Someone walking through a six-story downtown is, by such a measurement, traveling faster than a car traveling at ~90 mph through suburbia.
(Of course, a car can't travel that quickly through suburbia.)
In the worst flat in these terms I ever had in a city over here was 10 minutes walk to the next grocery shop and this was a dirt cheap flat on a loud main road.
Even parts of the town where you have mostly residential housing will have the occasional small shop, grocery store, gas station or similar. If I understood zoning in the US correctly this kind of mixing is at times even forbidden?
To be fair this exists in many of areas in the US as well.
From my suburban single family home in a small town in California I can easily walk to all those things in a few minutes, including 24x7 supermarket, another nicer supermarket, plenty of restaurants, movies, stores of nearly all kinds, playgrounds, sports fields, etc.