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> 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.

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.)

Ironically, my two best counter-examples of your claims above are both within 1 mile of each other.

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".

I think those are the exceptions that prove that it can be done, and can be viable. Totally agree that it's generally not a thing, but places like that show that all the other, similar neighborhoods are just missing out.

There are more than ten supermarkets within ten minutes of my walking distance, from the cheapest option to fanciest. In addition, even the fanciest bakeries sell the standardized type of bread for the standardized price.

So I know this problem is solvable because it is solved in places that are not the US

Most models outside the US would not work for the entire US, perhaps a few cities. Also, it doesn't seem possible to have more than 10 supermarkets within 10 minutes of your walking distance. They would have to be next door to each other. Of course, I'm thinking about this in the context of where I've lived in 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 friend's address in inner Copenhagen (a cheap place as she's a student), she has 4 supermarkets within 5 minutes walk (400m).

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.

> 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.

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.

I totally agree with all comments in favor of the European way. I just have to add something:

> The supermarkets in the city centre are smaller

Then maybe they are not actually supermarkets, instead small markets or grocery stores?

Two in the city centre are small enough that, if they were my nearest shop, I might not use them for most shopping. The proportion of ready-to-eat or ready-to-cook food (for workers / commuters) is too high, meaning there's less range of meat/fish/vegetables. I think the shop name is even a diminutive version of the normal supermarket to account for this.

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.

Suburban 7-11’s for example get a lot of foot traffic in the US. Much of it is from teens, but where available people end up including a stop while walking their dogs or doing other kinds of exercise.

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.

Small towns in the US already work similarly to European towns, though a bit more straightforward (pun intended).

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.

...and that's kinda what's missing in the US (and large parts of Southern Ontario) right now: small towns. Instead, you have bedroom communities that depend on an urban centre to make them work at all. No, not everywhere, but in too much of the populous parts of the country. It's gotten to the point that people just expect that that's just how things work. It made a certain basic sense, I suppose, with the GI Bill and the Levittowns it spawned post-WW2, but that should have been a very temporary solution to a baby boom housing crisis, not the permanent state of things. I grew up in a town with a population of about 1500 people, and we had two grocers, each with an actual butcher who not only cut meats, but made their own sausages, etc. Could you get fresh weirdo herbs that only grow halfway up Vesuvius in years that end in a 7? No, but we weren't missing anything anybody would actually miss either. (And if you want a really nice artisanal bread, make it - there are very few things that are easier, and autolysis means you don't have to spend hours working at it, you just wait.)

There's plenty of small towns, just takes moving there. I prefer them.

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.

I've lived in multiple small towns in America and the reality is the nice central amenities are too expensive for most working people, and at least half of the storefronts are boarded up, which means most people end up driving to the Walmart. The majority of people that do use the centrally located boutiques drive in from their homes which aren't in the center. Most new construction doesn't even include sidewalks or crosswalks, making walking dangerous even if you wanted to.

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.

>but generally they do have their own amenities like fast food courts / grocery stores / school systems

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.

People in Europe mostly choose the suburbs too.

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.

Europe doesn’t have suburbs like the USA does. In California if you drive an hour you’re in the suburbs. In Germany if you drive an hour you’re in another country.

Do they choose suburbs because it’s preferred or because it’s cheaper?

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.

You can't separate preference from cost. Or, in other words, they prefer it because it's cheaper.

Cost (more accurately price) indicates what is called a revealed preference. Actually a revealed preference is precisely what I am trying to point out here. There is a revealed preference for urban homes which is indicated by the higher price.

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)

Cost is part of the preference, I agree. I think though that we're not accurately capturing the true cost. The suburbs appear to be cheaper and they very well may be on an individual level, but are they cheaper for civilization? How do we price in your commute, for example? Or the cost of roads or the government building a new power plant? I don't think we have great market mechanics for this which makes the cost comparison a little difficult to do to begin with.

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.