I would guess that there are social accommodations and expectations for these kinds of things that might be missing in the US. Sort of like how in Europe, delivery is widely available for large goods, because many don't own cars. This does not exist in the US. I thinking making American society more accommodating will be helpful toward breaking the ideology of single-family homes.

What kind of large goods can you not get delivered in the US? Every store selling sofas or mattresses delivers, in my experience. TVs? Microwaves? Garden chairs? Maybe not everyone delivers but you can certainly buy those online.

This is why I said "not widely available", rather than "utterly impossible". If I buy something from Home Depot or IKEA in the US, and want it delivered, I generally have to arrange it myself, which generally involves finding someone on Craigslist or something. My understanding is that in Europe, it is available by default. Or in NYC, there were always people hanging around the parking lot to help with deliveries. This is not the case in most of the US.

Most anything you buy at Home Depot can be delivered. If you don’t believe me, just check out homedepot.com and see that most items can be delivered. It just costs money.

I have had appliances (fridges, washing machines, dryers), lumber, etc delivered. I have had a patio window replaced.

It may not be the case with IKEA but that place is even more known for cheapness. I just haven’t tried it with IKEA.

What ikeas are you going to? Having lived in several Canadian and US cities, home depot and Ikea both have delivery available (for a reasonable fee). Home depot also has truck rental, which is convenient enough for driving things home yourself.

What sort of large goods do you mean? I live in central Los Angeles, a city famously reliant on personal automobile ownership, and it has never been an issue having items like furniture delivered to my door.

I do understand your larger point about a city's infrastructure accommodating the culture of its inhabitants. Taking LA as an example again, because of the widespread reliance on car commuting in the city, it's harder here to close some streets down to personal vehicle traffic, as has been done in other cities recently.

If you go to IKEA in LA, do they deliver? What about Home Depot? In my experience, most of the time they don't, but I think in Europe it's different.

Ikea and Home Depot both offer home delivery for large items, nationwide (in most cases). Pricing varies (Ikea does a flat rate $50 or $60 regardless of how much you order, IIRC; Home Depot shipping charges depend on exactly what you're ordering), but it's generally available.

In fact, I've never bought a large appliance and walked out from the store with it. Even if my local store does have the item in stock (sometimes they do; sometimes they don't; the big box stores don't generally keep a large stock of major appliances in-store), it's way more convenient to get the store to do the delivery and install for me-- especially since that's frequently included in the cost for major appliances (or a relatively small extra charge).

I live in the Midwest, in a heavily car-dependent city, and even here Home Depot and Lowes deliver. There's a fee but unless you're doing it like every week it's gonna be cheaper than owning a truck (this tends to be true of a lot of, though not quite all of, the tasks my fellow suburbanites cite as the reasons they own a truck).

Most or all major furniture stores deliver here. I see delivery trucks from a very large one about 35 minutes away all the time, maybe as much as once a week. Not sure about IKEA, as they're super-weird about that kind of thing (see also: online ordering & shipping). They might, though.

Almost certainly yes. You may well need to pay for it but you can get most things delivered from, certainly, major chains.

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/services/deliver...

https://www.homedepot.com/c/About_Your_Online_Order