You could do the same in a dense area but then you run into housing cost/size problems. I don't see how you get the typical 4/3 suburban house and a low cost of living without driving.
I wonder if all those loaves of bread and coffees cost more than tires, having 2 or 3 cars, obesity, and lost productivity from car crashes and deaths (among other things)? Scale can make things cheaper, but is cheapness the goal? And scale in this context also creates centralization which has some fragile properties at times.
> You could do the same in a dense area but then you run into housing cost/size problems. I don't see how you get the typical 4/3 suburban house and a low cost of living without driving.
Tear down a house in the suburbs and put in a little market/grocery store and you don't need to drive anywhere you just walk over. The only reason all of the best neighborhoods you've ever been to are so expensive is because we just don't build mixed-use, medium density development. And also you can look at countries in places like Europe to see how it has been achieved. I'm not sure the premise of 4/3 suburban house is a good one. It's like saying how can you use AWS when you have this server rack in the basement that you have to use.
It's just cultural and institutional inertia driving us down bad paths because we don't have a good market mechanic to realize costs.
Except everyone with a reliable car still drives to the large grocery store and with a wide selection which has lower prices and better selection on basics but makes it up with lower volume, high margin luxuries that the small market c doesn't have floor space for, and the small market, even if it starts as something else, ends up specializing in alcohol, tobacco, and dry goods, and neglecting general grocery items. Unless it's an area with a particular ethnic concentration and the small market survives by focussing on the unique demands of that ethnic community in a way that the larger store with a wider catchment area doesn't have any real incentive to.
Its not that there aren't enough small markets opened in areas of single-family homes to see this trend; you can't fix it with zoning, at least not in the manner you describe. (You can by driving density to transport capacity to the point where driving to the large grocery is impractical, of course, but that tends to be beyond allowing medium density, mixed use development.)
Wiley St. Co-op and Jenifer St. Market are both relatively small grocery stores in the Marquette neighborhood of Madison, WI. The co-op is a bit larger, but less densely stocked and has no alcohol. Jenifer St. is packed to the gills, and sells alcohol. Both are surrounded by primarily single-family homes, with a few apartment buildings within walking distance. Neither are "ethnic" food stores, and neither sell much in the way of junk food, and neither sells tobacco.
I've been visiting them both for about 20 years whenever we visit relatives in Madison. I've always found them both remarkable, even given their placement in probably one of the most suitable locations in the USA for this sort of thing.
Of course, were I to comment on my own comment, I'd probably say "Yep, the exception(s) that prove the rule".
So I know this problem is solvable because it is solved in places that are not the US
It would take me 3 minutes just to walk out of my apartment complex, and another 5 to get to the supermarket right next door to the apartments.
What you have as a supermarket in your country must be different than what we have here in the US: Kroger, Albertson's, SafeWay, Von's, etc... These are very large buildings that take up a lot of property.
Taking a different friend's address in the suburbs, he has 3 supermarkets within a 10 minute walk (800m).
In the city centre, there are 10 supermarkets within a 5 minute walk.
The supermarkets in the city centre are smaller, and have a relatively limited range, although in practise I do 95% of my shopping at one. You choose a different supermarket if you need an upmarket/wider selection, but it doesn't matter as it's so close by (exception: if I really need something like a particular lactose free cheese for a recipe, I'll just go to an inner city supermarket rather than checking 3-4 shops in the centre). There is no parking.
In the inner city, perhaps 20% of them are large enough to be selling clothes, a few toys etc. There might be parking for 0-6 cars. Not having to walk across a ginormous car park saves a lot of distance.
You'll need to travel further (on average) to buy a barbecue, tent, etc. I think I remember the large American supermarkets selling this sort of thing — in Denmark, you'll need to go to the DIY / sports / etc shop. This will have a car park.
Example, though you could zoom into any European city and search "supermarket" on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/search/supermarket+in+Herlev/@55... -- Coop 365, Netto, Fakta, Føtex, Lidl and Rema 1000 are normal supermarkets.
And that's if you don't get it delivered. And even so that is when you use the car (hence why Europeans have a lot of hatchbacks). Not driving to a grocery store a quarter mile away to get a bag of chips that you forgot for a party. The energy expenditure for that is crazy. It's no wonder America has such high resource consumption.
> The supermarkets in the city centre are smaller
Then maybe they are not actually supermarkets, instead small markets or grocery stores?
Otherwise, I am not sure where to draw the line between a grocery and a supermarket.
It used to be that groceries were smaller shops with fewer categories of goods and less range within those categories -- they didn't sell toiletries, or light bulbs, or paper plates, or socks. Rice came in white and brown.
But around 10 years ago the large supermarkets started to take over shops this size, except with the same building they can use more floor space for retail. Their well-run logistics means they can deliver to them every day or two, so the smaller shop doesn't need a large stock room to maintain a wide range. Therefore, the smaller/independent general grocery businesses have mostly gone, but I can choose from perhaps 8-10 kinds of rice, compared to the 16-20 they have at the largest stores. The 8-10 kinds will be varied according to the area.
I do 80% of my shopping at one of these shops, 15% at another one (when I fancy a change, or walk home a different way), and less than 5% at a supermarket large enough to sell toasters, toys, televisions and t-shirts.
High enough density to have a locals within ~1/2 mile, and or a location where people stop on their way to or from work are how you keep prices reasonable. It’s never directly competitive with Walmart etc but being much closer is a real advantage.
The town itself is pretty self-sufficient, usually has a co-op, general store, single main road going through downtown, sidewalks, etc.
Larger cities do have suburbs like you're describing, but generally they do have their own amenities like fast food courts / grocery stores / school systems near the entrances of the housing developments, the commuting is generally only because of work, which hopefully we can make more remote to ease traffic for physical workers.
Remote work should make them more viable, before you could either just farm or mine.
Industrial period nearly killed small towns as people flocked to the city for factory work.
There's at least one, but not more than a few, exceptions in each state (Asheville, NC for example) where people move in with their money to larp "small town living" but it depends on outside capital to work and the original residents end up getting priced out.
Though some starkly do not. Before the pandemic, a friend was living in a San Diego area suburb apartment building that was located on a strip of land between freeways with the complex and a strip mall.
As for the rest of it, I'm not arguing that the suburbs is a good choice. It's just the one people do choose and they choose it because of space and cost of living.
If the urban areas have more expensive housing for a given unit size, that would imply it is actually preferred.
It’s like saying nobody drives because there is too much traffic. Or sporting events always sell out so nobody goes.
The broader point I am trying to make is that if the main appeal of suburban living is lower cost (rather than the actual suburban lifestyle) this is addressable not necessarily by expanding suburbs but by addressing the costs of urban living. In fact that would be better if it were really true that urban living is preferred.
In practice though I am sure many people would choose suburban living even if costs were equal to an urban environment. But the price difference does indicate that one (urban environments) is in higher demand than the other (suburban environments)
But to the point of the person you are replying to, the price of a house in almost any reasonable case I can think of reflects desirability for one reason or another. If you see that suburban homes are cheaper than a mixed-use, medium density neighborhood (the kind that everybody visits and take pictures of) that would indicate that the preference is for that. Though I guess you can argue that due to lack of supply that the cost is increased.
Compare with the Great Harvest Bread location a mile or two down the street from my dad's house. (It's a chain, I believe mostly concentrated in the midwestern USA.) The bread is overpriced and hastily made. The only reason they can command such high prices is that there's nowhere else anywhere nearby that makes bread that doesn't come in a plastic bag is because they can position themselves as a sort of luxury good. But they probably also need to have high prices because people only buy bread there for special occasions.
This is contradicted by this:
> But they probably also need to have high prices because people only buy bread there for special occasions.
It is not overpriced, it is prices according to its supply and demand.
The argument I'm trying to make comes close to suggesting that their bread functions as a sort of Veblen good. Which is an example of a kind of product whose pricing dynamics are slightly more complex than can be neatly explained by the econ 101 model.
Or maybe I do not hang out in circles where bread is considered a status symbol.
They are not expensive. The price is comparable or the same as any other bread.