physical distances needing to be covered, sure. Small Towns will only be a few miles in diameter at most and anyone one semi-fit should be able to walk that distance. But small towns typically will not have many sidewalks and may not have the amenities you are talking about.
While convenience stores, gas stations, and things like Dollar General are common full grocery stores in small towns are rare. They will typically have a post office, but may or may not have a bank. Having a drug store is virtually unheard of in small towns. So for most of these things people who live in a small town will need a car to drive to the nearby larger towns and cities to conduct business.
This is also assuming you live in the town proper and not on a ranch 5-10 miles outside of the town.