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.
This is funny and I think very cultural. I'm American and would walk 20 minutes to a large super market and carry 20kg back, up and down hills in San Francisco no less. I too enjoyed the exercise. I knew plenty of people who would shop at smaller stores, mostly people who grew up in cities, but I never really liked it. I grew up going to large super markets and find grocery shopping at them cathartic.
Our neighborhood supermarkets are the size of, say, a basketball court, so they're not as tiring.
Not that there's anything wrong with tap water, but eeeh.
Note that you can put it into backpack or use something like https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wozek+na+zakupy&t=ffab&iar=images&... (sorry, not sure how it is called in English).
PS Unless they have serious medical issues, far worse than typical. Or they are really old or really young. But in such cases they likely should not drive anyway.
What are you, a granny? It is not strenuous or difficult at all.
It's no wonder the US has such a high obesity and diabetes rate, with a sedentary society like that.
With something like https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wozek+na+zakupy&t=ffab&iar=images&... it is even simpler - my 80 years old grandmother is using it for shopping.
> your only sport ever is carrying groceries. What a poor life
Just how much stuff you buy? Maybe you live in awful city with shops more than 500m away from your home?
I have no interest whatsoever to involve cars in my life. Having to share the roads with them is bad enough. (The arrogance of space is ridiculous.)
Deliveries: these cost little because people aren't paid properly. If I wanted to pay them properly, I wouldn't be able to use their services much. So instead of normalizing exploitation in the name of convenience, I prefer not to use delivery services when it can be avoided. And with different supermarkets in almost every direction, within 10mins on foot they most definitely can be avoided. I don't mean to moralize, and I'll step right off this soap box, but keeping bad jobs alive is a disservice to my community.
More energy / more free time: neither the time nor the energy are wasted. If you want, you can see the time spent as an investment into health and focus, a tool for stress-reduction, an active period of mental rest, but really: this is not a zero sum game.
I don't think any of this will convince you, and I'm not trying to. But perhaps you can see that your view on the "best solution" is hardly universal and well-established alternatives exist that work for a surprisingly large number of people.
Political reasons? You bet! Everything we do is political. We are /zoon politicon/. I do things the way I do them because I like it this way, and if by doing them this way I contribute to the mainstream leaning one lifestyle closer towards what I consider comfortable then: yes, this is all terribly political.
> That is our failure, and it's a failure brought about to a large extent by bad policy that tells us we can't have nice things, because nice things are for the rich
You do realize that this is just your privilege? Most of people don't have everything in the walking reach, some would have to bike up a hill for a few kilometers to get to a shop, etc?
Don't get me wrong, it's great that you can, but it's just a lucky consequence of where you live, not something that's universally applicable to everyone.
This is exactly what TFA is about. It should not be a privilege, but it is, because we made it scarce. Not because it is more expensive to create, it is not.
Yes, that's the point, though. This discussion thread is about walkable cities.
I should also point out that urban planning that gives priority to people who walk benefits everyone, independent of their income. This cannot be said for designs that give priority to cars.
Anyway, my point being that IMHO it's not always a good idea to just try to copy/paste architectural and urbanistic solutions between regions with very different geography, culture and population density, no matter how trendy the idea is.
Or even less if shop is 300m away.
From my personal experience, I've found that doing physical exercise (paradoxically enough) seems to give me more energy. On those days where I've sat still all day I'm much more likely to feel like doing nothing after work, whereas when I've done my usual cycle commute I'm usually a lot more mentally alert. YMMV of course, but given the choice I'll personally rather do more than less physical exercise, even if it's small activities here and there like lugging some groceries.
I have a high street lined with shops on my way home where I can stop by, have a quick chat, perhaps pick up something that caught my attention as the scent of freshness overwhelmed my senses when I walked into the shop owned by a person that invites me for a drink and has visited my house socially.
The newest place near me right now was opened by an investment banker that chose to optimise for his hairline in his own words, so when I stop there to get stock up on exotic groceries, that is the best solution for me and if it’s raining, so what? I’ve got towels at home.
For decades I simply carried groceries in a big backpack and walked to the markets on foot (they are all within a 10 minute radius from where I live). I'd call the layout of my neighborhood functional and efficient.
Adverse weather has never been an issue for me. It's not like I regularly have things to haul that cannot possibly be rescheduled to a time after a thunderstorm. Some drizzle is barely even an inconvenience. Having to share the road with cars is the most annoying part of being mobile in the city.
> Also in urban environments, making a lot of "inviting" public spaces for people to hang around and loiter is not always a great idea.. this also attracts a lot of crime, drugs etc
I'd like to have more convenient access to drugs, but our parks don't seem to attract enough dealers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Seriously, though: when drugs and crime become a problem, making public spaces hostile to all people seems like a solution that should not be among the top ten.