I mean, yeah, it's great that you have everything necessary within walking distance, but sometimes you simply need to make larger trips...
I feel like there should be some kind of middle-ground...
That's the thing: when your grocery store is a short walk away, you don't buy groceries for the whole week. You just duck into the store on the walk home or you walk over at lunch. You buy things for that evening or a few days at most. Having to plan for a whole week of meals seems normal to us, but it's an adaptation to the fact that we live too far from grocery stores. With our large fridges, cabinets, pantries, and chest freezers, we basically turn part of our homes into well-stocked convenience stores so that we can go out as little as possible.
I don't think this is a common setup for any developed country with 2 income households. Likely the daily-run for groceries occurs in areas where women are homemakers. Is that part of the pitch? There's no way we're going back to that, or daily grocery runs.
Also, having these small produce-oriented grocers does not imply that people are doing daily runs. In my city I only see them in posh, upscale neighborhoods. In some larger metropolises like NY I've seen them also in less gentrified places, but they tend also to be specialty stores.
They're a fraction of the size. If average weekly needs and wants were met by those, that's where people in those neighborhoods would shop all the time. Everything else would be redundant. But instead they seem to fill a missing middle.
> maybe you don’t go to the grocery store literally every day.
Great, vindication.
Chicago, NYC, Lisbon, Berlin, Barcelona, etc. They all have their versions of these stores. You don't need to go anywhere else unless you want to for some reason.
For example, not havig a car is fine until your place of work is 10km out and using public transportation takes 1h whereas driving by car takes 10 minutes. Taking a bike or e-bike works, of course, unless it's raining or snowing or stormy, in which case you really want a fully enclosed (and heated) ride.
I'm sure you can find some "but in that case just do X" for all those cases, but the point still stands that all these issues only exist because you ditched the car, even if it's just a small electric one.
Designing a city/suburb/community that outright bans cars (by not providing any parking spaces) only works for a very small minority of the population
Bulky purchases are relatively rare and can be accomplished by delivery service, renting a van, or using a cargo bike (one of which makes groceries and transporting small children easier as well).
Vacations - rent a car, take the train, etc.
Anyways, few people want to outright ban cars. Look at the Netherlands - most families still have a car, it just doesn't get used daily. It's a convenience instead of a necessity. Maybe they use it to commute, but not to take kids to school or run small errands.
The average cost of owning a car in the US is around $10,000/year. Even the ability to cut from 2 cars to 1 car (for a typical family with two working adults) is a MASSIVE economic benefit.
There are efficiencies both in terms of time and money that come from bulk shopping that you’re not considering.
I lived car free for about 5 years in Seattle and it fucking sucked walking to the grocery store every day or two. In the winter it rains frequently so my groceries would always be wet by the time I got home which added even more time to dry everything off.
And I'm not claiming car-free is a panacea. I just want to stop subsidizing car-based infrastructure to the extent that we do.
Hell, we still own two cars for convenience (though I walk to work and my wife rides a bike). Though when the next car ages out, we'll probably trade it for an electric cargo bike.
You buy groceries more often, but less of them. Or you bring a wagon or those metal carts.
Furniture etc. gets delivered. Because everyone gets deliveries, the cost is lower because they have stable demand.
With good transit, you take it to the station or rental car if you're doing a road trip.