Well, that parent is just totally misguided. The idea that walkable means no more walking than you'd do when you drive to a Walmart… real nonsense.
People who actually live in walkable neighborhoods walk all the time with babies and groceries and can go 1-2km easily.
As others mentioned, lots of baby carriages exist that have extra room for stuff like groceries. I tended to wear the baby in a sling while pushing a larger shopping cart in order to get groceries at the multiple places in around a 1.5 mile radius from my home at the time that I had an infant. Americans way overuse strollers and carriages.
What makes for walkability is quiet-enough streets that were safe as opposed to having to walk by overly-fast heavy traffic or cross at dangerous intersections.
I'm rather shocked at how complacent everyone in this thread seems. Why is it ok to settle for neighborhoods that are built around cars and not suited to the tasks of every day living, outside of them.
In cold conditions, walking a mile is terrible. You shouldn't be needing to cross many intersections just to go shopping.
The car infrastructure is half of what makes everything spread out in the first place. The other half being zoning and underdeveloped land, often held that way for speculation purposes.
It is totally conceivable to live somewhere that has good shopping within two blocks radius. I've lived in multiple apartments where this was true. This should not be some kind of crazy unattainable thing, this should be the default.
I am strongly opposed to neighborhoods built around cars. And I definitely think it's far better if basic needs are closer than one mile but…
> In cold conditions, walking a mile is terrible.
Or you can just be decently prepared and have warm clothing. If you go faster, you stay warmer. That said, I'll admit that I go on less mile+ walks when the weather is rougher (although I do have Raynaud syndrome).
> You shouldn't be needing to cross many intersections just to go shopping
What we want is to avoid crossing traffic. The number of intersections isn't really the issue. In places like Portland where the street grid makes for tiny blocks, it's not a big deal that you may cross 10 intersections when you go just a half mile, as long as it's the tiny streets where cars have to pull over just to let another car go the other way and traffic is really slow.
I otherwise really agree with all the gist of your comment. Car-focused living is the source of probably the majority of all the ills in our modern life. It's anti-social (people don't see neighbors and run into friends on the street), it's dangerous, it creates unsustainable development patterns, and it's destroyed huge portions of our natural environment even leaving aside all the pollution and the costs of SO much paved roads and parking lots…
Well, that parent is just totally misguided. The idea that walkable means no more walking than you'd do when you drive to a Walmart… real nonsense.
People who actually live in walkable neighborhoods walk all the time with babies and groceries and can go 1-2km easily.
As others mentioned, lots of baby carriages exist that have extra room for stuff like groceries. I tended to wear the baby in a sling while pushing a larger shopping cart in order to get groceries at the multiple places in around a 1.5 mile radius from my home at the time that I had an infant. Americans way overuse strollers and carriages.
What makes for walkability is quiet-enough streets that were safe as opposed to having to walk by overly-fast heavy traffic or cross at dangerous intersections.