What can you get to within a 15-minute walk of your house?
A recent YouGov survey asked Americans what they think they should be able to get to within a 15-minute walk of their house.
Of these choices, I can currently walk to all of them from my apartment, aside from a university (no biggie, I'm not currently studying, although there is a Tafe within walking distance), a hospital, and a sports arena.
How many can you get to with a 15 minute walk from your house?
#fuckcars #walkability #urbanism #UrbanPlanning @fuck_cars #walking
Apparently it's important that they can walk to a petrol station though.
American here, the gas station is our version of the local corner store. Most places you have to drive to get to it but where I live there is one right at the entrance to the neighborhood and lots of adults/kids do walk there. I would sorely miss it if it was gone.
I agree with this, but also want to point out that gas stations are a poor substitute for a corner grocer or bodega. They are simply too large and require too much land for the function they are serving. Zoning rightfully mandates that they can't be on the bottom floor of a larger building due to the dangers posed by gasoline and they require lots of space for cars to park.
Essentially, we have forfeited a lot of valuable space to dispensing gasoline and significantly diminished the best features of corner stores by making them serve both functions. I would be curious to see what would happen if gas stations were forbidden from serving anything other than gas in high density areas. I would assume there would be much fewer of them, and each one would be optimized for efficiency to take up as little space as possible. We would also likely see the reemergence of neighborhood bodegas and corner grocers to fill the gap.
Gas station is a somewhat colloquial form of bodega/corner store in the US. Often corner stores without gas stations will still be referred to as gas stations. Sometimes they're also called convenience stores.
Wait really? I'm from a big city and I've never heard "gas station" refer to a place that didn't sell gas at all. Huh, TIL
I definitely don’t refer to it as a gas station if there’s no gas, but… I may very well refer to the convenience store attached to the gas station as a “gas station”. Like “I’m gonna stop at a gas station and get some coffee”, even if I mean any convenience store, gas or no.
It’s like a rectangle-square situation
I've noticed it's less common in the city and more common in rural areas. I live in SF and people here don't call them gas stations unless they have gas, but in the Central Valley this is extremely common.
I grew up there and I always forget how much more "proper" I speak at home vs where I grew up. My partner sometimes struggles to understand what I'm trying to say a lot of the time when I slip back into it when speaking with my family. Gas station is just one of the many overly generic terms. Another one is "Vallarta" which doesn't necessarily mean the chain grocery store Vallarta, but a Mexican grocery store usually selling produce and with a meat counter.
Yeah I know of a few 7-elevens that are just the store, no gas, but would still be thought of as a “gas station”.
Significantly diminished?
I live maybe 10 minutes walk from a gas station, it’s the size of a small grocery store, it has lot of staple groceries and a mini restaurant in it that makes pizzas, sub sandwiches, coffees, ice cream, and a full breakfast menu. Plus donuts every morning. Our gas stations often take the place of 2/3 businesses rolled into one.
I live by a QT for those Americans familiar with STL’s favorite gas station