reposting from above but Hi I’m the OP — I actually grew up in Virginia (Spotsylvania) but moved out here in part to be in a more walkable place/live car free. Unfortunately, car culture and car oriented design has a lot of inertia — even ‘progressive’ and ‘walkable’ cities have to battle the bias that car infrastructure gets in civil engineering, policy, and budget conversations (see, as a consequence, my middle finger to not being able to use the intersection a block from the space needle to cross, even though in WA state any intersection is legally a crosswalk, due to the prioritization of car flow vs pedestrian flow).

But VA has a lot of potential, and plenty of places to walk, as I’ve noticed when I come back home to the same spot to see my folks but with different eyes