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Comment by AmericanChopper | Hacker News Reader

It’s not that hard to understand. People want to take their cars shopping with them. Walking home with your shopping, catching public transport with your shopping, dragging your shopping around from one place to another, are all either inconvenient or impossible depending on what you’re going shopping for. Unless I can easily fit everything I intend to buy in my bag, I’d want to take car with me.

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For this reason, furniture shop, hardware shop, or any shop that tend to sell bulky things is usually not in the city center in a place more accessible by car and with a parking. At least, that's what happening in my city.

For other shopping, you can usually park in a relay parking (a parking close to public transportation) and you will be 5 to 15 minutes from the shops. And unless you brought a real shitons of things (which already means that going shop to shop is going to be annoying anyway) it's not going to be an issue. I lived 8 years in my city without a car. I was very rarely a problem.

The only thing is for people with disability. I can understand that for them, a car can still be practical.

I’ve lived in cites without owning a car for long stretches of my life, I’m in no way a private transport evangelist. But what you’re describing demonstrably a compromise in convenience, and not one that all people are will to make, or one that people will be willing to make every time. This is perfectly easy to understand.

I honestly don't see it that way. Car in city center usually lead to horrible horrible traffic, especially in our old European town where the centers are usually full of narrow streets.

It then becomes annoying for everybody: As a driver, you will be stuck in traffic and pollution most of the time. As a pedestrian, you will have to always mind your surrounding to be safe and you will have to smell the horrible car exhaust.

Since our center is mostly car free, it honestly feel more convenient. Sure you have to sacrifice the convenience of being close to your car, but you can be in and out of the center in a matter of minutes, never be stuck in traffic, and being there is much more enjoyable.

Also, my city converted a lot of road into pedestrian way and they added a lot of place to sit down, take a break, ... Before that, you where always stuck in a narrow sidewalk, bumping into other people with cars going full speed less than 1,50 meters next to you... Not really a pleasant experience. Your only hope to catch a break was in the shops themselves, meaning you where trying you damnest to go from shop A to shop B as quickly as possible. It made people overall more aggressive and your experience very bad.

And finally, they added more green space which help prevent flood which started to appear in the last years because we had too many area covered in asphalt.

But that’s still a compromise in convenience. You’re trading not dealing with one problem for not dealing with another. You’re making a qualitative judgement about which problem you care about the most. It’s not reasonable to assume that everybody cares about the same conveniences that you do.

I prefer the convenience that doesn't eventually set the atmosphere on fire because of mass CO2 release. Car free areas, especially integrated with housing drastically reduces the amount of travel necessary.

Funny thing is for cities with cruise ship ports cars are minor priblem: https://www.thelocal.es/20190606/barcelona-and-palma-ranked-... And for those blancket ban for four wheels won't even make a dent. Interestingly general perception is to get more cruise ships!

The tradeoff being made is a slightly more convenient experience for the shopper at the expense of everyone else in the city due to congestion, noise and pollution. It is selfish.

however, the infrastructure must be in place to make the public transport option viable in the first place.

Drivers cause congestion on the roads not the sidewalks, they’re only affecting other drivers, and if you expect the center of major cities to be a quiet and peaceful place, then I think you’re just setting yourself up for a lifelong disappointment on that front.

Convenience is a low, low bar for anything.

We already live in a society that is WAY too convenient. Instant messaging, online shopping, GPS, Google and all the rest of it has moved us one step closer to a ultimate, permanently-cathetered lifestyle of never having to leave the couch.

Let's welcome a reduction to the tiresome noise of internal combustion, methinks.

If you think convenience is a bad thing, then you’re free to live your life accordingly. But you’re not going to convince many other people to join you.

You can still park outside the city and walk the short distance or if it's too heavy to carry then most stores do free delivery for large orders.

Personally, I just avoid shopping in the city center unless I have a particularly good reason to. But the parent said they couldn’t understand why anybody would want to drive into the city. The answer is perfectly obvious. Convenience, even though it comes at the expense of taking more time. Everybody could do things the way you suggest too, but it would still be less convenient, so not everybody will do that every time. I’m sure many of those same people also buy things online, in circumstance where that’s the more convenient option.

this is a us/australia way of thinking. most of the world just buys what they need for that day on the way home. they don’t need huge refrigerators. and there are more opportunity for social interaction and more exercising.

this is one thing i greatly miss from having worked next to a small grocery store. there were always fresh flowers in the house, and even when i wasn't up to cooking dinner or going out, they had fresh-made items that could quickly heat up.

unfortunately, after leaving that job i could never get back into that habit - maybe because my only other option (two blocks from home) was a large chain store, and the food quality was never quite the same.

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