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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

In a walkable city with small markets, you pop into the market as you walk past it on the way home from work, grab ~4 things for supper and carry them home. It takes about 5 minutes, and you do it 7 times a week.

In a surburb, you spend some time making a shopping list to ensure you don't forget something, drive to the store, spend at least 30 minutes getting everything (it takes at least 5 minutes to walk from one end of the store to another), spend time waiting in line and checking out, drive back, unpack, et cetera. The whole process takes about 2 hours.

Which is the massive inconvenience?

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I'd question those numbers: 5 minutes for urban shopping and 2 hours for suburb shopping. So you're saying that in 7 5 minute stops (35 minutes), you're able to accomplish what it takes someone else in a suburban mega-grocery store to accomplish in 2 hours?

Apart from that, though, almost anything that you can easily plan out and do in bulk is going to out-efficiency something done in smaller iterations involving a lot of repeated steps (going in, walking around, checking out, etc.).

When we go shopping on the weekends, we mostly buy for the entire week. We buy quantities of food that can make plenty of leftovers and buy water/soft drinks by the cases that last several weeks. We try to make the process as efficient as possible and we could stop by the store more often since it's close - but that would waste a lot of efficiency.

It's more like 10, and you probably don't do it 7 days a week. You take a bus or train to your convenient stop near the market. Walk into the market, grab a basketful of goods, pay, walk home.

If the choice is between driving to the store 1x a week vs 7x a week, then you have an excellent point, but if the choice is between driving 1x a week and walking 5-7x a week, in the long run the latter is much better for my health, and it replaces time I spend on the treadmill in the gym.

Carrying bottled water and soft drinks is a major hassle without a car.

That's why we just drink tap water, or water with syrup if you like something sweet (a bottle of syrup lasts a week). It's a lot cheaper, too.

> almost anything that you can easily plan out and do in bulk is going to out-efficiency something done in smaller iterations

Not always. When I cycle or catch the bus home, I pop into the shops near my house, grab some stuff I need, and then continue on the way. Or I grab stuff at the supermarket near work, and cycle home with it in a bag.

Now I don't need to plan a big trip. I am already traveling to go home.

you're overlooking the price differences between these two modes of shopping.

There's no reason you can't combine the two. My experience in Padova was that there wasn't a huge difference, as the local supermarket wasn't a tiny corner store. Some items we'd buy in bulk less often with our car.

you pop into the market as you walk past it on the way home from work,

We're not European, we're not going to be European...ever. We just don't "pop in" to some market while we're walking by. We pop-in while we're driving by or we plan to drive 5 minutes to an awesome supermarket.

Just stop this constant crap about walking and "only if we're like some European village" crap that will never happen in America.

> that will never happen in America.

It happens a lot in New York City, and other dense urban areas in the US.

Where besides NYC? Nowhere. Americans like their cars. They like to drive. America is not the collectivist/statists that represent modern HN...which is pretty sick.

Hackers are anti-establishment! Hackers are not conformists that defer to government minders!

The insanity in your comment is the idea that urban density is the statist / authoritarian / corrupt central planning piece.

Try reading Louis Hyman's "Debtor Nation," particularly the bits on FHA and the creation of a national (and heavily subsidized) mortgage market.

The sub/exurbs, the essential symbiotes of car culture, are the dirigiste statist artifacts.

(yes, also a lot of the people who want to have you sell your Nissan Armada are also like that, and it's fair of you to call out statist authoritarian where you see them. But it's lunacy to suggest that suburbs and car culture just represent an organic Choice of the Free Market™)

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