I know what you mean! I&#x27;ve lived in places in Texas that, by all rights[0], should have been walkable, but in practice weren&#x27;t for the very same reasons:<p>1) Social inertia: you&#x27;re going to be the only one doing it, and feel like a pariah.  It also feels like you&#x27;re holding everyone up because they basically expect to be able to turn across a lane that now has a pedestrian.<p>2) Poor design: you have to take a bizarrely circuitous route that makes you ask, &quot;okay, did anyone actually try using this before final approval?&quot;<p>Especially sharp contrast going from my office in SF to the Googleplex in Mountain View -- in the former, I could stroll around, take a walk, go wherever.  At the Googleplex, you end up having to take unofficial routes between buildings -- walk up a sharp driveway (shared with cars) rather than the out-of-way sidewalk, dart across a busy street while traffic is held up, sometimes waiting on the median for the other side to clear up.  Yuck.<p>[0] Example A: Lived in apartment catty-corner from my (large) university in a small town.  Much of the route didn&#x27;t have a sidewalk, just a curb and some dirt&#x2F;grass. People would actually ask if you needed a lift!  No, just walking to my apartment, 1&#x2F;3 mile away!<p>Example B: Lived in an apartment directly across the street (a two-lane, slow one) from a shopping center and less than a half mile from a bar -- but again, drivers don&#x27;t expect you to cross the street or walk alongside it, and no sidewalk to the bar.<p>(Just realized this post has a ton of words that are different in British English.)