Is a walkable America even possible?

Think of where you grew up. If you’re anything like me, chances are you’ve spent an unreasonable amount of time stuck behind the wheel for pretty much everything. When I was in high school, the one-way drive to school was 50 minutes. Doing that twice per day for 180 school days per year for 13 years means that my parents and I burned 3,900 hours or over 162 full days waiting in traffic—almost a half year, and that’s just for school. I might be an extreme example, but travel times like these are standard for many people who live in suburban or rural America. Driving times can be reduced or eliminated by moving to more urban areas or those near where you want to work, but that gets expensive fast, and not everyone wants to live in the inner city. So people pile up on each other, suburbs get built around city centers with industry, and highways get built to connect the suburbs. Once those suburbs get filled out, more are built to try and keep up until no one can afford to live near the city. Everyone is forced to drive long distances to get anywhere, destroying walkability.

The way to fix this is simple: reduce the need to travel such large distances. The key is mixed-use development, which is a type of zoning style that allows all types of buildings to be built in one space: residential, commercial, entertainment, anything. So, what makes that so unique? Typically, cities and towns are compartmentalized into subdivisions, each with a zoning code: single-family homes, multi-family, commercial, and so on. Traditional zoning means that if you live in a single-family zone, which many people do, you must drive out of your subdivision to reach a commercial zone to shop or work. Now, this isn’t really a problem if zones are small and many differing types are adjacent. However, often they are not, forcing people to drive a mile or two just to eat, shop, or reach recreational areas. These commercial and recreational areas have huge parking lots to accommodate these drivers, which entirely overlooks the possibility of walking or biking. Commercial zoning also usually requires specific amounts of parking spots, which can lead to quiet businesses with vast empty parking lots, thus wasting valuable space and increasing the distance between locations. Instead, what if we had mixed-use zoning—or at least smaller, more varied subdivisions—where in your neighborhood, there was a corner store to buy everyday groceries, a cafe to eat at, a small gym, or anything other than more houses? People would be able to walk just a couple of minutes to buy eggs instead of having to drive a few subdivisions over to the nearest supermarket. Smaller businesses and amenities that are spread out and closer to where people live enable more foot-travel.

The affordability problem is also improved by mixed-use zoning as people aren’t piled on top of each other to be around one city center. You can live in an area with bigger homes while still being near a restaurant and convenience store, while others can live in more dense housing right next to a train station or movie theater.

An excellent example of this is actually a place like Troy. While it is not fully or even majorly mixed-use, Troy’s zones are small and varied. Where I live near campus, I can walk a couple of minutes to Big Apple Pizzeria, Bite of Xian, Stewart’s Shop, Prospect Park, and the Love of Fuzz Music Store. The density of the zoning in Troy allows more people to live in the same space while also giving those who live there places to go without getting in a car. Plus, just a couple minutes away are single-family zoned areas, which are still near enough to other zones to be somewhat walkable, though they could benefit from more amenities.

On the other hand, look at a place like Colonie, which has vasts of land all marked for single-family homes. This makes it near impossible to walk anywhere, forcing residents to drive to these large 5-lane roads, like Troy-Schenectady Road, where commercial developments cling to. Since no one walks to these places and there’s much more traffic—103,086 cars per day—these roads are massive and often don’t even contain sidewalks for people to try to use. It is also notable that housing prices in Albany county, which Colonies resided in, average $336,893 whereas in Troy it's more like $272,340.

Overall, if American towns and cities adopt more of the Troy formula and less of the Colonie formula, housing costs would fall and walkability would increase, leading to a more people-oriented society rather than being stuck every day on a 50-minute commute. Plus, as fewer people will have to drive places, traffic will dramatically decrease, causing driving to actually become fun again and helping those who just prefer to drive in general.