[jjav]

The claim at the top of the thread was "essentials being a 30-45m drive away".

I clicked on each of those links and asked for directions to food shops and in every case google maps gave me a route less than 10 minutes drive.

So I remain unconvinced that suburbs with "essentials being a 30-45m drive away" are somehow a common thing. You need to go pretty far off into the boonies for that to be the case but then it is no longer a suburb.

[vel0city]

Ah, 30-45m drive, yeah. A lot of these places will still be within 15min or so to a lot of amenities, probably 20min most to most things. There are still some that are pretty way out there, easily 20+ minutes to most real amenities. A couple I can think of close by:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/fc2DS3dMQrDJK3na9

https://maps.app.goo.gl/AnygKw17WmFxHkc58

https://maps.app.goo.gl/kppAZYyDJuJZBGtD6

But a 10 minute walk to most of those amenities is also pretty uncommon. You look up walking directions for most of those places? I'll be amazed if there's a real grocery store within a 10 minute walk.

[jjav]

Two trains of thought; I was reacting to the OP line of "People would rather stay marooned in the middle of an endless desert of houses with essentials being a 30-45m drive away", which I maintain is a nearly impossible scenario.

(Because everyone needs food and other essentials, so if you have "an endless desert of houses" somewhere, that's a lot of people, so inevitably very soon there will be stores nearby.)

The other point is whether you can walk to them in 10min (or 15min as lotsoweiners above said). I don't claim you can always walk to shops in 10min from suburban houses, it is easy to find cases where it's further away (but far far far closer than "30-45m drive away").

But, you can also easily find suburban places where you can do it, and those places are all over, there is nothing rare about them. The idea (which often comes up in these topics on HN) that it is impossible to walk to stores/restaurants in the US outside of Manhattan & SF, is nonsense. If you like to walk (I do) just pick a suitable spot.

A few examples where I've lived: next to Pruneyard in Campbell, a bit further south in San Jose around Cambrian, and in Cupertino not far from DeAnza College. In all of these it was easy to walk to a supermarket in 10min. All of these are in Silicon Valley, where the story goes you can't walk anywhere but I was easily walking to stores.