Comment by rekado | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rekado | Hacker News Reader

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I've never owned a car in my life, never got a drivers license. I live in a walkable city (Berlin, close to the border). When I need to haul things around the city I take the cargo bike.

For decades I simply carried groceries in a big backpack and walked to the markets on foot (they are all within a 10 minute radius from where I live). I'd call the layout of my neighborhood functional and efficient.

Adverse weather has never been an issue for me. It's not like I regularly have things to haul that cannot possibly be rescheduled to a time after a thunderstorm. Some drizzle is barely even an inconvenience. Having to share the road with cars is the most annoying part of being mobile in the city.

> Also in urban environments, making a lot of "inviting" public spaces for people to hang around and loiter is not always a great idea.. this also attracts a lot of crime, drugs etc

I'd like to have more convenient access to drugs, but our parks don't seem to attract enough dealers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Seriously, though: when drugs and crime become a problem, making public spaces hostile to all people seems like a solution that should not be among the top ten.

Same here, the supermarket is 3' away by foot and I've never even thought "oh man, I should take the car and go to the larger supermarket that's 15' away".

It's just not inconvenient at all. I wonder if the difference in opinion is from a lack of exercise? I don't mind carrying 20kg of stuff back home in bags, I'm used to it and it's good to get at least some exercise.

Haha carrying 20kg of stuff back home in bags, that's ridiculous! Yeah do that after a long day of work, and also you can forget ever having any energy left for doing any sport because now your only sport ever is carrying groceries. What a poor life

This is the way I live, you think I've never shopped after work? If I couldn't carry 20kg for 200m, I'd have more of a problem with how I live than where.

Yes but it's an incredibly strenuous and unnecessarily hard way of life, if that's what you want, fine, but society at large has as a core value to eliminate unnecessary, hard, repetitive tasks so that's not going to be a good way to structure neighborhoods.

I don't think we'll ever agree, because there seems to be a fundamental difference here. You speak as if I'm toiling in the mines all day, whereas I don't even think of it as particularly hard or annoying.

I'm also noticing the absence of any 'average American' experiences in this thread...although COVID has disrupted average a little.

> Yes but it's an incredibly strenuous and unnecessarily hard way of life

What are you, a granny? It is not strenuous or difficult at all.

I agree it's a hassle, but at least it does help provide some exercise.

It's no wonder the US has such a high obesity and diabetes rate, with a sedentary society like that.

If anyone seriously considers transporting 20kg for 200m "incredibly strenuous and unnecessarily hard way of life" then it is hard to treat them seriously.

Note that you can put it into backpack or use something like https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wozek+na+zakupy&t=ffab&iar=images&... (sorry, not sure how it is called in English).

PS Unless they have serious medical issues, far worse than typical. Or they are really old or really young. But in such cases they likely should not drive anyway.

I think the most common way to call it would be "utility trolley" or "utility cart". Usually the ones you'll see in the U.S. are all metal and can fold up to make it easier to put them in car trunks or carry them on buses.

do you even lift?

20kg is quite on extreme side. Also, walking for 350m with 20kg of stuff is unlikely to be a problem unless you have massive health problems.

With something like https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wozek+na+zakupy&t=ffab&iar=images&... it is even simpler - my 80 years old grandmother is using it for shopping.

> your only sport ever is carrying groceries. What a poor life

Just how much stuff you buy? Maybe you live in awful city with shops more than 500m away from your home?

Yeah, that’s a big part of it. If you have shops within walkable distance, you don’t need to carry huge amounts of groceries. You can just grab a few things to last you the next three days on your way past!

If you think this is strenuous and unreasonable for an able bodied person, then I think you need to level set with the rest of humanity. Also, just get a bike with a basket if you don't like carrying stuff. Personally I feel super stressed and mentally exhausted on the occasions I have to spend the afternoon urban driving... Give me the 20kg walk any day!

20 kg seems like a lot for walkable grocery shopping unless you're intentionally getting a bunch of bulk staples all at once.

It's not every time, but when we need water I get two sixpacks (for balance) and those are 18kg alone.

Not that there's anything wrong with tap water, but eeeh.

Tap water plus SodaStream is the life for me.

Oh wow, that's a great idea! I don't much like carbonated water, but if you do, this'll make your life amazing.

Regular brita filter is great solution for drinkable tap water.

I tried that but the jug had a weird smell. I don't know if those filters that go on the tap directly are better, I keep meaning to try them. Have you?

Filtering tap water at home has been a solved issue for generations. From ceramic water filters (CWF), ceramic candles to reverse osmosis and etc...c’mon dude.

Haha, I'm sorry my filter question offends you.

>I've never even thought "oh man, I should take the car and go to the larger supermarket that's 15' away".

This is funny and I think very cultural. I'm American and would walk 20 minutes to a large super market and carry 20kg back, up and down hills in San Francisco no less. I too enjoyed the exercise. I knew plenty of people who would shop at smaller stores, mostly people who grew up in cities, but I never really liked it. I grew up going to large super markets and find grocery shopping at them cathartic.

I think I'm the opposite, I prefer smaller shops because I find the big supermarkets extremely tiring. I think it's because of how hard your brain needs to work in them, you need to be making "do I need this?" snap decisions very quickly as you roll through the aisles.

Our neighborhood supermarkets are the size of, say, a basketball court, so they're not as tiring.

Yeah and if you stopped doing that and instead used a car to buy your groceries or ordered them delivered to your doorstep, you would have more free time and more energy. People want free time and energy. Just because it "works" for you to walk in the cold rain carrying groceries in a backback, doesn't make it the best solution. If there are better solutions, why insist on doing it the worst possible way?

Walking for 10 minutes with an umbrella to the shop takes about the same effort as packing all this things into car and later unloading it and driving.

Or even less if shop is 300m away.

Oh, you misunderstand. Involving a car would most definitely not make it a better solution.

I have no interest whatsoever to involve cars in my life. Having to share the roads with them is bad enough. (The arrogance of space is ridiculous.)

Deliveries: these cost little because people aren't paid properly. If I wanted to pay them properly, I wouldn't be able to use their services much. So instead of normalizing exploitation in the name of convenience, I prefer not to use delivery services when it can be avoided. And with different supermarkets in almost every direction, within 10mins on foot they most definitely can be avoided. I don't mean to moralize, and I'll step right off this soap box, but keeping bad jobs alive is a disservice to my community.

More energy / more free time: neither the time nor the energy are wasted. If you want, you can see the time spent as an investment into health and focus, a tool for stress-reduction, an active period of mental rest, but really: this is not a zero sum game.

I don't think any of this will convince you, and I'm not trying to. But perhaps you can see that your view on the "best solution" is hardly universal and well-established alternatives exist that work for a surprisingly large number of people.

> and with different supermarkets in almost every direction, within 10mins on foot they most definitely can be avoided.

You do realize that this is just your privilege? Most of people don't have everything in the walking reach, some would have to bike up a hill for a few kilometers to get to a shop, etc?

Don't get me wrong, it's great that you can, but it's just a lucky consequence of where you live, not something that's universally applicable to everyone.

> You do realize that this is just your privilege?

This is exactly what TFA is about. It should not be a privilege, but it is, because we made it scarce. Not because it is more expensive to create, it is not.

I live in the Netherlands. Being able to walk to the supermarket in 10mins is very common. What you call privilege, we just call urban planning.

Good for you, I don't, and that's my whole point. What works for you wouldn't necessarily work for me, and not because we are savages incapable of urban planning, but because there are real challenges totally different than in Holland (geographical, economical, historical, cultural, etc.). Simply, what you call "urban planning" is way easier to do in a flat land and specific types of architecture, where cities where already built with planned street layouts, wide boulevards, etc. I happen to live in an old city with lots of narrow, one way streets, steep hill slopes, etc. and urban planning can get you only as far, without resorting to destroying historical neighborhoods just to make space for bike lanes. And btw my city is perfectly walkable, to make it clear, it's just not particularly bike friendly...

Anyway, my point being that IMHO it's not always a good idea to just try to copy/paste architectural and urbanistic solutions between regions with very different geography, culture and population density, no matter how trendy the idea is.

> You do realize that this is just your privilege?

Yes, that's the point, though. This discussion thread is about walkable cities.

I should also point out that urban planning that gives priority to people who walk benefits everyone, independent of their income. This cannot be said for designs that give priority to cars.

What bikes have to do with walkable cities? IME the explosion of popularity of e-bikes, e-scooters, etc. made my own city only less enjoyable for walking, not more. IMHO if you want a walkable city it should be organized around pedestrians and efficient means of public mass-transport (trains, trams, electric busses), not bikes... and all I hear is a push for replacing cars with e-bikes...

> Yeah and if you stopped doing that and instead used a car to buy your groceries or ordered them delivered to your doorstep, you would have more free time and more energy. People want free time and energy.

From my personal experience, I've found that doing physical exercise (paradoxically enough) seems to give me more energy. On those days where I've sat still all day I'm much more likely to feel like doing nothing after work, whereas when I've done my usual cycle commute I'm usually a lot more mentally alert. YMMV of course, but given the choice I'll personally rather do more than less physical exercise, even if it's small activities here and there like lugging some groceries.

Yeah but people should be free to use whatever form of physical exercise that they want. Should we never do any sports anymore and instead just force everyone to do inefficient transportation? That's just making life so much more poor.

Seems to me you’re the one insisting in doing something in the worst possible way.

I have a high street lined with shops on my way home where I can stop by, have a quick chat, perhaps pick up something that caught my attention as the scent of freshness overwhelmed my senses when I walked into the shop owned by a person that invites me for a drink and has visited my house socially.

The newest place near me right now was opened by an investment banker that chose to optimise for his hairline in his own words, so when I stop there to get stock up on exotic groceries, that is the best solution for me and if it’s raining, so what? I’ve got towels at home.

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