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Comment by nemo44x | Hacker News Reader

If you travel or stay long enough you'll find there's plenty of bedroom communities in Europe - you just didn't go to them because why would a tourist go to them? The typical layout is town->multi-family housing surrounding the town that is walkable->larger housing (mix of multi/attached and detached ) that is not walkable. Older parts of the USA (pre-war) are very similar in that there's lots of mixed zoned areas where people live among the shops and services local to them.

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Well I was primarily visiting family so lots of bedroom communities that by USA standards feel almost like a downtown. Even a rural village had a boulangerie and coffee place within a 20min walk.

Also I spent the first 28 years of my life in Europe so I feel like I have somewhat of a grasp for what it’s like. Just that these defaults become more obvious when you live elsewhere for a while.

Even those bedroom communities are a lot more livable than their US equivalents, because they have local amenities, meaning you're not forced to go to some big-box store or strip mall for stuff like you do in the US. They function as small towns, not just vast swathes of houses, which makes them more sustainable.

I agree that it's weird that people want to live in places where there's nowhere to walk to and the landscape is houses with nearly no landscaping except for lawns and some shrubs. Not even trees - just a lawn desert of isolated homes. It's not even a cost thing in many cases as the homes are not cheap or small, etc.

Carrefour is one of the largest retailers on earth utilizing a big box model. They’re all over bedroom communities in suburban Paris.

> Carrefour is one of the largest retailers on earth utilizing a big box model.

In the 70s already, the one near Toulouse was for some time perhaps the largest superstore in the world (at least the largest in Europe).

When big box retail came around, we weren’t forced to go there, we chose their selection, prices, and hours over the smaller stores that couldn’t successfully compete. They’re worse job creators but better at distributing stuff to the region.

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