To add, in walkable communities you are much more likely to be a “regular” at more places, since you are walking to the places nearby, and to share multiple regular places with other people. Walking 15 minutes to 30 minutes still keep you in about a 1-2 mile radius, which is pretty small and has a lot of overlap with other people walking. So you are likely to see the same people at the bar as at the gym or the coffee shop.
If you are driving 15 minutes to 30 minutes, especially if you get on a highway for any amount of time, you could be anywhere in a 15+ mile radius. Your grocery store and your preferred bar could be 20 miles away from each other, so not likely you will run into Jim from the bar in the cereal aisle.
It's more cultural than walkability. I've lived about 20 years in NYC but now spend months at a time outside the city as well.
In the US, in VHCOL places like NYC filled with upper middle class striver / PMC types.. everything is so fleeting & ephemeral you just don't have "regulars". You just feel anonymous. Everything is moving/changing all the time, expectations and trust are low. There is a lot of classism.
I lived in buildings 8 years & had neighbors on my floor who re-introduced themselves to me many times, somehow forgetting we've met. I knew their dogs names.
The shops I go 2x/week have 50-150% annual staff turnover and even the staff that somehow last 5 years barely acknowledge recognizing me. The staff who work in my building disappear without a trace one day. My condo board president introduced herself to me for the third time recently. We stopped having package pickup for a couple years because allegedly our staff & mail woman didn't get along.
Meanwhile in the small town I spend more time, I drive, but I am a regular at some restaurants that I go maybe monthly or less. Regular to the point of waiters sending us free drinks, or knowing the same waiter from 3 different restaurants he's worked over the years, being on a first name basis. I knew my last mailman by name and sent him a retirement card. I bump into the postal clerk at my vet. The guy who cleaned my chimney gave me a great greenhouse recommendation recently.
Backing up a sister comment on this thread: I've lived in SF and Chicago, both also as walkable as it gets for the US, and in both had relationships as a "regular," whether at a corner store, cafe, or the grocer. I remember our Albanian corner store guy in particular, who would comment on me gaining or losing weight. Our neighborhoods felt like a small town where we all knew each other (including the homeless!).
I live near New York now, and while I hear from friends that they find that kind of community in some faraway boroughs of NYC, everyone in Manhattan reports your profound and deep sense of alienation from their fellow man, though some with a positive spin.
I have not seen this alienating anonymity in any other part of the country, though I have felt it whenever I'm there. As there is no other place in this country even remotely as dense or with faster turnover (not even SF), I'm fairly confident Manhattan is unique (in this country).
Brooklyn the same as Manhattan though.
I think I'm just pointing out the urbanist utopia walkable American city NYC kind of already fails the claim.
But I'm pointing out that just because NYC fails the claim does not mean that the claim is wrong.
I think there's a goldilocks zone of walkable, at least for the purposes of this "urbanist-I-know-everyone-utopia" feeling – you could have perfectly walkable places that aren't dense enough (people wise), so they won't work. I'm thinking of Gorham's Bluff, Alabama, which is an attempted New Urbanist project. Or, you could have Manhattan, which is also walkable but frankly mind-boggling in its density.
No offense to New York. I sometimes find myself in wordless awe of its sheer power.
I mean, Manhattan is the most densely populated place in the entire country. I’m talking about communities designed around walkability, not places where people are so densely packed your local services are basically within the same block out of necessity.
Philadelphia, Chicago, and Seattle are extremely walkable for a large part of the city proper, in my experience. Whereas places like Phoenix, Orlando, and Dallas are sprawls where almost none of the city is walkable.
In a small town, it is easy to become a regular when there are only 5 restaurants and one vet. But in a proper "city" walkability is a major factor in community level.