Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

> I love how I can just jump on a bike here and be at a large supermarket in 5 minutes

If you live in a large US city, this can still be very manageable. There are two large grocery stores and a small one as well as a Target and a metro line within a 5 minute walk of my house. Apart from the metro line, we didn't really prioritize the grocery stores, etc when looking for a house. That said, there are many downsides to living in big US cities as well.

View on HN

Doesn't sound like a lot to be honest. This is what I'm used to in Germany, say around 1km radius, everything walkable:

* 1x big REWE, 3x small REWE, 1x Real, 1x Netto, 2x ALDI, 3x LIDL, 1x Turkish grocery store, 1x Asian grocery store

* Too many kiosks too count (tobacco, drinks, snacks, maybe like a convinience store)

* Too many bakeries to count

* 2 tram/metro stations, soon to be 3

* 5 bus stations (not counting the weird ones)

What they probably meant was they can hop on a bike and be in /any/ supermarket they fancy in this time.

Your city seems pretty good compared to what we're usually seeing from city planning in the US though.

Oh, that wasn’t an exhaustive list, just the places my wife and I go. We also have various american, african, asian, and middle eastern corner stores and a dozen restaurants, Dollar Store type shops, liquor stores, and some other things I’m forgetting. But I also live between a large park and a body of water so there’s presumably less area in my “1km radius” than yours. Either way, my point wasn’t that my US city is better than European cities, but rather that it’s more walkable than most American cities.

That does sound like the Ruhrpott if I had to guess!

I feel like it could be an elaborate social engineering attack, but yes bingo :)

The Kiosks gave it away! I've never seen such density of them anywhere, incl. Berlin. And definitely not Bavaria! They are pretty cool, so!

Those places tend to be unafordable longterm for anyone making even twice the median salary.

That is ultimately a problem of scarcity. No one is building walkable communities, so the only remaining walkable communities are the "historic" ones that, surprise, everyone wants to live in because the alternative sucks. Elastic demand, inelastic supply.

The channel mentions regularly that this isn't because of a lack of demand, but because of restrictive zoning laws and building codes that forbid it.

Jobs in those places also tend to pay a lot higher than the median salary.

Not in the Midwest.

What are some nice, livable and affordable cities you can recommend in the Midwest where you don't need a car?

As someone who has lived in the Midwest for the past ten years I think you’ll be hard pressed to find this. In Lincoln NE, for example, all new housing for at least the past 30 years has been in car-dependent suburban developments which has resulted in all but the Haymarket district of downtown being car dependent.

That district has been mostly livable without a car for the past couple years after a grocery store was built there. I say “mostly” because as soon as you want to do anything outside of The dozen or so blocks of the Haymarket a car quickly becomes required again.

This is a common theme of walkable areas in the US and Canada. They do still exist but because of the development patterns of the past 30+ years they are small islands in an ocean of cars. Their scarcity also drives up prices and makes them less affordable than surrounding areas.

I’m in Milwaukee, WI. Houses in my neighborhood are a bit expensive - starting around $300k for a SFH - but you can live a very full life without a car. For myself: we have a car for visiting people outside the city and going to the lumberyard, but groceries, schools, parks, hospital, etc are all in walking distance and downtown is about 10 minutes away on the bus

Any college town, to a fair approximation.

Also Carmel, IN for some reason.

Chicago

Reply on news.ycombinator.com