This is an interesting map to play around with. It allows you to see how many 15-minute neighborhoods and cities there are around the world. And it works by calculating the average time it takes to walk or bike to the closest 20 points of interest in 10,000 cities. These points include all of the usual suspects like places of work, schools, healthcare institutions, grocery stores, and so on. A blue cell indicates an average walk time < 15 minutes, and a red cell indicates an average walk time > 15 minutes. The darker the color, the shorter or longer the average time in minutes.

By this measure, it's hard to beat many/most European cities. Here are Paris and Barcelona:

The city propers are completely blue, and you have to go pretty far out (or up into mountains) to find areas that don't have 15-minute conveniences.

Toronto has a strong core and isn't terrible overall, but expectedly, we aren't as uniform and as deep blue as Paris and Barcelona:

Where things get really interesting, though, is when you look at cities like Dallas and Houston:

It's clear where these cities stand on walkability.

Conventional planning wisdom tells us that smaller city blocks are generally preferable to larger city blocks. They make for more interesting walks (which can change our perception of distance) and they improve overall connectivity. This is why you'll often hear planners advocate for things like "mid-block connections." It is a way of creating the feeling of smaller blocks.

Salt Lake City, as we have talked about, is the opposite of this. Its blocks measure 660 feet x 660 feet (call it 200m x 200m for those of us more accustomed to using the international standard for measuring things). This means that if you were to walk only 2 blocks (inclusive of 2 streets), your walk would be close to 500m, which is a commonly used walking/transit radius.

Things get a bit tricker when you're not walking in a straight line. For example, if you found yourself wanting to cross a street somewhere in the middle of a block -- and you wanted to obey all traffic safety rules and not jaywalk -- you would need to walk over 200m just to get to the opposite side. So basically a whole other block.

There are also instances where even this street grid gets interrupted. This past weekend, I spent an evening walking to and from dinner on Main Street. And at one point, I got caught trying to cross the convention center (which occupies 3 blocks). I guess I could have tried to cut through, but I walked around, which added 2 additional blocks (~600m in total).

Thankfully, SLC also has many instances of new mid-block streets/connections, road diets, internal laneways, and enhanced center medians, among many other things. I mean, here are some plans to turn Main Street into a pedestrian promenade. All of these interventions are an effort to soften the city's underlying block structure, which we know tends to be indelible in cities.

I tweeted this out yesterday:

What I was getting at is that there's lots of available room within our existing boundaries for infill housing. We are nowhere near full, despite what some people will tell you. In fact, most areas are not dense enough to properly support modes of transport that aren't the car.

Of course, there are a number of ways that one could be offended by a statement like this.

One, you could argue that more density would make the city unlivable. Two, you could get into the chicken-and-egg game of whether a more expansive transit system is needed before allowing more density. Three, you could say that we already have enough zoned and unbuilt housing supply -- so why do we need more? And I'm sure that there are many others that I'm not mentioning here.

Density can be a counterintuitive feature for cities. It can actually make a place more livable by encouraging more amenities adjacent to where people live and work, and it can also reduce traffic congestion by empowering alternative forms of mobility. If the only reasonable way to get around is by car, then of course most people will drive.

We also need to avoid the chicken-and-egg mental trap when it comes to mobility infrastructure. Land use and transportation always work hand in hand and need to be thought of and executed on simultaneously.

Finally, the objection of already having lots of sites zoned for new housing is an enticing one. But zoned and delivered are two vastly different things. And the unfortunate reality is that there are a lot of zoned sites that won't be able to develop in the short and medium terms because the market isn't there. But that doesn't mean that other housing typologies couldn't be built.

At the same time, we need move away from "cruise ships of urbanity." Broadly speaking, Paris -- to cite just one of many examples-- is at least and on average about 4x denser than Toronto. And somehow, people still like living and visiting there.