It was like a 45 minute walk to the "main Street", with no sidewalks for most of it.
It doesn’t sound like you grew up in the suburbs, man. It sounds like you grew up in a fairly small town.
That's just American suburbs, honestly. Many if not most subdvisions are designed to be pedestrian-hostile with the specific intent of excluding -- shall we say -- a certain class of person who doesn't have access to a car, and are thrown up wherever a builder managed to snag a contiguous chunk of greenfield site vaguely near a major city rather than being planned and positioned to for convenience to mass transit and amenities.
Heck, I live in a old streetcar suburb, that's basically in the city proper, and while it's only a ten minute walk to the nearest grocery store, I don't walk it because a) it's a fucking Walmart and I'm not giving them any of my money if I can help it and b) it'd require me to walk along two busy stroads, one way while lugging sacks of groceries. I'd prefer not to get mowed down by somebody coming off the highway who's not paying attention at the crosswalk if I can help it.
It must be area dependent in the US then, because I’ve lived in suburbs or small towns most of my life - the rest was spent on military bases overseas when I was a kid. The previous poster’s description of “no sidewalks” left me wondering just how far away from the city this suburb was. I mean, I could see specific subdivisions, I guess, but if it’s a true suburb of a major metropolitan area, I guess I always think of those as being thoroughly developed.
That’s been my experience, anyway. Not with public transport or anything, certainly, but fully paved and all that.
For reference, I live in a suburb of a midwestern city right now.
Wikipedia describes it as a suburb. It's within 40 miles of Manhattan. It might have been a little less than 40 minutes walking to parts of main Street. I checked on Google maps and asked it how long to walk from my parents house to the town library, which was pretty central.
It doesn’t sound like you grew up in the suburbs, man. It sounds like you grew up in a fairly small town.
That's just American suburbs, honestly. Many if not most subdvisions are designed to be pedestrian-hostile with the specific intent of excluding -- shall we say -- a certain class of person who doesn't have access to a car, and are thrown up wherever a builder managed to snag a contiguous chunk of greenfield site vaguely near a major city rather than being planned and positioned to for convenience to mass transit and amenities.
Heck, I live in a old streetcar suburb, that's basically in the city proper, and while it's only a ten minute walk to the nearest grocery store, I don't walk it because a) it's a fucking Walmart and I'm not giving them any of my money if I can help it and b) it'd require me to walk along two busy stroads, one way while lugging sacks of groceries. I'd prefer not to get mowed down by somebody coming off the highway who's not paying attention at the crosswalk if I can help it.
It must be area dependent in the US then, because I’ve lived in suburbs or small towns most of my life - the rest was spent on military bases overseas when I was a kid. The previous poster’s description of “no sidewalks” left me wondering just how far away from the city this suburb was. I mean, I could see specific subdivisions, I guess, but if it’s a true suburb of a major metropolitan area, I guess I always think of those as being thoroughly developed.
That’s been my experience, anyway. Not with public transport or anything, certainly, but fully paved and all that.
For reference, I live in a suburb of a midwestern city right now.
Wikipedia describes it as a suburb. It's within 40 miles of Manhattan. It might have been a little less than 40 minutes walking to parts of main Street. I checked on Google maps and asked it how long to walk from my parents house to the town library, which was pretty central.