Would much rather be near a decent small or midsize grocery with no or limited off-street parking, and which receives its deliveries on the street in the early morning (no loading dock)
I live in a walkable Seattle neighborhood. Accordingly, the "supermarkets" are not quite the mega-large stores they are in other parts of the city, and they have smaller parking lots accordingly.
This is a generalization, but as a rule, Seattle is laid out on a grid system, and every 5 blocks there is a larger 2 lane road where the speed is 25 MPH instead of 20MPH. Grocery stores are generally on the corner of those larger blocks.
> Would much rather be near a decent small or midsize grocery
In my experience, prices are higher and the selection is very limited, so living near one of those doesn't present much benefit to me.
Which is my next point, despite living walking distance to 3 grocery stores, I still typically drive a mile away to a larger store because prices there are 2/3rds to 1/2 what they are at any of the stores close to me.
A mobile consumer base, people with cars that can travel to potentially hundreds of retail options, is a backbone of American competition. Like cars or not, they empower consumers to defeat local monopolies. The next stage, pickup trucks, then empowers retailers to sell large products (appliances) to an enormous consumer base from a central location without dealing with transport companies and/or teamsters for local delivery.
I love density, but, in my experience this is not true. London doesn't have a large competitive market of grocery stores. Neither does Boston or New York City.
Density means higher real estate prices, that means grocery store sizes go down, and the barrier to entry goes up. Yes you can get more small specialty shops (which is great!) but I've had times where I've had to go to 3 different large supermarkets to find some oddball item I needed, and density would make that even harder on me since stores would have a smaller variety of stock.
Of course the 2 largest grocery store chains in America are trying to merge, so very soon American cities won't have much competition either.
I'm not saying density isn't good, it is, and it makes lots of shopping easier, but certain types of (uniquely) American retail experiences fall apart when cities become more dense.
Heck Seattle already is dense enough that there is only 1 Costco within the city limits, the density of Costco's in the suburbs surrounding Seattle is actually quite high! Prior to living in the city proper, I was a 15 minute drive from two Costcos! Now I am a 30 minute drive from one Costco. Since I don't have the time to go that far on a frequent basis for groceries, I am paying more for food living in a city that has more grocery stores around me, than I was when I lived in the suburbs.
Here's a map of all of them: https://maps.walkingclub.org.uk/shops/
Alternative map: https://www.toptiplondon.com/food-drink/london-supermarkets-...
London does have larger stores, but it isn't like in America where the average grocery store is, well, huge.
(Obviously some chains such as Asda have larger stores!)
On the west coast at least, American grocery stores are either small like Trader Joe's (Aldi sized I believe), tiny local ethnic stores, or you start getting into larger and larger categories that start at "really damn big" and end up at "you can get lost here".
The "you can get lost here" sized stores typically have much cheaper prices, and families go there on weekends to buy essentials (meat, veggies) to stay on budget.
All in all I'm not saying it is a bad thing, having a higher density of grocery stores is nice, it means going to the grocery store isn't a dedicated trip, but those cheap huge discount stores are very nice to have around.
[1] I like to stay for awhile in the middle of cities so I can actually shop at local stores, cook some food myself, etc.
Multiple neighborhoods I lived in had walking access to Stop & Shop, Star Market, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Target, bfresh, cheap overstock/clearance stores, a farmers market, and other independent grocers, many catering to nationalities/ethnicities with large subcommunities in the area. Just a train or bus ride away I could go to Market Basket, Roche Brothers, Wegmans, a worker owned-co-op, and more farmers markets and independent grocers.
Costco was a longer train ride away, but accessible if you wanted something specifically from there. Delivery is more economical because of the shorter distances involved.
You can see this yourself by doing a map search.
In rural areas I've lived, one is common, sometimes zero within a fifteen minute drive. Suburban areas might have two or three regional supermarkets, plus Walmart, Target, Costco and/or Sam's, but always way fewer within the area covered by the same travel time.
Different parts of Boston is incredibly varied though, I shouldn't have made a general statement.
- Whole Foods
- Key Food
- 2-3 specialty grocers (think italian importers, etc.)
- gourmet grocer
- two butcher shops and a fresh fish shop
- CVS (yes, they sell groceries! spooky)
- 2-3 bodegas that sell shelf-stable goods, as well as a small collection of fruit and vegetables
If you go expand it to 15 minute bike, the world is truly your oyster, but the primary one that pops up is Trader Joe's.
The most remarkable part of this description, is that it identifies at least 4 or 5 different neighborhoods in NYC, those are only the ones I can think of off the top of my head, and I haven't been close to everywhere.
There's a lot of things to knock about NYC, but it's easily the most walkable city in the US, that I've seen.
I Costco baker told me once that they used less preservative in bread than small bakers. Costco has such a high turnover that they don't need bread that can survive a whole day on the shelf. Same too with their vegetables that spend far less time in transit than they would getting to a tiny farmers market.
Not if that family uses that same truck for commuting every day or for trips to the pharmacy or movie theater or whatever.
What's the pace in Seattle? The Dutch don't have many meaningful hills, Seattle on the other hand...
San Francisco is known for its hills, but Seattle has some pretty bike-unfriendly hills as well, unless you've got an electric motor attached to your bike.
> you just need the infrastructure to let you do so
Yes, if your city treats cycling as an afterthought, it will be less practical to cycle. If your city treated driving as an afterthought, it would be less practical to drive. You get what you build for and what you prioritize.
> Even then, we drive on compact snow for 1/3 the year.
Oulu has snow for half of the year and still has a substantial cycling mode share, because they prioritize it: https://youtu.be/s3Sx_OH_wok
Most people buy appliance at most once a decade. There’s a reason the bed of trucks have shrunk while cabs have grow over the years: most people don’t need trucks. The harm pickup trucks cause society has to be worse than this empowerment.
Pickups are way more dangerous in an accident, way more likely to get in an accident, and require way more fuel to power. You’d have to empower a lot of appliance sales before this can even come close to balancing out.
America is just not denselly populated enough to really make it worth your while to build a supermarket ever 3 miles. Too much empty space so people refuse to live efficiently.
I think supermarkets becoming 4-over-1 buildings with living places above them would be fantastic. Walk down to the first floor to get your groceries, walk them up to your home.
edit: this is in a U.S. context, I don't know how these terms are used in other English-speaking countries
This is what a pre-supermarket grocery store looked like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grocery_store#/media/File:1909...
I live in brooklyn, exactly the kind of city described. I'm within a 10 minute walk of at least 4 grocery stores, none of which have a parking lot at all.
Just my personal observations of course.
You see this idea everywhere, it's not "corn is one America's staple crops and the use of corn syrup which is sweeter and more abundant than cane sugar gave Americans a preference for the very sweet" but "Americans with their unrefined pallets, unhealthy diets, and obesity crisis put heaps of sugar in everything."
Cultural things Americans themselves have more agreement over are often more respected abroad: cinema, music, American fast food, American sports, etc.
Sometimes I think people that grew up in, and live in a big city forget that not everyone in the USA lives like that.
There are still a tremendous amount of beautiful places in all 50 states.
I've lived in a few US cities since then; of them, NYC was the only place that didn't feel built for cars more than humans. But NYC still feels like humans have been pushed "out of the way" in favor of car traffic in many places, especially outside of lower Manhattan.
I currently live in a small New England town that does an OK job at "human" infrastructure because it was originally built for walking and there just aren't enough cars to ruin things for pedestrians. But I would love to hear suggestions of other not-cities in the USA that are walkable, bikeable, and not car-dominated. I've been considering buying a home to combat out-of-control rising rent prices and walkability is a requirement for me, so I love adding new areas to my list.
A Whole Foods moved in down the street a few years back and they do have a parking garage under the building, but I'd guess most customers aren't using that. I wouldn't be mad if it went away tomorrow though.
We're of course a very different city than pretty much all other cities in the US, as we're not at all car dependent in most parts of the city.
My favorite grocery store is about 1/4 to 1/5 of the typical supermarket like a Safeway, because it has all the same products without all the fluff. And an actual real butcher counter with plenty of on staff butchers, instead of row upon row of prepackaged cuts.
In a walkable neighbourhood, they'd just be a store front:
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/197+Roncesvalles+Ave,+Toro...
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/1435+King+St+West+Toronto,...
Or at the very least, much smaller:
* https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6395232,-79.4172267,3a,75y,3...
Whole foods has plenty of them in all big cities.
It's just a cultural reason why some cities lack them--probably because people don't cook at home as much in NYC, for example.
There is also very heavy competition from more traditional markets, like those found in Chinatown with very cheap meat and produce prices.