Living in a walkable city means my weekly shop is a few hours of walking or biking instead of being stuck in traffic, and I'm only mildly tired afterwards since I use a bike with pretty large pannier bags. Since I have no car related costs I can afford more fresh food, a healthier diet, and I can afford to be more choosy about the ethics of what I buy. There's a twice weekly farmers market about a ten minute walk away, and quiet walks through parks to get to the shops. Living somewhere with car centric infrastructure, as I used to, this lifestyle was far less feasible.
Have your experiences been different with moving to walkable/bikeable cities? Any questions or points to be made? I'm not very up on the theory side of city planning, but my experiences line up with the whole "fuck cars" thing.
One of the best things about living in a walkable place is that the concept of a weekly shop is basically dead - access to grocery shopping is available enough that I can go as many or as few times to shop as is warranted.
Granted, this usually adds up to once a week or less, but yeah. Big benefit.
This is an important concept to be imparted on those who do not understand the benefits of walkable places - a frequent question is how they can manage to complete their weekly shop without a car, since the car is in their mind needed to transport enough groceries to last the entire week. This is of course necessitated by the fact that their ideal location to shop for groceries is a significant distance away that can only be completed in a practical manner by car.
With where I live, this is unwarranted because I have access to convenient grocery shopping about 200 meters away by foot, and for ideal pricing I go 1 km away on a bike with storage on the rack. I do not want for variety either, I've got multiple speciality shops and 5 different grocery chains within a 1 km radius.
Notjustbikes had a whole episode on how nice it is to decide each day what you want to eat, and just buy it on the way home.
It's nice to be able to, done get me wrong, but if I could stock up for 6 months I would. Who wants to waste time getting groceries every day?
it's not a waste of time lol, are you stuck in car-centric thinking where getting groceries is an hour long affair? for me it takes like 20 minutes to buy stuff of which most of it is just getting to the store, and i don't even live that close to the store!
For me it’s a short drive to the store - would be bikable except for the hill. However grocery shopping is still a chore, and it still takes over an hour out of my life. Yes, I’d try to minimize that, regardless of what transportation I used.
Over COViD I invested in a chest freezer, and I already had significant storage, so now i can bulk buy more things. Already the only reason I go so often is fresh vegetables: if I could get them to last more than a week, you bet I’d make fewer shopping trips
You don’t have to make a Costco run every day. You can spend 5 minutes at the grocery store grabbing 3 items.
A Costco run every couple months keeps me in stock of dry goods and anything that freezes.
I may have to goto the grocery weekly for produce, dairy, and bread, but at least don’t have to worry about things, like meat, cereal, etc.
@usualsuspect191 @perviouslyiner Uh… people who eat fruit or vegetables or fresh baked goods?
It’s not that you get them every day, but that you have the ability to get them whenever you want them instead of having to plan an excursion.
I'm personally a big fan of finishing up work, looking through the cupboards, polling the kids and wife, and then walking 5 minutes to the grocery store to get a few things for dinner. Gets me out of the house, and since I work from home mostly I find it helps me make a nice mental and physical separation between work and the evening. Fresh baked sourdough from a local baker is an added plus.
I realize there's an immense level of privilege I enjoy to be able to do this (namely living in a very metro area, and usually having no commute), but having also lived in Europe and India for periods of my life it's sad to see there this type of daily shopping is way more normal and commonplace.
You need to watch the video because he specifically addresses your misconception.
I'd love to break up the shop into more frequent, smaller trips and I could, but for my work and parenting duties during the week it's just easier to do it all in one go.