It does sound appaling but, here in the UK, my dad lives in a fairly large city and, once a week, I drive him to the largest supermarket in the area which is about 10 miles away.
There are, of course, other supermarkets much closer (2 within walking distance) but they are not quite so big, have a limited choice and are situated in areas which attract a certain class of clientel (known in the UK as Chavs). For him, the inconvenience is worth it - although it does take 3 hours out of my day.
My examples were less than 5 miles, too. 2.5mi each way to drive vs 0.8mi each way to walk.
I like having both options - I stop at the supermarket on my way home from work for a bigger shop. But when I just need one thing it's great to be able to walk and get it.
Plentiful parking is available at my supermarket door too - but it's a different experience. The need to navigate other cars, the busy intersections which inevitably exist around shopping centres, the larger store with more people - it all creates a larger and more frustrating/stressful experience than a quick walk in the sunshine when I only need a couple of things.
None of those products seem extraordinary for a small grocery store to stock they all sound like staples of any shop - especially the fresh food. If they don't exist in your local stores then that is of course an issue - but it is an issue by design where you live.
I imagine part of the cost if that to achieve the kind of stock levels I have you need a certain population density (I live on the urban/suburban fringe of my city) - and if you live in the suburbs with everyone on a 600m2 block then of course it will be difficult to maintain fresh stock and a large enough customer base. But this article is talking about making cities walkable areas so it doesn't really apply to suburbs anyway.
supermarket has never been more than 2 miles away - certainly not a 20 minute drive and it's even within biking distance
I'd consider that far, far away.
My walk to the nearest train station is about one mile, takes about 15 minutes to get there on foot, and that's irritatingly far, too, considering the trip is two way and repeats every day. Something like a grocery shop should be accessible within decent walking distance, a five-minute walk or so.
A rule of thumb is that if something is far enough that I have to take the car in the first place I'll be incentivised to drive further away to a big supermarket/other big stores while I'm at it.
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.
As someone who lived in London for nearly a decade, getting groceries was 100x easier than when I lived somewhere you had to drive for 15-30 minutes (traffic) to get to a large hypermarket.
A rucksack will easily carry around 5-6 days of food. Other than that, I would simply pop by the shop on my commute home from work. It would be a 5-10 minute detour max.
Remember that the shops in such cities are directly accessible (no need to walk through a massive shopping centre), there's no time wasted on finding a parking space, there's so many shops that it's extremely likely that there's at least one between your home and the bus/tube stop and they're mostly exclusively filled with food so you're not walking past dozens of aisles filled with non-groceries.
The big bonus of course is that if you wake up in the morning and realise you're out of milk, it's a usually a <5min walk to the closest shop to pick some up and no one will bat an eyelid if you're still wearing your bathing gown. :)
There's also generally less food waste (as you shop for fewer days and can plan better) and you can opt into buying your fruit, veg, meat and fish fresh every day instead of having to hope that your 'big shop' at the megastore will still be fresh at the end of the week.
If the supermarket is only 0.5 miles away, it's going to be quite small.
Normal sized supermarkets are in the range of 5 or so miles apart.
I am not interested in living in a place where tiny stores are my only option.
Also, why would I want to waste my time walking 20 minutes multiple times a week, plus time in the store? That sounds dreadful, why would you want that?
I think it's just that everyone is close enough to a supermarket, it's easy enough to just go there on the way back from work, or just pop to the supermarket. It's not worth paying to get someone to do the groceries for you.
I don't think I've ever lived further than a 15 minute walk from a supermarket.
You have to live in rather remote place in US to not have a supermarket within 10 minute drive. There are plenty of places like that, to be sure, but in the suburbia you’re thinking of, large supermarkets are typically within 5-10 minutes drive.
For example, I live in Seattle, in a single family house in a single family house neighborhood. I have 3 large supermarkets within 5 minute drives, and at least 6 within 10 minutes.
Given that, why would I want to go to a store that has smaller selection and higher prices, if I can get to a proper one in 5 minutes?
The UK puts plenty of supermarkets in/near town centres too, though, so if you live near a town centre you don’t typically have to drive out of town (or drive at all) to buy food.
It’s nothing like the US where the distances are huge and a car is all but mandatory in many/most areas.
Where I live shops are within walking distance, and since we have a kid we switched to having lots of food delivered once a week fresh from the countryside.
I am especially bullish on that delivery service. Sure, they use a car, but one small truck making the rounds seems a lot more efficient than lots of small cars driving to the store.
Shopping is a very trite activity, owning a car doesn't make it much better. In fact driving out to some shopping center seems to make shopping a day trip, which is one wasted day. I prefer to just pick up a few things on may way home from the tube, and ordering more complicated stuff from Amazon (plus the weekly food deliveries).
Just as much as going to the 10km away supermarket requires a car or public transport - you can walk if you want, but I will have already went home from shopping while you are still just started walking.
That is mainly a density issue. Most people don't like density.
At an ordinary population density, supermarkets are about 2 to 5 miles from each other, which is probably 3 to 7 miles by road.
Large stores require many customers in order to remain in business. If supermarkets are closer, then they lose efficiency. Prices must be higher. Variety drops; you'll get just 2 types of cheese and 1 type of apple if the stores have to be smaller.
Without a car, large shopping trips become impossible. A young healthy adult can carry 1 or 2 shopping bags about 0.7 mile without major difficulty, but that just isn't enough. Stores would have to shrink by a factor of 20 to 100 in order to get them close enough, but the efficiency still plunges. Think of the portion of each sale that must support the manager's salary, or the number of stores at which each delivery truck must stop.
Without a car, frozen food can only be purchased in winter. Hot food, such as the fried chicken my supermarket offers, would never be able to get home in good condition.
Taking a friend's address in inner Copenhagen (a cheap place as she's a student), she has 4 supermarkets within 5 minutes walk (400m).
Taking a different friend's address in the suburbs, he has 3 supermarkets within a 10 minute walk (800m).
In the city centre, there are 10 supermarkets within a 5 minute walk.
The supermarkets in the city centre are smaller, and have a relatively limited range, although in practise I do 95% of my shopping at one. You choose a different supermarket if you need an upmarket/wider selection, but it doesn't matter as it's so close by (exception: if I really need something like a particular lactose free cheese for a recipe, I'll just go to an inner city supermarket rather than checking 3-4 shops in the centre). There is no parking.
In the inner city, perhaps 20% of them are large enough to be selling clothes, a few toys etc. There might be parking for 0-6 cars. Not having to walk across a ginormous car park saves a lot of distance.
You'll need to travel further (on average) to buy a barbecue, tent, etc. I think I remember the large American supermarkets selling this sort of thing — in Denmark, you'll need to go to the DIY / sports / etc shop. This will have a car park.
It's true that a supermarket or a shop is about 30 min drive for most places, but those rural areas are typically poorer, and populated with the elderly, so driving is not an option.
Same here, the supermarket is 3' away by foot and I've never even thought "oh man, I should take the car and go to the larger supermarket that's 15' away".
It's just not inconvenient at all. I wonder if the difference in opinion is from a lack of exercise? I don't mind carrying 20kg of stuff back home in bags, I'm used to it and it's good to get at least some exercise.
I just spent 3 weeks living in a small village. There was a grocery store in the town. The next one was, as you say, 50-100km away.
If you lived in one of the smaller villages around here, it would be 50-100km to the store, yeah.
City dweller nonsense about how it's oh-so-inconvenient to wait N minutes extra for food delivery is just funny in this context. Bunch of babies, I tell ya. :P
It's highly situational, but speaking broadly the US usually it's a "5 minute drive vs a 25 minute walk" situation.
But even if you live 5-10 minutes from the supermarket many people will still drive because everything is designed around people driving. For example, it's very common to lack sidewalks and even when there are sidewalks, protected crossings can be sparse.
So a 10 minute walk to the store can involve you having to walk in the street or in the mud and grass, cutting across the street where there's no crossing signal, and having to walk through a busy parking lot to actually get to the building.
And even once you're in the store things are designed around cars. The size of packaging and the quantities that people normally buy in are based on the idea that Americans take their car to the grocery store once a week and fill their trunk space with groceries.
I think the whole idea of having to drive to get groceries is a fairly uniquely American thing. Here in the UK in a medium sized town I have multiple places to buy food within walking distance, from a corner shop (small, has convenience items only), up to a full sized supermarket.
There are, of course, other supermarkets much closer (2 within walking distance) but they are not quite so big, have a limited choice and are situated in areas which attract a certain class of clientel (known in the UK as Chavs). For him, the inconvenience is worth it - although it does take 3 hours out of my day.
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