As usual in this type of threads, I don't quite understand what Americans mean by 'walkability'.

When I was in high-school, I spent 2 weeks in the USA, on Long Island. I could walk for an hour and not walk across a pedestrian. There were often no sidewalk (when there were, I wasn't sure I could use them, as to my foreign eyes, being detached from the road, they where running though properties :-D ), but what's the problem with that? There was almost zero traffic, since the areas are low-density residential; much less than on my country roads. I could reach the ocean, I could reach playgrounds/playfields, I could reach one street with shops, I could reach... the high-school. No transit was needed. But I was alone in the streets/on the roads. I didn't understand why the older kid (16?) of the house was already driving a big car to go to high-school...

When I look at Google Maps, a huge proportion of those suburbs areas seem to be within a mile of a either a shop street or a supermarket, and often some playfield too (we don't have that many over here). The grid pattern makes access easier. So I am puzzled. It seems very 'walkable' to me. Of course accessing those supermarkets by foot or cycle ranges from unpleasant to maddening because access was generally only planned for cars. But that's much more easily fixable than redesigning the whole zones.

Now if you work 15 miles away, that's something else, but does this come into 'walkability' concept? No density is going to fix that: even in a big dense city, your job, or your next job (and even more your partner's!) is almost always going to end up on the other end of the city after some time. Walkability cannot help there, so I reckon jobs location shouldn't weight on the concept much.

I lived abroad in a pretty US-sprawl-like place. A huge majority of detached houses, a few rowhouses, a handful of short flats buildings, with supermarkets in place of the town centre. Basically no small shops, but a few bars between the supermarkets. I was living on one side of the town, and I was walking (winter) or cycling (summer) everyday to my workplace on the other side of the town, 2 rivers and 1.5 miles away. I would shop on the way back home. Easy, simple, practical. No transit is needed. For me it is walkable. But it seems it isn't, for many people I read here, because they would declare similar areas in the US as non-walkable.

I now live in a municipality, where density is 8 inhabitants / km² (20-25 inhabitants / sq mile). But most people live within half-a-mile of the village centre. It has enough small shops for your daily or weekly needs; if you wish, there's a bigger shop/small supermarket in the next village, 2 miles away. There's a guy who is over 80 years old and who lives at the farthest point in the municipality, 1 mile away. He comes shopping almost everyday, by foot, on the road that passes in front of my house. So for him I guess it is walkable. But what if we ask all the 40-something who live 4 times closer, but who prefer to take their car, and drive 2 times 10 miles to go a big supermarket. They'll swear they need their car, for those countrysides are not walkable! Heck, my neighbour works in the centre, that is one quarter miles away (5 mn walk, 1 mn bicycle) and takes her car to go to work.