I can give you my personal experience over the last decade.
10 years ago I moved into a neighborhood which was quite walkable. My daughter walked to school. She had friends to play with that were on the same dead end street we lived on. There was a convenience store that was a 5 minute walk. A supermarket that was a 5 minute bike ride.
You know how they say you don't realize what you have, till you loose it? Well, 2 years after moving to that house, we found a really good deal on a fixer upper house the next town over. It was a "better" town, with "a good school system". This is basically a nice way of saying it is a richer, whiter town, IMO.
So, we sold the house in the perfect neighborhood and moved 5 miles away to Ellington which is a less developed, more rural town than Vernon.
It is a nice town. The schools are excellent, but, if I had it to do over again, no way in hell would I move. Not for me, but, for my kids.
Kids should not need a chauffeur to play with friends. They should be able to walk/ride a bike to do so.
The road I live on now is a typical country 2 lane. Not quite busy enough for the town to put the money into decent shoulders. And even though it has a posted 35 mph, there are some less busy straight stretches where it's really easy to find yourself doing 50-60 mph.
I ride it all the time on my bike, but, I'm not big on the idea of my 11 year old son doing the same. Another thing about this town that bugs the hell out of me is the fact that almost every single kid rides the bus. Apparently there is some law stating that if there are not sidewalks from the kids front door to the school, he must be bussed. He has a friend that lives about a half mile from school and he rides a bus!!!! This is ridiculous and one of the reasons you see a pretty fair number of fat kids.
So, I agree completely that walkability is worth a considerable amount of money.
It's too bad that most places have been layed out for auto dependence for the better part of a century. Maybe cities which have suffered from the exodus of the middle class, can use the walkability/cyclability angle to attract some back.