Hacker News Reader

Nothing about cars specifically enables this. Building cities so that you have to drive to travel any significant distance, however, guarantees that you need a car to take advantage of competitive pricing. But that's self-apparent... Building dense cities that can be accessed by bike and on foot would have the same effect. Spreading out your city so that what could be a 15 minute walk is now a 15 minute drive isn't an improvement.

> Building dense cities that can be accessed by bike and on foot would have the same effect.

I love density, but, in my experience this is not true. London doesn't have a large competitive market of grocery stores. Neither does Boston or New York City.

Density means higher real estate prices, that means grocery store sizes go down, and the barrier to entry goes up. Yes you can get more small specialty shops (which is great!) but I've had times where I've had to go to 3 different large supermarkets to find some oddball item I needed, and density would make that even harder on me since stores would have a smaller variety of stock.

Of course the 2 largest grocery store chains in America are trying to merge, so very soon American cities won't have much competition either.

I'm not saying density isn't good, it is, and it makes lots of shopping easier, but certain types of (uniquely) American retail experiences fall apart when cities become more dense.

Heck Seattle already is dense enough that there is only 1 Costco within the city limits, the density of Costco's in the suburbs surrounding Seattle is actually quite high! Prior to living in the city proper, I was a 15 minute drive from two Costcos! Now I am a 30 minute drive from one Costco. Since I don't have the time to go that far on a frequent basis for groceries, I am paying more for food living in a city that has more grocery stores around me, than I was when I lived in the suburbs.

The Costco's are a result of bulk buying, which relies on motorized transport and easy at-home refrigeration, both very American things. The more European tradition of buying food multiple times per week is odd in America outside of a few downtown cores.

That doesn't match my experience in Boston.

Multiple neighborhoods I lived in had walking access to Stop & Shop, Star Market, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Target, bfresh, cheap overstock/clearance stores, a farmers market, and other independent grocers, many catering to nationalities/ethnicities with large subcommunities in the area. Just a train or bus ride away I could go to Market Basket, Roche Brothers, Wegmans, a worker owned-co-op, and more farmers markets and independent grocers.

Costco was a longer train ride away, but accessible if you wanted something specifically from there. Delivery is more economical because of the shorter distances involved.

You can see this yourself by doing a map search.

In rural areas I've lived, one is common, sometimes zero within a fifteen minute drive. Suburban areas might have two or three regional supermarkets, plus Walmart, Target, Costco and/or Sam's, but always way fewer within the area covered by the same travel time.

May depend on the part of Boston, my wife used to live there and her area didn't have much, she was either walking a mile or taking the train to a different area.

Different parts of Boston is incredibly varied though, I shouldn't have made a general statement.

The only area where that isn't true is basically West Roxbury, which is the most car-oriented area of Boston.

Huh? London has Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Morrisons, Aldi, Lidl, Asda, Co-op Food, Iceland and Marks & Spencer Food.

Here's a map of all of them: https://maps.walkingclub.org.uk/shops/

Alternative map: https://www.toptiplondon.com/food-drink/london-supermarkets-...

When I was doing AirBnB[1] in London, I noticed that the vast majority of London's grocery stores were quite small compared to the stores in America. The small co-op near me is about the size of an average London grocery store, and the selection of stock is poor enough that I really can't get much shopping done there.

London does have larger stores, but it isn't like in America where the average grocery store is, well, huge.

(Obviously some chains such as Asda have larger stores!)

On the west coast at least, American grocery stores are either small like Trader Joe's (Aldi sized I believe), tiny local ethnic stores, or you start getting into larger and larger categories that start at "really damn big" and end up at "you can get lost here".

The "you can get lost here" sized stores typically have much cheaper prices, and families go there on weekends to buy essentials (meat, veggies) to stay on budget.

All in all I'm not saying it is a bad thing, having a higher density of grocery stores is nice, it means going to the grocery store isn't a dedicated trip, but those cheap huge discount stores are very nice to have around.

[1] I like to stay for awhile in the middle of cities so I can actually shop at local stores, cook some food myself, etc.

From NYC, within a 15 minute walk from my door:

- Whole Foods

- Key Food

- 2-3 specialty grocers (think italian importers, etc.)

- gourmet grocer

- two butcher shops and a fresh fish shop

- CVS (yes, they sell groceries! spooky)

- 2-3 bodegas that sell shelf-stable goods, as well as a small collection of fruit and vegetables

If you go expand it to 15 minute bike, the world is truly your oyster, but the primary one that pops up is Trader Joe's.

The most remarkable part of this description, is that it identifies at least 4 or 5 different neighborhoods in NYC, those are only the ones I can think of off the top of my head, and I haven't been close to everywhere.

There's a lot of things to knock about NYC, but it's easily the most walkable city in the US, that I've seen.

Sure but everyone would expect that in New York but people on here tend to miss that suburbs can be walkable too. I live in the most suburban neighborhood 25 miles away from central Phoenix that you could possibly imagine and have a 15 minute walk to 2 full size grocery stores, several bars, a wide variety of restaurants, plenty (an understatement) of medical offices, coffee shops etc. 20 minutes gets me to Walmart, a movie theater, and tons more. Having been to New York many times I strongly prefer the walk through tree lined, low traffic and noise streets that I have here.

But where is the calculation for all the effort to distribute food to all those tiny shops? It is comes in via truck/van often at night. Central large stores, with customers buying in bulk, means fewer trips. The total carbon/energy in the system isn't as simple as saying "walking is better". It may be that a monthly trip to fill a pickup with food is more green than thirty daily trips to the corner shop by foot. Environmental concerns and modern lifestyle trends don't always line up nicely.

I Costco baker told me once that they used less preservative in bread than small bakers. Costco has such a high turnover that they don't need bread that can survive a whole day on the shelf. Same too with their vegetables that spend far less time in transit than they would getting to a tiny farmers market.

100s of people driving individual cars to get to a grocery store is absolutely less efficient than a couple dozen box trucks delivering food to smaller localized stores. Not to mention, we can electrify those delivery trucks and negate a lot of the carbon emissions. Even if you electrify all of those cars you still have the massive environmental impact of building and maintaining the roads and parking lots they have to use. Individualized auto transit is a blight. "Modern lifestyle trends" not lining up with environmental concerns is usually more of an issue of modern lifestyle trends being unsustainable.

> It may be that a monthly trip to fill a pickup with food is more green than thirty daily trips to the corner shop by foot

Not if that family uses that same truck for commuting every day or for trips to the pharmacy or movie theater or whatever.

I look forward to the day when we all drive semi trucks to work so that we can journey cross country to stock up on goods and not have to deal with the corrupt long-haul trucking industry.

I have a weakness for fresh food so stocking up once a month doesn't appeal to me.

Depends on definition of fresh. I like fresh bread and so make it at home. One can definitely bulk-buy ingredients for fresh bread.

Your food will be flash frozen to preserve taste and nutrition!

Reminder that it only takes about 6 minutes to bike a mile, or 8 if you go at a leisurely Dutch pace. You don't need cars to go far enough to have quite a few options, you just need the infrastructure to let you do so.

Lol. Maybe is Seattle or SF. Biking in unplowed snow/ice is far slower, when it is even possible.

Unplowed? Sure, but cities should be plowing. Driving on unplowed snow/ice is also far slower. :)

The city doesn't plow the sidewalks and bike trails, at least not until the roads are passable. First priority is emergency services and highway connections to the outside world, not shovelling out bike trails through the woods. Even then, we drive on compact snow for 1/3 the year.

Then this goes back to what I said initially:

> you just need the infrastructure to let you do so

Yes, if your city treats cycling as an afterthought, it will be less practical to cycle. If your city treated driving as an afterthought, it would be less practical to drive. You get what you build for and what you prioritize.

> Even then, we drive on compact snow for 1/3 the year.

Oulu has snow for half of the year and still has a substantial cycling mode share, because they prioritize it: https://youtu.be/s3Sx_OH_wok

Lots of alternative transport things are possible in cities with 10x the population and 4x the urban density. And little farming/agra business. In a country one can drive across in a day. There is no comparison to the middle parts of North America.

We're talking about cities, so... the urban density of Oulu is 2,372/sq mi. The urban density of Indianapolis is 2,352.6/sq mi. Pretty comparable!

But it seldom snows in Seattle, so they don't bother to invest in any snow-clearing infrastructure - the city just shuts down for a day or two after a mild snowstorm.

San Francisco is known for its hills, but Seattle has some pretty bike-unfriendly hills as well, unless you've got an electric motor attached to your bike.

> it only takes about 6 minutes to bike a mile, or 8 if you go at a leisurely Dutch pace.

What's the pace in Seattle? The Dutch don't have many meaningful hills, Seattle on the other hand...

I can choose between 5 supermarkets in a walking distance. And they are all busy.

America is just not denselly populated enough to really make it worth your while to build a supermarket ever 3 miles. Too much empty space so people refuse to live efficiently.

> The next stage, pickup trucks, then empowers retailers to sell large products (appliances)

Most people buy appliance at most once a decade. There’s a reason the bed of trucks have shrunk while cabs have grow over the years: most people don’t need trucks. The harm pickup trucks cause society has to be worse than this empowerment.

Pickups are way more dangerous in an accident, way more likely to get in an accident, and require way more fuel to power. You’d have to empower a lot of appliance sales before this can even come close to balancing out.