Britain (England in particular) is half and half, really. Lots of people live in towns and can walk to everything.
But a very large number of people make the choice to live in the kind of "out of town" developments that would be familiar to Americans: a car-journey from everything and served by large supermarkets to which you can't so easily walk, rather than in the kind of smaller more traditional communities that are a walk from everything. And nowhere is cycle-friendly yet, really.
Covid will exacerbate this -- people looking to live in houses with gardens will choose to live further away from towns.
I have lived mostly in towns and I prefer that, but where I am living at the moment, the corner shop is not a corner shop, it's a small supermarket, and it is a hilly half mile away. This is right on the cusp of impracticality for a lot of people who don't have the freedom to work from home during the day and who are shopping for more than just themselves.
I live by myself and I don't have a car, but I work from home, so I choose to do that journey on foot, rather than get deliveries, but I am unusual in this; most people get deliveries or will take the car (and then go to the bigger supermarket further away).
This. When I lived in London I never got in my car except to make journeys out of London. Now that I live in a village (and not a particularly remote one; London is less than an hour away by train) I need my car to do anything.
Britain (England in particular) is half and half, really. Lots of people live in towns and can walk to everything.
But a very large number of people make the choice to live in the kind of "out of town" developments that would be familiar to Americans: a car-journey from everything and served by large supermarkets to which you can't so easily walk, rather than in the kind of smaller more traditional communities that are a walk from everything. And nowhere is cycle-friendly yet, really.
Covid will exacerbate this -- people looking to live in houses with gardens will choose to live further away from towns.
I have lived mostly in towns and I prefer that, but where I am living at the moment, the corner shop is not a corner shop, it's a small supermarket, and it is a hilly half mile away. This is right on the cusp of impracticality for a lot of people who don't have the freedom to work from home during the day and who are shopping for more than just themselves.
I live by myself and I don't have a car, but I work from home, so I choose to do that journey on foot, rather than get deliveries, but I am unusual in this; most people get deliveries or will take the car (and then go to the bigger supermarket further away).