I had a hard time understanding the meaning of this sentence, and its context. The idea of "driving downtown to go shopping" is backwards to me. You live downtown, and walk a few meters to the shop.
Then I realized that you may be from the USA, where your cities seem to be turned inside out. You are indeed a funny country.
US cities, at least the ones where downtown has turned around, have a donut-shaped wealth distribution; rich downtown, blighted inner-city and inner-ring, outer wealthy suburbs.
in the UK, town centre development has been hindered particularly by the effects of having caused a diverse small business and retail environment to grow around central developments, whose owners have fiercely opposed any disruption that could be created by heavy works, regardless of the importance to their ultimate survival.
consider where the central mall provides the only large scale car parking availability for the surrounding areas, like in my home town and the situation in Windsor afaict whenever I visit, which has a large town centre retail district without any suitable parking for the sprawl of retailers outward from the centre complexes.
edit splitting to avoid confusion after accidentally posting early :
concluding without the argument I originally intended, I suspect that the data is so poorly collected and used that we could very likely find many new ways to revitalise our town centers getting plenty of sensible fresh investment to pursue models we've been simply overlooking
It’s a really sad story that’s helped make the poor even poorer.
You can learn more about it here:
- https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/white-f...
- https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2018/03/white-fligh...
- https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history...
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/redlining-what-is-history-mike-...
Both, really. From all the people I know, there's only one person who cannot walk from his place to a nearby bakery. And in that case it was a conscious decision to "become isolated" and buy a house in an unlikely place. Walking every morning to buy bread for breakfast is a deeply entrenched cultural thing. I cannot really imagine living somewhere where this is not possible. Most of urbanized places are indeed downtown.
Sadly, bakeries in America are rare. Your daily bread comes from the supermarket. Much of it isn't baked on site, and it's designed to keep for several days. We don't have a tradition of daily fresh bread, which is too bad for a lot of reasons.
But Americans have plenty of food options so don't weep too much for us. If you want decent bread, it's available in many places, including many of those supermarkets and chain bakeries like Panera. It's not magnificent bread, but it's good. Magnificent bread is also available; it's just not a priority.
Americans do have a pretty dysfunctional relationship with food, and we'd be a lot healthier if we fixed it. But the mall isn't really part of that. That's more about the supermarket than the mall, and those are separate niches.
So for most people in the area, going anywhere besides a recreational walk, requires getting in a car.
I don't believe this situation is unique to United States with regards to similar towns.
That’s incredible! The mall near me that has all of that requires a few thousand meters of storefronts in 5-6 buildings just to pack all of that in.
Where is this place?
Exactly. Most small towns in the suburbs of Paris are just like that if you live within 1km of the center.
EDIT: It's nothing particular to France either. If you go to any city with more than, say, 20.000 or 30.000 inhabitants in western Europe (at least the countries that I know), it will be quite similar.
EDIT: no need to take a plane... if you need some proof, look at this google maps/street view link: https://goo.gl/maps/iDirDFH16d8xMvwx9 All the things that you mention on your "snarky" message can be indeed found on the couple of pedestrian streets that you see here. Except for the cinema, but there is a theatre (now closed due to covid). If you want a cinema you need to walk less than 2km to the one in the next town.
I love those little towns and have dreamed of retiring to one. (One thing I need to figure out how to say in French is "How is the Internet there?"... though I suppose these days I could even get one of those nearly-dead little villages they sell so cheaply and bring a Starlink.)
I think the distance between rural towns is generally more like 5-10km each direction in the parts of the US I am familiar with. 2km through a densely populated urban area is very different from 10km through the countryside too.