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Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

Shopping centers are a bad example for this, because if you buy stuff, you somehow have to take it home, and carrying a carton of 12 liters of milk, 2 10-packs of toilet paper, a bag of frozen stuff and shower curtain rod, all of that in your hands on a bus, is well.. a pain.

Also, at least over here, most shopping centers have underground parking.

The "historic city center" and all that crap... that I understand... noone goes there for weekly shopping, but instead people go there to hang out, drink coffee, eat, etc.... public transport works great for that. Malls, shopping centers or even larger stores? Nope.

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Why would anybody need to buy 12 liters of milk when the store is 5-10 mins away on foot?

Reality in a lot of european cities is fundamentally different to most of the US.

> Reality in a lot of european cities is fundamentally different to most of the US.

I am not sure about which european city you are in. Here in Germany, there are more cars than people. Infact, there is so much parking shortage that, people walk 10 minutes away to park their cars, because the streets are already full.

Also, I don't know anyone going to store daily, most people shop en-mass over the weekend, mostly Saturday afternoon. Only people I see regularly on the malls near me are just retired oma/opa but they also shop like every 4-5 days.

That being said, while at least in the city I am in, has the most connected and excellent public transport, somehow I have to take a reverse de-tour by bus on my way to work, because bus routes are not often straight forward and there are only specific limited routes I can take, unless I can find a place near some U/S-bahn station(immensely difficult these days due to housing crisis).

If I had a car, I could reduce my daily commute to work by 2.5h, but then again, I don't have strict on-site requirements, so it doesn't matter.

Because I don't want to go to store every two days, and the prices in local small stores are higher than in a larger, discount store. I buy a pack of milk, and I'm good for a month.

The big box discount store (which demands that customers buy in bulk to save money, and because it is so far away from you that you can ONLY visit it once per month) is as much a product of US style suburban sprawl, as car-dependency is.

In a walkable city you go by a store every time you go outside - you come back from work, you pass by a store or two where you can buy fresh groceries. This has also an impact on healthy diet, giving access to fresh goods which wouldn't possibly last a month and thus wouldn't get eaten if people drive shopping every few weeks.

> In a walkable city you go by a store every time you go outside

I'm all for designing for walkability, but this is a case study in failing to understand audiences. If you make this not just a possibility but a requirement of walkable cities, many people won't want to live in your "walkable" cities at all.

There are much better arguments possible here. For instance, you could promote CSAs for regularly delivered farm-fresh produce, or establish efficient grocery delivery services that use one vehicle to deliver to many many customers, or other potential options that don't involve regular car trips for grocery shopping and don't involve spending an appreciable fraction of your day shopping.

> don't involve spending an appreciable fraction of your day shopping.

if you're concerned about how your time is spent, i think you're missing a fundamental piece of the puzzle: how much time you spend driving. you could end up saving an enormous amount of time while still going out to shop more if you cut out driving and reduce the scope of your trips.

Not really. People tend to have tolerance levels for commute type activities, so while cars enable going farther in the same amount of time, the time budget doesn't change. If they have a walkable city they are likely to find reason to go to a farther away store if it is still in the time budget.

If you don't want to live in a walkable area boy have I got great news for you. Close your eyes and point at the map!

I would love to live in a walkable area. I would like people designing walkable areas to not make assumptions like "Oh, everyone will love shopping several times a week, just like I do!". (Or worse, "I don't enjoy this myself but I'm sure other people will!", which is a common failure mode.) Let's not have a false dichotomy that assumes everyone who wants to live somewhere walkable also enjoys running errands and wants to do it more often.

Yes, I could, but I don't want to. Go to store, walk around, wait in line, for what.. 1eur worth of milk? Plus you buy a bunch of other stuff that you don't need, because "it's there". I just make a list, go to the store once, fill up on 100, 150eur of stuff, and I'm done for a week or two. Stores are horrible, people are slow, they 'park' their carts in the middle of the aisle, so you have to bump into them to pass, they're too stupid to use the self-checkout lines but still use them and wait for someone to help them (scan stuff for them, instead of just using a normal line), people wait for 10 minutes in line, without realizing they'll need to pack their stuff and pay, so only after half of their stuff is scanned, they remember to take out their shopping bag, and only after they hear the price, they start searching their handbag for a wallet. Then they remember they need cigaretts too,... Delivery sucks too.. overripe bananas, bumbped apples, half-thawed frozen stuff, crushed boxes, long-lasting food just before the expiration date, etc..

Nope, weekly trip to the store minimizes all of the issues.

in this case maybe amsterdam style will suit better your usecase? you take a 5-10 min electric bike(maybe even cargo type) trip to a discount store, you put everything in bags/cargo space and return home. Or Swiss style: discount stores usually are placed close to trams, you buy your stuff and just take a tram to your home(and since usually those have ded lanes, it's damn fast). You may be concerned about capacity(maybe you don't like to carry two big bags) - you can take a foldable luggage cart. Ofc you can also order a taxi and since you live not too far, price isn't that big if you do this once a week. You can also use your car, but with all added costs/time spent for some ppl it's not worth it. There are also services that just bring to you what you order from these big stores. There's one more thing: you could combine the two store types: daily shopping for some small stuff in nearby store could offset the need to go to a bigger store by one week

IMO modifying life style for chronic car owners is nonstarter. Simple / fair incentivize is to make it justifiably expensive. Reduce street parking / op lots. If stores want car customers, they need to build parking infra onsite, either above or below grade. Expensive car elevators if they have to. Charge premium for parking costs. If they try to pass on cost to all customers instead of just drivers, then their prices will be less competitive with stores without onsite parking. Car owners have right to car, but they should pay for all of externalities, and if that works out to be expensive parking bill everytime they bulk shop then so be it.

There is no 'street parking' next to shopping centers/malls, it's all organized parking lots (usually underground, below the shopping center). What kind of a shopping center requires you to park on the street?

I live in a relatively small city with a pedestrian zone "historic center", and all of the larger...ish shopping centers are outside the city center, and larger stores are on the 'edge' of the city. Both the stores and restaurants in the city center are tourist-based and so are many residential properties that are now just airbnbs causing the housing crisis to be even worse. On a rainy january afternoon (so, last week for us), the city center is dead. No toursts, noone goes there to shop, since you can go futher out with a car, noone goes there to walk around, since it's raining, so it's just a few people that work there during the day and not even them in the afternoon. I mean.. why would you go to shop there, if you can drive to the edge of the city, where you can park without issues, buy stuff and drive it home?

Why would I want to drive somewhere just to shop? I don't care about rain. If it is absolutely pouring I don't need to to out. I don't feel the need to live entirely disconnected from nature.

But why? I have a car, I just drive to a shopping center with enough parking and do my business there. Why would i go out of my way to use a bike, in rain and cold or heat and sun to go to a shopping center without parking? The malls know this, that's why they have parking, usually underground.

Why? It's because you're making other people pay a large part of the cost for your convenience. We aren't going to tolerate it forever.

If malls know this, parking reqs should be eliminated so that every business decides for itself how much parking they need

And those stores will be significantly more expensive to buy from while having a smaller selection of goods. It's my understanding that small stores also live off of selling less healthy stuff like alcohol, fast food etc. Some villages here lost their only store after an alcohol tax increase because the stores weren't profitable to run anymore.

I guess you're getting shelf stable milk instead of fresh milk?

Milk is not supposed to last for a month.

Isn't modern technology grand? See also pasteurization, canning, pickling, and many many other technologies that help food last longer. Why should people care what something is "supposed to" do? Many kinds of food are "supposed to" spoil quickly, but we've gone to great lengths to overcome that.

(For clarity in case there is a nomenclature difference here, UHT milk is shelf-stable liquid milk that's entirely equivalent to any milk but lasts much longer before expiring. That's separate from things like evaporated milk or powdered milk, which are also substitutes for milk but not directly equivalent.)

UHT milk does not taste like fresh milk. Sure it is safe for months, but it isn't good for months.

I once was at a farmers place - when they were done milking the cows in the morning they brought milk in from the tank for breakfast - ever since then I can't drink store bought milk as fresh milk tastes so much better. (the milk was also unpasteurized, I believe fresh was the key to taste but I'm not sure)

I'd argue the difference between UHT milk and standard pasteurized milk is much smaller than the difference between either and fresh milk, and most people don't buy fresh milk (or want to).

But in any case, it's good that multiple options exist.

Sure, but I mostly need milk for coffee, and sometimes for stuff like puddings, so a liter of milk either lasts a week, or I just need two liters right now for a unplanned batch of pudding/milk rice/etc. UHT is good enough for both. I don't drink milk directly.

UHT pasteurised milk. The one I have at home now has an expiration date in late june.

Where I live the prices at local stores are pretty much the same as at the bigger stores farther away.

> The "historic city center" and all that crap... that I understand... noone goes there for weekly shopping, but instead people go there to hang out, drink coffee, eat, etc.... public transport works great for that. Malls, shopping centers or even larger stores? Nope.

When there's a lot of housing there, people sure do do their weekly shopping downtown - but it's mostly the people who live in the area. I lived in central Philadelphia for 7 years or so and when I needed groceries, I walked to one of the grocery stores in the neighborhood. I mostly wasn't carrying a ton of stuff on the train, but that's because there were shops close enough to walk to instead anyway.

(Though also, you can fit a lot of stuff in a cargo bike.)

Sure, if you need some bread, you go to the local bakery and buy that.. or if you need some onions, you buy those in the local store. But here, in my (relatively small, but still...) city, if you need weekly 'supplies', you drive to larger stores and get 100, 150eur of stuff, so you don't have to go to the store every day.

I get most of my grocery shopping delivered, or I go to the supermarket in my cargo bike, dump it all in the front, and ride home. You really don't need a car for this stuff at all.

I also have a cargo bike I use to get all sorts of things - from a full shopping cart to a large IKEA haul. Kids go in the trailer while the groceries are loaded in the cargo bike.

I live in Parisian suburbs and stores are all less than 10km away, I have never had trouble getting anything.

If I need something larger / heavier (say, cinder blocks and cement) I just rent a truck for two hours and get all the heavy shopping done in the time frame.

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