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Comment by aesclepius | Hacker News Reader

Jesus it's objectively worse. NY/Chicago/London/Paris/Tokyo you can conceivably and easily nip out to a grocer's, bodega, cafe or pub within 10 minutes of where you are. LA? Outside of certain certain pockets like DTLA, KTown, WeHo or similar walking is tough and if your friend is across town you're SoL without a car.

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But I don't want to! I literally just walked to the store and it was in absoute perfect conditions - we wanted to go for a walk anyway, the weather is perfect (sunny but not hot), the store is 10min walk from my house, the neighborhood is nice and not drive-thru so there is ~0 non-local traffic. The plan was we go for a walk, and pop by a store and get one item. But as usual it never ends up being that way, so we had one paper bag of items - 6 pack of beer, some cheese, box of blueberries, nothing very heavy.

I am pretty fit, like I deadlift 280lbs :) and still walking with this stupid bag ruined the whole walk back. And it wasn't even much - if I replaced beer with food it would be like, 2-3 days worth.

I would have rather just finished the walk, then drove 3mins to the same store. In the most perfect conditions imaginable, with minimal amount of groceries. And what if it was 100F, or 32F, or raining, or I didn't want to go for a walk, or I needed to get some large items like sugar or rice or a gallon of milk or a lot of beer for a party?

Walking to a store is simply not an advantage at all. And if you go to even a poor country you can see most people agree - as soon as they can they start driving to big box stores, and small local stores die.

And regardless, even if (which I wouldn't grant) the majority would prefer to walk rather than drive, it's still SUBJECTIVE, not OBJECTIVE. A ton of people prefer to drive.

When you live closer to grocery stores, you buy less food more often. I live two blocks away from the grocery store, I go fairly frequently, and I never have an issue with the weight I’m carrying. And I deadlift the same as you

Not gonna lie, having a 10 minute walk ruined by carrying a bag home sounds like you maybe need to deadlift less and cardio more or something. Or maybe get better bags?

Walking to stores is an advantage because it allows for a density of services unavailable if parking lots are a serious consideration for businesses. I can go to my local convenience store, and my barber, and a no-waste shop, and my local bar, all in one pleasant morning… plus I don’t have to worry about a dui!

I mountaineer too, it's just a chore to walk with groceries, esp. if the weather is bad and you have to do it every 3 days given how little one can carry.

I think I mentioned the drinking aspect in the original comment. I could do all of these things by car, probably faster too... except drinking. So I guess it depends on how often one drinks :)

The paper bags they give you are terrible, they're barely fit to walk to the car with. They always fall apart on the walk home, and the ergonomics suck too. But with any reasonable bag I find it's not a big deal.

I'm of the impression paper bags are not meant to be carried. As long as I've been alive, they always break.

I suspect they're simply supposed to be a bundling device so you can stack them for loading in one of those foldable vertical bring-your-own-grocery-cart like old ladies in urban areas use. They certainly can't carry all that crap in-hand either, but this is the only way I've seen paper-bagged groceries make it more than a block without drama.

Are paper bags for groceries a thing in any country other than the US?

As a mountaineer, you no doubt have a wonderfully ergonomic high volume backpack that is great for a week of shopping. Two if your diet is basic meat and veg not processed food in lots of packaging.

Same to the OP. You should own a decent feckin' shopping bag. It's basic adulting where I live. You have observed the problem yet not doing anything about which is just really weird.

>You have observed the problem yet not doing anything about which is just really weird.

They observed the problem and simply have a different solution than you. I'm sure there's a number of other factors they didn't mention that make it preferable to simply use their perfectly working car.

> I'm sure there's a number of other factors they didn't mention that make it preferable to simply use their perfectly working car.

I'm sorry but when one is willing to put that much effort to try to justify using a car to avoid a 10 mn walk, that's only because one is way too lazy and privileged...

You treat the walk as the default and car as something that needs to be justified. That's BS. I think you are too privileged to live in a safe neighborhood, in good climate, to be healthy enough to walk with load, and to own a good backpack :P

To me car is the default solution, it's simply better in every way for most people. Making one's life better doesn't need to be "justified".

> You treat the walk as the default

Is it unreasonable to treat “moving around with your body” as the default vs “moving around in a $x,000-x00,000 device”?

It is! Just like not having surgery, not using AC/heating, or not wearing glasses, etc. All those things are unnatural and some are expensive, but luckily we are not hunter-gatherers anymore ;)

The effort of a 300 word comment on the internet? This isn't Twitter.

>one is way too lazy and privileged...

you are free to think that. It is still a subjective choice in the matter.

> I mountaineer too, it's just a chore to walk with groceries

Yeah if you're going to walk with groceries, use a mesh or canvas bag with handles, or a grocery basket/cart if you're buying more than a few items. Carrying paper bags sucks because you have to hold them in your arms and support the bottom of the bag.

In many countries adults just continue to wear backpacks. One of the things I keep in my backpack is a big IKEA bag, meaning I'm pretty set for shopping on foot (or bike, which is more common for me). Medium sized purchases go in the backpack, larger things go in the IKEA bag.

>Walking to stores is an advantage because it allows for a density of services unavailable if parking lots are a serious consideration for businesses.

in my case it doesn't matter because the nearest store is a mile and a half uphill. Nothing can fix that.

It's also a desert so there's plenty of space. Suburbs are simply incompatible with these ideas.

> Suburbs are simply incompatible with these ideas

Indeed. But you seem convinced it's the idea of walking to fulfill basic daily needs that's the problem...

Not particularly. I'd love to be able to walk a block down the street if all I need is a haircut and some milk. I just recognize that that isn't possible in my situation without spending a significant amount of time/energy (that I already lack) in doing so. I simply prefer that over the urban hellscape that is my local downtown (and well, the rural area where it's the worst of both worlds). It's also cheaper, so that helps.

There are other solutions to this if we don't only consider walking. e.g. public transportation. But my nearest bus stop is a quarter mile in the opposite direction. And only a quarter mile if you decide to hop the train tracks (which comes hourly, I am conveniently enough a mile from my local Amtrak); it's a half mile to do "safely".

I actually do agree that some of the tips here could improve even this short minor route I described to get to a bus, but suburbs don't exactly care much to begin with. When everything is far, everything is unwalkable, so why bother (in the minds of these small city planners).

> I just recognize that that isn't possible in my situation without spending a significant amount of time/energy

I'd argue the main reason it is isn't possible is because of poor town planning decisions made by governments over the last 50-60 years. It is still possible in many (most?) European town/cities, and is possible in the inner-city (but still pleasant and largely residential) suburb I live in, but I'd acknowledge there's far too few such suburbs in most Australian cities, and from what I've seen the US is similar.

You can still drive perfectly well in walkable cities.

And maybe it's just a TV trope, but do your paper bags lack handles? In Europe essentially all grocery bags have handles and are easy to carry. The amount of food you bought sounds easy to me to carry home, and I don't even lift.

It's a tradeoff - the argument is about car vs walking infrastructure, and while it's nice to have both I'd prefer to lose the latter if I had to make a choice. Driving in Amsterdam is... inconvenient. At least in central areas, I've never been far out.

They have handles, it's still just inconvenient to carry and makes a nice walk into a chore, vs driving with much more groceries per trip.

Sounds like you need one of those walker bags with wheels. It would make grocery walks much easier.

Problem is, current level of car usage is absolutely unsustainable with current co2 emissions targets, even with electric cars if they use coal.

Climatologist here, basically everything is unsustainable if you use coal power. If we’re lucky we can keep steel production and that’s about it.

So we'll still be able to build steel bike frames ;)

What about electric cars with nuclear power or renewables? In any case the argument is not about that. It's one thing to say "we cannot sustain the CO2 emissions / we cannot build enough highways for everyone so sorry, we cannot have some of the nice things anymore", but that's not what the above says.

It is also ok to express an opinion that car-free living is better for some people, or argue that most people prefer it, although I think that is self-evidently incorrect, cause as per IMF data I linked somewhere here, one of the first things people all over the world do when they get any richer (like, $2.5k-10k per capita income) is buy a lot of cars.

But the above is saying it's OBJECTIVELY better. Other than just being wrong, that betrays the kind of "I know exactly how everyone should live their lives, and I would make them if I could" attitude that I hate.

I agree with your general point about the romanticization of no-car life. I grew up without a car in a walkable city. It was nice but there are legitimate trade offs.

My mom used a wheelie cart to do our shopping growing up. As a kid I thought it was embarrassing but now I get it. Cargo bikes are another good option. Having to carry home groceries without some sort of cargo apparatus like that does suck, even in nice weather.

Walking to the store is great when it’s a habit to do so every day, so you’re just picking up some fresh meat and produce for whatever dinner you’re making that night. It’s a very pleasant (and healthy) lifestyle. For trips where you need to make larger and heavier purchases, it’s also very enjoyable to bike.

That's because 10 minutes away is too far, that's almost a mile, and it becomes a chore.

I live a block from a store, and its much, much easier and more plesant than going to the effort of getting the car out, driving somewhere, having to find a parking spot, etc... Driving's a pain in the arse.

A decently walkable suburb/city would have a store within a block or two, maybe a five minute walk.

Sounds like you need a walking trolley for groceries

It's like a bag with wheels you can drag, that was my immediate thought anyway

There's tons of micro mobility that could have also helped

Then go there with some backpack.

I have a store in same building than my flat (but other side), and it is the best. Dont need to have car, dont need to worry about DUI...

100F (38C) is here twice maybe per year? Cannot you survive 38C for a few minutes?

If it is 32F (0C). I just put warm clothes on? 32F is not very cold temperature anyway.

Raining = umbrella (but I go without it, 2 minutes of rain wont kill me).

How many times a year do you host a party? For me its just once a year (birthday), I just go to store multiple times.

But I understand that your store is 10 min walk which sucks. I guess your city is not dense enough.

Or I could just drive. How is walking with all these inconveniences "objectively better"? :)

If all the externalities involved in having everyone use cars for every trip where they don't feel like walking are managed (including health impacts from pollution, sedentary lifestyles etc., time wasted sitting in rush hour traffic, dominance of cityscape by infrastructure dedicated to automobile traffic etc. etc.) then sure, driving is objectively better. I've yet to come across anywhere in the world that's true though.

I mean, this thread argues that the environment in Amsterdam/Tokyo/New York/... is "objectively better" than in LA to live in.

"sedentary lifestyles" is not a real externality and anyway is also easy to achieve with transit; "time wasted in traffic" is simply false (far more time is wasted on transit given how fast it is to drive for an average trip, and sometimes even in rush hour), "dominance of cityscape by infrastructure dedicated to automobile traffic" by itself is a subjective aesthetic preference.

Now as for the actual real externalities, I said elsewhere, it's one thing to say "most people reveal the preference to drive (and I disagree with them OR because driving is just better), however they cannot all have what they want because of pollution / global warming /...". That could be correct, although it would also imply this is a technological problem - they mostly solved pollution from cars, and if we e.g. had cheap fusion or solar energy and electric cars we could all go back to driving.

It's quite another to pretend that people need to switch to the inferior (by their own revealed preference around the world) lifestyle because it is "objectively better".

I basically waste no time at all travelling - I do it mostly by bike which is obviously beneficial health wise, and if I do take a train or bus I use the time to read etc. (plus walking to/fro stations/stops is, again, a positive use of time). The objective downsides in the amount of infrastructure dedicated to allowing everyone to drive everywhere is surely seen in the cost of maintaining it, and the impacts it has on housing affordability etc. Not to mention the environmental damage caused.

I certainly don't want people feeling like they're being forced into making inferior choices - just that we make an effort to design our towns and cities so that the choice to walk/bike/use transit is a realistic one that compares favourably with driving.

Cycling commuting distances/speeds, especially European-style, only counts as exercise for very sedentary people. Walking is barely exercise at all.. in the same time one could drive and also do some real exercise. Reading does make transit less bad, but usually only works on a familiar (no need to check for stops), transfer-free commute that's not very crowded. Otherwise if you time overhead vs reading (I've actually done it once in a place with bad traffic and relatively good buses, sadly I had a transfer) you can maybe get 30-40% of your commute as focused reading time and driving will still be faster in most places. Interestingly I think for that, transit is actually better on long inter-city trips, like someone I know commutes from Tacoma to Seattle during rush hour, it's I think 1:10 by train with no interruptions, or a 50min drive from hell. In that case I'd prefer transit :)

I think people just don't realize on gut level how fast driving is... someone mentioned Edinburgh as a place where it would never occur to them to drive. As it happens it was 5:30pm there when I plotted a random trip out of the city center to some residential area, it was 25min in "red" traffic vs 43min by transit, not counting overheads of waiting of course - so realistically x2 faster and that's from a city center. That was also my experience almot everywhere I lived or visited... you'd look at "terrible traffic" and wince, then you look at transit directions and drive/call a cab cause it's way faster anyway :)

> Cycling commuting distances/speeds, especially European-style, only counts as exercise for very sedentary people.

Which I'd wager includes a sizeable fraction of the population. I also remember seeing a study in Germany some years ago where they found that exclusive car commuters had the highest average BMI and bike commuters the lowest. Granted, it was not a massive (ahem) difference, but definitively a few kilos…

The US is too far gone for this to make sense. “Walking to get groceries”, I mean jeez this means something utterly different in the US vs Europe.

Here, walking to get groceries means depending on what I need, I walk down the road to get some daily fresh produce, or a few minutes more to get more variety of non perishables, cleaning products etc. It’s a lovely walk, it’s relaxing, and I come back with at most 3-4kg. I do this regularly, and I can do it on my way home when I take the metro for whatever.

In the US, it’s literally something you have to plan for. No kidding you don’t want to walk; one of the goals is to minimise time spent especially if it’s not relaxing time.

I can't speak for all people in the US but my family is not content with selection in a single store. We buy different kinds of items in different stores. And I mean big stores, with big parking lots and dozens of isles. It is also not very clear that you spend less time shopping: you cannot possibly live off 3-4kg of food for a week or two so you must shop very frequently.

I think this video sums up how I, and most europeans, feel about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHTzqHIngk

If you don't understand the core differences between how to even buy shopping and the influence this has on how you live your life… it's not possible to explain that, actually yeah, it's possible to never do shopping by car, even to feed a whole family.

I am sorry, the sentence with the "buy shopping" does not make sense to me. I completely understand this arrangement, I grew up in the USSR, where people had been carrying a net bag in their pocket (advised several times in this thread), calling it "what-if" bag ("авоська") and just going to the store every day and getting whatever was sold there, thinking the idea to plan to buy the exact things you need is ridiculous.

Grew up in the city and yeah you get used to it. We had our own bags my mom sewed or mesh bags. If we bought something like beer it wasn’t in 6 packs but one or two bottles at a time. Also we had decent public transportation, we’d hop on a trolleybus (electric buses) even for a few stops if the bags got heavy.

At the same time I agree that it wasn’t fun and I didn’t enjoy it as a kid. If we could have an option to have a car, drive it and fill the trunk with groceries and drive back we would have.

> And what if it was 100F, or 32F, or raining, or I didn't want to go for a walk, or I needed to get some large items like sugar or rice or a gallon of milk or a lot of beer for a party?

As a New Yorker, you just described daily life here? It’s really not a big deal — things are so close you can take multiple trips if you need to. Get some canvas bags. Plus since everything is so close you end up just doing smaller trips every day or so. If the shop is longer than 10-15 minutes and I’ve got more than, say, 40 pounds of groceries I might get a car back home, but that’s a rare trip. And honestly I’ll probably just walk it back anyway.

Maybe we just have a higher tolerance for pain here — I’ve certainly had people visit who think of themselves as fit and they get gassed out by regular New York walking life.

> I’ve certainly had people visit who think of themselves as fit and they get gassed out by regular New York walking life

It's interesting how things become normal once you do it every day. I used to live in a fifth floor apartment without lift. Quite a few stairs to climb. Three things come to my mind.

a) You very quickly learn not to forget anything when leaving the house.

b) There is some perverse sense of satisfaction in having guests over and walking up the stairs together; and purposefully keeping a calm breath whilst the guests are wheezing and complaining.

c) Some tradesman was working on one of the floors. I will never forget the sight of him carrying something heavy up those stairs whilst practically breathing through the cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

For very legitimate reasons life like this is not for everybody. But I would say for able-bodied healthy people it would be good to have a bit of regular forced exercise like that.

> I will never forget the sight of him carrying something heavy up those stairs...

Oh man, absolutely. I still have a vivid memory of moving out of a 5 floor walk-up with a narrow stairwell and as I was walking back into the building out comes the guy bear hugging my Fender Rhodes electric piano. It's gotta be around 150 pounds and very bulky. He was walking like it was nothing.

Hah, yes, I can see how that would leave quite an impression

It's tragically hilarious to me that the car brain imagination can only consider moving a multi tonne large dangerous vehicle around in order to simply ease the discomfort of the small bag of groceries. Most people use little wheeled carts that are light and foldable and easy to push or pull around.

Yeah, most people thru history were also subsistence farmers and it's "tragically hilarious" that "civilized brain" only considers I dunno, engineering or science or art to make a living, or whatever when you could be subsistence farming for reliable and easy to produce food.

I didn't drive until I was 29-30 and lived mostly in walkable areas so I can easily consider the alternatives. They are just, as I found out when I tried car-dependent lifestyle, inferior. One might even say, "objectively worse"...

> NY/Chicago/London/Paris/Tokyo you can conceivably and easily nip out to a grocer's, bodega, cafe or pub within 10 minutes of where you are.

This keeps coming up on HN but it's not as absolutist as it's made to be.

There are lots and lots of suburban places in the US where you can walk to things as you describe. NY/Chicago/London/Paris/Tokyo do not have a monopoly on walkability.

I live in very suburban (approaching on rural, but still suburban) area in the outskirts of silicon valley. Within 10 minutes I can walk to two supermarkets, several cafes and two pubs. Also to movie theaters, library, two drug stores, many restaurants, child care, a department store and many other businesses.

But unlike Manhattan, within 10 minutes (ok maybe 12) I can also walk to an open space forest where I can hike, mountain bike and go camping. Unlike in Manhattan, I can road bike many tens of miles of rural low-to-no-traffic roads out of my front door. We have many open soccer fields within easy walk (kid loves soccer so this is great).

Suburbs can be very walkable and have more variety of amenities within easy reach than a dense city.

Also, when grocery shopping using a car, I can carry a shit-ton more than I can on foot, so I don't have to go shopping nearly as often. In a pedestrian-centric town, grocery shopping is a daily chore. Using my car, I only have to go once a week or so.

I think people are criticizing "American suburbia", not a a truly suburban form which is more urban than a rural form and less urban than an urban form. I live in what I call a "bike suburb". While the grocery and a couple other businesses are a 7-8 min walk away on a multi use path, the rest of the town opens up in a 5 min bike. Likewise I'm a 15-20 min drive away from tons of nature, and if we do need to drive around it's not as convenient as it is in suburbia but not too difficult either.

But a lot of suburbia is completely inaccessible or hostile by foot and unbikeable. Since you're in Silicon Valley, you can probably think of tons of places like that. Mixed use zoning and infill developmental priorities are what create this urban form. This is the important bit, not squabbling over which city is better than the other.

> Since you're in Silicon Valley, you can probably think of tons of places like that.

I sort of can't, which is why I always express doubt about these suburbs where one must supposedly drive 30 minutes to the nearest store (not a quote from this thread, but one that I've seen many times on HN).

I've lived also in south San Jose, Cambpell and Cupertino. In all those I could also walk to supermarkets and many other businesses.

San Leandro, Union City, Fremont, and further East like Danville and Pleasanton can be pretty bad to walk around in. The West part of the Bay has generally been wealthier and historically had more pedestrian affordances. I'm pretty sure all of these factors go into making the Bay as a whole such an expensive and desirable place to live.

This is exactly why I lived in Santa Monica when I lived in LA. One of the few walkables cities in the area (not all of SaMo mind you. Just talking about the area between Ocean and say 7th or 8th)

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