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.
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.
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.
Nope, weekly trip to the store minimizes all of the issues.
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?
Milk is not supposed to last for a month.
(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.)
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)
But in any case, it's good that multiple options exist.