"In England, housing is often characterized by closely situated semi-detached or terraced structures built under flexible zoning regulations. This environment allows small businesses to coexist harmoniously with residential areas, in contrast to the rigid industrial zoning common in the United States."
I'm American and live in Oz. Australia does this well imo. Small cafes and shops are sprinkled throughout neighborhoods. For any large grocery runs, I need to take my car but day to day basics (and more importantly...coffee) are within only a few minutes walking distance.
At least in Melbourne, this is only really the case for more established (and typically expensive) suburbs. Go out to Clyde North or Officer and you've got basically nothing in a walkable distance.
Even in (relatively affluent, semi-inner) Burwood East many of the old strip shops have been converted to non-regular or non-retail businesses (e.g kitchen showroom, accountant, baked goods wholesaler). You'd need to go up to Kmart Plaza to get groceries or coffee.
In Sydney, it's generally the case for established neighbourhoods close to the CBD. Walkability in inner city suburbs like Balmain, Leichhardt, Rozelle, any of the eastern suburbs really is super high.
Contrast this to urban-sprawl created suburbs like Marsden Park and a few of the Hills district burbs and it's the opposite - barely any public transport and next to no community infrastructure.
Yeah I’m in Melbourne and thanks to working in tech, I can afford to live in one of those inner areas with cafes and community events at my doorstep. But the average person is forced out to some hellscape like Craigieburn or Melton where kids will be surrounded by mega highways in every direction.
We really need to do more to bring pedestrianisation and walkability out to the cheaper areas rather than having them be a luxury for the rich.
There's an additional factor that is significant in my corner of the world:
Plenty of people work in businesses that are necessarily far from any city, like factories, so not only they can't really afford living in those dense areas with cafes and the lot, they couldn't live there anyway because there's little to no mass transit to this middle of nowhere where they're headed every day, so they need to drive.
Communists approached the problem by just building residential areas around the factory, but it was unhealthy and in this day and age you can't expect anyone to work at the same steel mill for 35 years, like my grandpa did, so it's not a solution.
Usually they're sprinkled on arterials of some scale. Suburbs could support more corner shops and studios, but (at least where I live) it feels like councils are nervous about parking burdens created by these. Developers avoid giving up any more land to parking than they need to. Residents don't want employees and patrons of a corner hairdresser or architect swamping their streets with parked cars. So we mostly get endless blocks of residential, and some old corner stores revert to living rooms instead of what they were designed as.
Not even close but then again I don't know which market in the US to compare to. I'm originally from Houston which is suburban sprawl at its worst. I could get a McMansion for $500k USD.
I live in the northern beaches area of Sydney and a "knockdown rebuild" can go for roughly $2m-3m AUD ($1.3-1.9m USD). I struggle with real estate prices here.
The prices are generally higher however the quality and service is better than what you'd get from Woolworths or Coles, the big chains here. We have a local butcher who's stuff is higher quality than what the chains carry. I can also order stuff not readily available (like a thanksgiving turkey).
I'm American and live in Oz. Australia does this well imo. Small cafes and shops are sprinkled throughout neighborhoods. For any large grocery runs, I need to take my car but day to day basics (and more importantly...coffee) are within only a few minutes walking distance.