There's a YouTube channel[1] explaining the difference between North American cities and European ones. As a resident of Amsterdam he covers this city a lot.
I'm from Zurich, Switzerland. I don't own a car because everything I need is either in walking/cycling distance or reachable by public transport. While I've been well aware of the car dependency situation in North America, watching a few episodes from the mentioned YouTube channel, made me realize that this is a self-inflicted problem because of car centric zoning and development rules. The often cited "greater distances" are in fact the result of these, not the cause.
I'm in Chicago in Rogers Park and own no car. Everything I need is walking distance and I get to work via commuter rail that is a block from me. It's awesome.
Very interesting link (@Not Just Bikes), didn't think it's so bad in the US with pedestrian walkways.
I mean like I live in the Romanian suburb and it's not great, but supermarkets everywhere and walkways alongside car roads is the norm. What we still try to catch up is Netherland-ish bike lanes, problem's when they do it at all, "they" (city roadworks) implement it in a very Balkan way: they made a bike lane allright but every 10 meters there's a crossing with a 10 cm bump, makes biking on the lane rather impractical if not impossible.
ottawa, canada. no car for 9 years, i live downtown but yeah everything is spread out pretty far outside the core dt area. Worst part though is the culture expects a car more than you actually need one in my exp.
After spending a few weeks back in Europe (after 8 years in the US), it quickly came back to me how much easier it is to live a healthy daily pattern of life there than it is here. In particular: Shopping for food in the US is almost always a separate trip in a car or a bus or on foot. Whereas in Spain it's common to go meet friends, pick up some bread and veg from the store, meet more friends and pick up things from a butcher on the way home, then you start cooking and go out again later. Ane you can do this every day. In Amerca... you have to plan a trip with a car to buy more than you want to spend and stock it away, and at the end you want to go out and you don't even want to cook
In the UK, the supermarkets, the Internet, and modern 'town planning' have largely caused the demise of the UK high street.
In the 70s towns were smaller, fewer people had cars, and there were hardly any supermarkets, so people walked into the town centres and did their grocery shopping there.
Then in 80s we started getting the first out-of-town supermarkets with free parking. You have always had to pay for parking in UK town centres since I can remember.
And the UK government relaxed Sunday trading laws. Many family owned stores stayed closed on a Sunday - having 1 day a week off.
Then supermarkets started offering more 'range', to the point now where many UK supermarkets are like mini-shopping malls. Clothes, music, opticians, locksmiths, pharmacy, and so on. And they started closing their town centre supermarkets and moving everything to the new out-of-town ones.
At the same time UK planning laws now favour developers building 1-2000 homes with a couple of small shops, no High St. or Main St., and as many houses as possible built on all the remaining space for profit. These developments are unsurprisingly nowhere near town centres, so people need to drive. And they don't want to go into a town centre where there's no supermarket, and you have to pay to park. I don't really understand what we're trying to build over here.
Towns that have prevented mainstream chains (Sainsbury, Tesco, Starbuck, MacDonalds) from setting up, have faired far better. Butchers, bakers and greengrocers, small convenience stores (mom+pop groceries) all still exist in those towns, unlike those towns with nearby supermarkets.
So in part, we're not as bad as the US, but we love our cars, and just blindly go to supermarkets now.
This is also why I think and hope electric vehicle is not the global solution to the too much ICE cars problem, nor is archieving self driving on those cars. A popular solution doesn't make it the best one, it is just the best solution under certain circumstances. Yes I'm talking about tesla.
Absolutely, design of cities dictates behaviour. The secondary effects of this are interesting too. For example, european kitchens can be smaller because they don’t need to store as much.
Indeed! I was in SF for a few months. Finding affordable food was insanely hard. Fast food was both really cheap and everywhere. Fresh produce and basics like bread were expensive or hard to find, a long bus / tube drive away. Of course it's much easier to fall into that trap of shitty and cheap food.
Where I live the balance is much easier. Vegetables, fruit, meat, ... it's all relatively cheap and easy to get, there's supermarkets and bakeries everywhere. Fast food is relatively expensive, so you get something to think about: (expensive+unhealthy but easy) || (cheap+healthy but you need to cook)
Is this just an urban vs outer suburb thing, tho? My experience of the US is largely limited to San Francisco and Seattle, but there did seem to be supermarkets within walking distance most places in the city.
I suppose you're talking about one certain life style where this kind of pattern fits well. I used to follow this exact description for many years when I was younger and did in fact live right in the center of a small city. It worked great for me. I remember one weekend where I suddenly craved a boiled egg and so just had to walk 5 minutes from my door to a farmer's market to buy a single egg which I carried home holding it in my hand. (The guy selling the eggs gave me a surprised look, but hey, I was single back then, one egg was enough...)
But later in life, with three little children, I just simply couldn't imagine a trip to the grocery store every day. Having moved out to the suburbs, public transport or walking wasn't an option any more, and I was already doing enough driving around what with the kids going to school and all kinds of afternoon activities.
I would have actually loved the more car-centric design of North American cities where at least the driving is made easy. No squeezing through small alleys, tiny parking lots (if any) and 3+ stops to get all the things you need for the week.
The reason the North American car centric design works (too) is that it optimizes for convenience rather than environmental concerns (and it's not like European cities optimized for the latter either, they were simply built in pre-car times). Even if the driving distances are further, that doesn't necessarily mean that the overall shopping trip is much longer in practice. And even in cases where it is, I just find it much less stressful to drive in North America. Of course, your mileage may vary.
When I lived in the city center many years ago, there was one larger grocery store about 5 minutes away from me on foot and a couple of smaller stores specialized in one thing or another in the same area. And while that was very convenient for me, it also meant that there was constant traffic in front of my house from people driving to these stores. There wasn't much zoning rules, apparently, the stores where all just mixed in among the residental houses.
Even if supermarket is in walking distance, the limiting factor is ability to take all the purchase with me. Using a car i could fill half the car with the purchase, so i do not need to visit it again for several weeks.
I remember I had 5 supermarkets between 5 to 10 minutes walking distance from my home when I was living in Milan. 100 meters in 1 minute is 6 km per hour which is a brisk pace so the closest supermarket was at about 400 meters. Of course I never drove to them, I always walked and came home with a couple of bags two or three times per week, usually at 2 PM when the supermarkets are almost empty. Water weights a lot and could be a reason to go shopping by car but 1) I always drank water from the pipe in the kitchen since I was little 2) I would have to walk to my home from where I found a parking place on the street and that was often as much as walking from the supermarket.
As somebody who's lived in both Amsterdam and the Bay Area, the list of things that Bay Area car advocates say are impossible that I've seen work with my own eyes is endless.
I mean, when I’ve visited San Francisco, it seems to have supermarkets all over the place too (albeit rather expensive, not-very-good ones), so they even have a local model.
Pop 200k city in Germany. Historical city center is roughly 2 km²
We have one Aldi, one organic supermarket, 4 REWE, 1 Edeka, and one Penny. Everything but Penny is less than 1 km away from where I live, the closest REWE is 300 meters.
This density falls off when you leave the center, but you still usually have at least one within walking distance.
in india, that is your local grocery store. every street has them. of all kinds, stocking different things, sometimes similar things.
these give employment to a huge number of people who are simple passive shopkeepers, they do not do any advertising, do not have to raise loans (though some do) or "invest" in anything exotic. just their stock in hand.
since the "concentration" of power is distributed, everyone owns their own shop and nothing more.
majority of the shops don't even have an employee. the owner/family does the whole thing. (mom and pop store)
what this does is, there are no shareholders to satisfy, no shoplifting at the scale it becomes a problem for corps and employees don't care.
this model should be adopted elsewhere too, the opposite of going hyperscale
Sri Lanka chiming in: this was the case when I was growing up. Two corner stores within 50 meters of my home. Personal relationship with both owners (they set aside my favourite paper, advised me on razors when I started shaving). Now that has been lost with supermarkets. It's all very convenient with a lot of choice, but something has been lost. Something experiential that can't be boiled down to KPIs.
I live near Green Lanes in London. Have a massive Sainsbury's (supermarket, nudging hypermarket as sells clothes), an Aldi, and then all up Green Lanes is a never ending stream of grocers in various med flavours (Turkish, Italian, Cypriot etc). It's chaotic, but I love being able to get anything I want from nice people any time. Only sad bit is the good Butcher closed (English style. There's still at least 4 Turkish ones, but they don't do pork, sausages, fancy aged steak etc.).
In the Netherlands this still exists, but mostly in the form of shops "from foreign people". So you have some Turkish stores, a Bengal store, a Polish store, an Afro-Carribean store. They are often run by one person or a family. The customers know where to find these stores without advertising.
Recently, in my town at least, there are a few larger Turkish supermarkets. I don't see the smaller shops take a hit yet, not sure if things will change.
> model should be adopted elsewhere too, the opposite of going hyperscale
So you are saying there were no grocery stores in the US before Piggly Wiggly opened up?
It was the model that preceded the current one throughout the western world. It clearly failed because it couldn’t compete with the efficiency (and much better customer experience and prices) provided by supermarkets.
It wouldn’t work without imposing some artificial limitations (as is the case in quite a few European cities) which have a significant productivity cost.
I would gladly take small, diverse stores who sell local products over big supermarket chains. Unfortunately, in most big cities in EU this is not an option, anymore.
This model also means using of lots and lots of labor because sales volume of those shops is very small and it keeps entire family occupied. It means those people are unavailable for other productive activities.
The world is entering labor shortage zone that will last for as long as we don't figure how to fix reproduction without abandoning human rights (which isn't an option anyway because there are many countries and people can vote with their feet).
Economic models that are as efficient as possible and above all, labor efficient, are thus highly preferrable.
It's very likely we will see totally unmanned chain convenience stores soon.
It seems they mean grocery store, rather than supermarket. Also take into account that in the Netherlands it's more common to go grocery shopping daily or every few days.
Is it more common to go daily because there are so many grocery stores? I'm not in Amsterdam, but Switzerland, where I am, there's supermarkets for every neighbourhood, I took to buying groceries nearly every day because it's so easy to pick them up on the way home, I can just go in and see what's on sale to make dinner.
I'd qualify the most popular chains here (like Albert Hein) as super markets. You can buy not only food, but also all the basic home supplies (cleaning products etc), large choice of drinks and sweets and so on. Basically all you need on daily basis as long as you're not too picky about the brands. But not home _equipment_. In years of living here in few places I've been only going to the store by feet. Indeed it's every few days as apartments are mostly small and you have no space for storing/freezing a lot of food. And there are mice everywhere.
It's probably because they are so close. I would imagine many americans would do the same if their neighbourhood was in walkable distance. I live in Germany and I do the same I go shopping everyday for 10 minutes for the things I need for the day.
In the Netherlands you have supermarkets, some big, some small and sometimes smaller mom and pop stores that sell the basics. They are outcompeted by supermarkets that tend to be very close as well. There are no supermarkets that sell everything, like you might find in France (Hyper Marche, Carrefour) or the US (Walmart).
What is the difference? In Europe we call basically everything a supermarket and its a synonym for grocery store. The only exceptions would be minimarket which are extremely tiny and hypermarket which is your US Walmart-style extremely large store that also sells electronics and clothes etc.
That means "things required for daily life". They definitely mean supermarket. It's about the same in Rotterdam. I'm an eight minute walk away from four different big supermarket chains. If I walk 10 minutes I can get to the second most distant Albert Heijn.
In Berlin, there is within the block of my apartment 6 supermarkets. There is even two of the same brand one of them on one corner and the other on the other corner.
I live in an American city, population ~250,000 in the city center; 2.5 million if you include the suburbs. Nearest grocery store to me is ~2 miles away.
Living in the US and within walking distance (5-10 min walk) of a grocery store, I'd much rather drive because I can buy more things, thus making fewer trips over the month. It's the same 5 min by car, but it's just a lot more convenient. I have plenty of exercise, so I prefer to not carry a bunch of bags to stay fit...
I'm in similar situation. I much prefer to walk, because it's healthier, cheaper, less stressful an more pleasant than driving. Also, since it doubles down as excercise, I don't have to do as much of it.
I carry the groceries in a large-ish (35 L) backpack.
Yeah it seems like a cultural thing whereas some people want to shop a little bit every day and driving is a hassle, others (like me) want to shop once a week or two and be done with it. Driving is not an issue, as I work and exercise from home.
In the centre of Amsterdam, most Albert Heijn stores (they are the most common supermarket in Amsterdam) are relatively small and only sell the more popular products. These are the places with lots of tourists, while real estate is expensive, so it makes sense. More outside the center where the living neighbourhoods are most Albert Heijn stores are on the larger side and have their full stock. Though some smaller malls have also smaller supermarkets.
In other cities in the Netherlands you see a likewise pattern.
Where I live (in Germany) there are 8 or 9 supermarkets within half a mile distance, two of which organic and one a "center" (i.e. big). I find that the inventory is limited only in 1 or 2 of the smallest ones. In all the others I typically find everything I need.
Amsterdam is not extremely big but almost 1 million people is not extremely tiny. And even then size little to do with these stats unless you are talking about places with less than a handful of supermarkets.
Flatness is nice (but weather is bad). However, the main thing is infrastructure and mixed zoning. When you build bike lanes, walkable streets and lots of shops, a livable city will follow, not the other way around. Build for the traffic you want rather than the traffic you have.
These stats on supermarkets will be similar in many European cities btw. Many cities in the US are also relatively flat, and you don't see the same thing generally.
pstadler|2 years ago
I'm from Zurich, Switzerland. I don't own a car because everything I need is either in walking/cycling distance or reachable by public transport. While I've been well aware of the car dependency situation in North America, watching a few episodes from the mentioned YouTube channel, made me realize that this is a self-inflicted problem because of car centric zoning and development rules. The often cited "greater distances" are in fact the result of these, not the cause.
[1] https://youtube.com/@NotJustBikes
lotsofpulp|2 years ago
Bluescreenbuddy|2 years ago
MichaelRo|2 years ago
I mean like I live in the Romanian suburb and it's not great, but supermarkets everywhere and walkways alongside car roads is the norm. What we still try to catch up is Netherland-ish bike lanes, problem's when they do it at all, "they" (city roadworks) implement it in a very Balkan way: they made a bike lane allright but every 10 meters there's a crossing with a 10 cm bump, makes biking on the lane rather impractical if not impossible.
https://imgur.com/a/iCCQJRt
penjelly|2 years ago
jareklupinski|2 years ago
noduerme|2 years ago
DrBazza|2 years ago
In the 70s towns were smaller, fewer people had cars, and there were hardly any supermarkets, so people walked into the town centres and did their grocery shopping there.
Then in 80s we started getting the first out-of-town supermarkets with free parking. You have always had to pay for parking in UK town centres since I can remember.
And the UK government relaxed Sunday trading laws. Many family owned stores stayed closed on a Sunday - having 1 day a week off.
Then supermarkets started offering more 'range', to the point now where many UK supermarkets are like mini-shopping malls. Clothes, music, opticians, locksmiths, pharmacy, and so on. And they started closing their town centre supermarkets and moving everything to the new out-of-town ones.
At the same time UK planning laws now favour developers building 1-2000 homes with a couple of small shops, no High St. or Main St., and as many houses as possible built on all the remaining space for profit. These developments are unsurprisingly nowhere near town centres, so people need to drive. And they don't want to go into a town centre where there's no supermarket, and you have to pay to park. I don't really understand what we're trying to build over here.
Towns that have prevented mainstream chains (Sainsbury, Tesco, Starbuck, MacDonalds) from setting up, have faired far better. Butchers, bakers and greengrocers, small convenience stores (mom+pop groceries) all still exist in those towns, unlike those towns with nearby supermarkets.
So in part, we're not as bad as the US, but we love our cars, and just blindly go to supermarkets now.
a_c|2 years ago
joshghent|2 years ago
mavamaarten|2 years ago
Where I live the balance is much easier. Vegetables, fruit, meat, ... it's all relatively cheap and easy to get, there's supermarkets and bakeries everywhere. Fast food is relatively expensive, so you get something to think about: (expensive+unhealthy but easy) || (cheap+healthy but you need to cook)
rsynnott|2 years ago
deafpolygon|2 years ago
I live in the NL, but I can hardly meet any friends. Maybe a difference in culture in Spain?
kleiba|2 years ago
But later in life, with three little children, I just simply couldn't imagine a trip to the grocery store every day. Having moved out to the suburbs, public transport or walking wasn't an option any more, and I was already doing enough driving around what with the kids going to school and all kinds of afternoon activities.
I would have actually loved the more car-centric design of North American cities where at least the driving is made easy. No squeezing through small alleys, tiny parking lots (if any) and 3+ stops to get all the things you need for the week.
The reason the North American car centric design works (too) is that it optimizes for convenience rather than environmental concerns (and it's not like European cities optimized for the latter either, they were simply built in pre-car times). Even if the driving distances are further, that doesn't necessarily mean that the overall shopping trip is much longer in practice. And even in cases where it is, I just find it much less stressful to drive in North America. Of course, your mileage may vary.
When I lived in the city center many years ago, there was one larger grocery store about 5 minutes away from me on foot and a couple of smaller stores specialized in one thing or another in the same area. And while that was very convenient for me, it also meant that there was constant traffic in front of my house from people driving to these stores. There wasn't much zoning rules, apparently, the stores where all just mixed in among the residental houses.
AniseAbyss|2 years ago
[deleted]
em500|2 years ago
Average distance to primary/elementary school: 500m (with on average 3.6 schools within a 1km radius, 27.5 within a 3km radius)
Average distance to secondary/middle-high school: 900m (with on average 10.8 schools within a 3km radius)
That's why starting from age 8 or so most kids cycle or walk to school themselves (there are no school busses in the Netherlands AFAIK).
sejtnjir|2 years ago
eterps|2 years ago
zajio1am|2 years ago
mytailorisrich|2 years ago
pmontra|2 years ago
malermeister|2 years ago
rsynnott|2 years ago
Semaphor|2 years ago
We have one Aldi, one organic supermarket, 4 REWE, 1 Edeka, and one Penny. Everything but Penny is less than 1 km away from where I live, the closest REWE is 300 meters.
This density falls off when you leave the center, but you still usually have at least one within walking distance.
2Gkashmiri|2 years ago
these give employment to a huge number of people who are simple passive shopkeepers, they do not do any advertising, do not have to raise loans (though some do) or "invest" in anything exotic. just their stock in hand.
since the "concentration" of power is distributed, everyone owns their own shop and nothing more.
majority of the shops don't even have an employee. the owner/family does the whole thing. (mom and pop store)
what this does is, there are no shareholders to satisfy, no shoplifting at the scale it becomes a problem for corps and employees don't care.
this model should be adopted elsewhere too, the opposite of going hyperscale
hliyan|2 years ago
te_chris|2 years ago
mpol|2 years ago
Recently, in my town at least, there are a few larger Turkish supermarkets. I don't see the smaller shops take a hit yet, not sure if things will change.
ffgjgf1|2 years ago
So you are saying there were no grocery stores in the US before Piggly Wiggly opened up?
It was the model that preceded the current one throughout the western world. It clearly failed because it couldn’t compete with the efficiency (and much better customer experience and prices) provided by supermarkets.
It wouldn’t work without imposing some artificial limitations (as is the case in quite a few European cities) which have a significant productivity cost.
DeathArrow|2 years ago
anovikov|2 years ago
The world is entering labor shortage zone that will last for as long as we don't figure how to fix reproduction without abandoning human rights (which isn't an option anyway because there are many countries and people can vote with their feet).
Economic models that are as efficient as possible and above all, labor efficient, are thus highly preferrable. It's very likely we will see totally unmanned chain convenience stores soon.
ssdspoimdsjvv|2 years ago
secretsatan|2 years ago
avallach|2 years ago
Loeffelmann|2 years ago
jochem9|2 years ago
In the Netherlands you have supermarkets, some big, some small and sometimes smaller mom and pop stores that sell the basics. They are outcompeted by supermarkets that tend to be very close as well. There are no supermarkets that sell everything, like you might find in France (Hyper Marche, Carrefour) or the US (Walmart).
dtech|2 years ago
timvdalen|2 years ago
Notatheist|2 years ago
That means "things required for daily life". They definitely mean supermarket. It's about the same in Rotterdam. I'm an eight minute walk away from four different big supermarket chains. If I walk 10 minutes I can get to the second most distant Albert Heijn.
michael_vo|2 years ago
rsynnott|2 years ago
macilacilove|2 years ago
kermitdekikker|2 years ago
that_guy_iain|2 years ago
AndrewOMartin|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
drawkward|2 years ago
glimshe|2 years ago
badpun|2 years ago
I carry the groceries in a large-ish (35 L) backpack.
gedy|2 years ago
ars|2 years ago
mpol|2 years ago
In other cities in the Netherlands you see a likewise pattern.
dalai|2 years ago
SargeDebian|2 years ago
jazzyjackson|2 years ago
avazhi|2 years ago
This isn’t surprising and it isn’t something to extrapolate to anywhere that is even minutely dissimilar.
kermitdekikker|2 years ago
Flatness is nice (but weather is bad). However, the main thing is infrastructure and mixed zoning. When you build bike lanes, walkable streets and lots of shops, a livable city will follow, not the other way around. Build for the traffic you want rather than the traffic you have.
These stats on supermarkets will be similar in many European cities btw. Many cities in the US are also relatively flat, and you don't see the same thing generally.
zaps|2 years ago