You need state to be less involved.
“Master-planning” this kind of thing from the top-down doesn’t work. Let’s start with how we define “everything” - what are all the amenities that you would want to have within a 15-minute walk of your home?
This quite obviously differs by community, and changes as those communities change over time (this is the essence of gentrification). In one neighborhood day care centers may be an essential amenity, in another CBD shops. And what qualifies as “grocery store” or “coffee shop”? In one NYC neighborhood it may be a Pathmark, in another Whole Foods.
Even the blurb of the article that you posted highlights that it is government (zoning) that is the impediment, not the solution. And also the Balkanization of American city administration (with lots of local jurisdictions pretending to be “villages” when really they are districts within a metro area of millions), as the article also discusses.
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There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Isaac Asimov
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