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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

I said that too. And I'm not a millenial but a 70's kid. And then I had kids of my own and now I can't imagine not having a car to stuff the kids into, or a big backyard so I don't have to walk to the park with them to play. It's not like I wan't to drive everywhere, it's just the tradeoff I'm happy to accept in order to have a house with a big backyard for the kids to play in.

So this is nothing new. People have always preferred one thing, and changed their minds when having kids.

I imagine I'll be going back to my previous lifestyle (Urban instead of suburban) when the kids can take care of themselves.

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You have to drive everywhere because everything is so far apart to make room for all the roads and parking and setbacks to avoid the problems created by all the cars.

Partly true, although I'm not even in a sprawled suburb, it's rather compact and well connected with public transport - but still once I have the house I almost can't go without a car because of all the stuff you need when you have (and maintain) a house.

Also some things are far apart by definition. Going fishing, to the forest, or just the Sunday morning hockey practice etc is part of "the package" of stuff you can do with a house and car. I Wouldn't trade those for a situation where my house was much closer to work and the area more dense, but I'd have no car.

The one thing that could revolutionize this is rental car pools with self driving cars. In the urban areas where parking is a hassle and the shared cars are always parked nearby, shared cars is becoming more common. That doesn't work in the suburb though. If I could summon a shared car when I need it, I wouldn't need a car of my own. That would mean the suburbs could be denser and have less cars.

I grew in Brazil, where it was possible to have a big family and grow up in the city. The issue is not that one has grown up, or that one has a family. The issue is that society forces you down a path at a certain point in life, instead of presenting the options (which, if they were given equally, living in a city would almost certainly win).

And a car is darn convenient for a family-sized weekly grocery trip.

Dramatically more convenient is having 3 grocery stores within 4 blocks, so you can buy groceries in small batches every other day, or wheel a wagon over for a larger load.

I'm surprised you don't have better delivery options in the US, in the UK the main supermarkets all offer good internet ordering.

I have excellent delivery options but I want to see what I'm buying so I very much prefer driving to the grocery store. Even if 90% of the products are of the kind you can buy without seeing (detergents, canned foods etc) the stuff I need to see like fresh fish/fresh meat etc is so important for what else I'll need. I could probably get a lot of the recurring purchases delivered but I'm not going to shop for groceries any less than 2-3 times per week anyway.

But then if you follow this line of thought you can deliver the bulk and go only to the grocer for the smaller, easy to carry purchases. So, maybe, there is no need for the car anymore?

There are delivery options, but lots of people don't use them.

(1) It's nice to see food first, especially produce and to a lesser extend meat.

(2) "Buy X for me every week" is where delivery shines, but you can't adjust for deals.

And a car is darn convenient for a family-sized weekly grocery trip.

Agreed. However the only reason I have to make "family-sized weekly grocery trip" is because there is nowhere within easy walking distance for quick daily grocery trips.

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