As part of my dissertation fieldwork, I extensively surveyed and interviewed many local experts as well as residents of the city.
In one of my case study neighborhoods, one man in his 30’s who I interviewed gave me a detailed, mental map breakdown of his spatial relationship to the neighborhood.
As the head of his company, he managed remote working staff, working remotely himself, and valued that the neighborhood offered the amenities for a high quality of life as he worked from home.
He detailed the benefits of having multiple gym options within a 5-minute walk and also detailed specific aspects of his day such as the one or two breaks per day he takes specifically to go to the local Zabka (a very popular convenience store in Polish towns and cities), getting in a brief walking break and picking up a power drink or other snack.
He even specifically noted that he chooses the Zabka that is a 3-minute walk from his home and while multiple other Zabkas exist within a 5-7 minute walk, he emphasized that he valued the hyperproximity to the closest one as efficiency is something he highly values in his routine and environment.
On the personal front, when we first settled into our urban neighborhood in Warsaw 2 and a half years ago, my partner was still used to driving everywhere, including the grocery store, while I would prefer to walk.
As time went by, I gradually saw his behavior change. Small things. Saturday morning, deciding to walk to the bakery on the corner of our block (as opposed to driving to the grocery store at the mall), and overall just relax into accessing the diverse amenities in our immediate area by foot.
When he gave me this shopping trolley as a holiday gift a year ago, I was really over the moon, knowing how it would transform my own walkable lifestyle.
Little did I know that he would also take to using it as well. We have multiple small grocers within a 15-minute walk to our home, but last year one opened up a 5-minute walk away. My partner’s habits completely changed as he started to prefer walking to that one for groceries. ‘The opening of that store was a game changer’ he noted, when I asked about the development of his ‘walkable urban’ lifestyle.
Neither of these guys talks about urbanism the way I do. They don’t swoon over talking about the social connectivity of neighborhood walking rituals. They both emphasize a value on the efficiency of such hyperproximity. It’s not an ideological, emotional or moral decision between walking or driving, but important as we understand modal shift and mobility decisions.