I don't understand this. By the time you drive 20 miles in Germany (starting from a city) you not only have passed a "town" you have also arrived in the next city.
It isn't complicated. The population density of the US, excluding Alaska, is about 1/5 that of Germany, and we are probably relatively concentrated in mega-cities.
But it doesn't have to be that way. I'm in Munich now, and little Bavarian towns of 10k or less are nearly always much more walkable than US cities 20x their size.
I see this point of view a lot, but it's got one major flaw: A lot of my trips to the grochery store/Costco/Sams Club include far more things than I can carry. The idea of not owning a car sounds like the exact opposite of a paradise to me.
Oh, plenty of people own cars in these little towns. Most households have one, I'd bet. And getting from town to town without a car is...challenging. Possible, there are trains and buses, but it's hard.
But for day to day errands, you don't need a car, you can get by fine without one. That's the difference. You have a choice, whereas in the states you don't. Small towns in the US are mostly hilariously walking-hostile, and public transportation is effectively non-existent.
I admit, it's a bit amusing to see how often Americans treat this as something that must be either-or. When I talk about German cities being more walkable, or having public transit, so many assume that this means driving is either impossible or impractical, as if it was not feasible to support more than one mode at a time.
Though I suppose I can't really blame them, because that's more or less how things work back in the states: most cities are designed for cars to the near-exclusion of all else. You can walk, but there's nothing in walking distance from the residential areas. You can bike, but it's dangerous and uncomfortable. You can take a bus, if you're okay with tripling how long every errand takes.
While it would be nice to be within walking distance of many daily places, there are real downsides: Noise, air quality, crime. I live in an incredibly quiet and peaceful neighborhood. I do have to drive a good 20 minutes to get to a major grocery store but Walmart is 10 mins away and a small grocery store less than 5. I do wish there was a coffee shop within 10 minutes of walking distance, but otherwise I can't imagine any upside for me personally in "walkable" cities. People selling their public transportation and walk-able cities just doesn't resonate with me at all, in fact it sounds horrible, but I'm glad the choices are there.
The thing with walkability is that it changes the frequency of shopping. If going to buy food requires me to drive to a supermarket, I'm going to want to buy enough stuff to do that rarely and that will be more bags than I'd like to carry. However, as I'm usually buying food by entering one of the multiple stores that's on my way when walking home from work, I do that almost every day, and then it's just a few items.
Most countries don't rely on bulk buying groceries at warehouse stores like Costco. That'd be bizarre to most people outside America.
A lot of cultures you go up to the grocery store to buy what you need for what you're cooking that day. Not going once a month to fill a truckload of year long supplies.
Living in Germany now we go more frequently, but I do miss Costco for a lot of stuff. Costco is easily one of the best parts of American retail culture.
