But this is a matter of chosen-lifestyle.
This was really brought home to me talking to my mother-in-law (who lives in Nyköping). She is a keen walker and owns a bike - but when I ranted about the incredible scale of traffic in what is a small and should be an eminently walkable town, she said "How else can people buy their weekly groceries?"
The point of walkable towns (which these small and quite intimate towns in central Sweden could be), is that the center of town would be full of flourishing small and specialized grocery and other stores, and people would buy food from their nearby store, and keep the center of the town alive and busy.
Instead of this, people prefer to sit alone in their car and drive at a snail's pace in a polluting traffic-jam, to a stadium-sized parking-lot where anonymous super-grocery chains are located out of reach of the 'poors' who have no car, and therefore no means of getting there.
Right. The change only works when you switch to a model of buying your daily groceries, because the market is close, and smaller, and quick to get in and out of. You may still make a weekly or bi-weekly trip to the big market in a car to get bulk stuff, but each day's meals are based around the perishables that you bought earlier that day or the day before.
(Yes, this is hard, and it only worked for us when we lived in Chicago, and the market was a few blocks away or we passed by grocers on the way to and from work, but it was a nice way to live.)
Driving to buy groceries may be necessary today, but maybe not tomorrow.
From Ruth Cowan's More Work for Mother: "Butchers, greengrocers, coffee merchants, and bakers employed delivery boys to take order from and then carry purchases back to the homes of their more prosperous customers. Smoked, dried, and pickled fish, fruits and vegetables, second-hand clothing, and linens were routinely sold from pushcarts that lined the curbs and traveled the back alleys of poor neighborhoods."
I'm in London, and use Ocado, which means if I can't even be bothered to open the app to decide what to order they'll populate the order for me based on my favourites and my past shops. I know I'll get something that's generally "close enough". When I can be bothered to open the app, I have a starting point that's ~90% right. My weekly shop takes me ~5 minutes.
I can't possibly imagine going back to doing grocery shopping - or pretty much any shopping - myself again. Ever. The exception is the very occasional urge, usually if I'm going for a walk anyway, or want something extra. But even most sudden urges is so much more convenient to handle via Deliveroo or similar.
The big out-of-town supermarkets will die soon enough, and be replaced by warehouses. The shift to deliveries has been steady in the UK at least. Small town centre grocery stores might survive to some extent for that occasionally extra shop.
One less reason to want to own a car for me at least.
I know, same here, it's so great. I used to have an annoying 30min detour 3 times per week, and now I do my grocery shopping on the phone for 5mins while I'm commuting. The time I save has gone into more cooking, and healthier meals. Delivery is definitely better than using a car. Nobody that already has a full time job should have to put up with such annoying chores.
But delivery services, and services related to house work has a big stigma in northern Europe, people think it's really important that "everyone cleans up their own mess" and you should not be able to "buy your way out". You see CEO:s in companies having kitchen duty doing dishes to get brownie points and you often get very negative reactions to using such services.
Personally don’t believe the supermarkets will go away. I don’t think the business model of these delivery platforms allows having qualified staff to do the shopping.
Ocado is increasingly licensing their warehousing platform internationally, so it's likely to show up near you.
I'd agree with you if we were talking about staff picking from a shop floor - that does not work reliably enough at all, but that model is several years outdated and the only reason some of those still survive is that the more automated systems like Ocado's and a few others are a lot more capital intensive to roll out as it means building dedicated specialized warehouses.
Not to pick on you but this sentiment is that sure I can handle groceries without driving to a store. I’ll just have some gig worker deliver it for me.
Personally I prefer shopping in person anyway. It’s not a big deal once a week and usually have multiple errands to run anyway.
I don't agree that it's straying from the topic. The shift towards getting groceries delivered is likely to start to kill off the big out-of-town super markets in certain markets, and it fundamentally changes the dynamics where grocery shopping was a big factor for people living in areas with few walkable shops with respect to their real or perceived need for cars.
E.g. my mums neighbourhood in Norway is one she'd likely have had to move away from when she gets a bit older than now if it wasn't for delivery services. She's close-ish to shops, but not close enough to be comfortable carrying lots of groceries any more. Having delivery services means the neighbourhood remains walkable enough for her for longer.
> Not to pick on you but this sentiment is that sure I can handle groceries without driving to a store. I’ll just have some gig worker deliver it for me.
No, my weekly shop is delivered by salaried drivers. They're not paid great (I've checked), but they're certainly not paid as poorly as the typical gig worker and thankfully they've recently been forced to up salaries to deal with the ongoing lack of delivery drivers in the UK. My very occasional extras via Deliveroo are delivered by gig workers, and I'm conscious they're paid shit so I generally tip heavily.
Personally I utterly hate shopping in person unless it's something that I like to look at, and I'm very happy to pay extra to avoid having to.
But to bring it back to the topic, if having someone deliver groceries takes away the main reason why people otherwise need a car, it's a net win. For me it e.g. makes a big difference in where I'd be prepared to live as I don't need to take into consideration whether it'd be a long walk with heavy bags any more. I enjoy long walks. I don't enjoy long walks with bags full of groceries.
Back in the states, I shop for groceries daily (again, choosing to live in a semi urban area with two grocery stores in easy walking distance) after dropping the toddler off at daycare. A stroller works wonders. Not sure how I will shop after he starts kindergarten next year.
Only if delivery was organized in a way to deliver to multiple households in the same area does it start to make sense from an ecological perspective: but your neighbourhood still has to have those delivery trucks in the walking/biking paths.
It's a bit like a bus vs. a car. They're not equal, even if they both drive on the same roads.
Despite the social consequences.
Ir seems to imply that it is a demand that technology not change things socially or if they will be bad. Both are flat out impossible as the inventor(s) don't even know what will change ahead of time. It is neither reasonable nor actionable.
If it doesn't imply that it is meaningless as the dumb luddite line "Science never sacrifices, it always murders." How the fuck is a process of discovery supposed to sacrifice anything when it isn't even an entity! Attributing responsibility of murders to it is similiarly daft - why not blame murders on violence instead?
Sure scientests should come out with ethical codes of "what not to do" after infamous incidents like say Harry Harlowe's gratitutousness monkey torture or human experimentation on the vulnerable but moral culpability is on the men responsible, not those who engage in a common different process. It would nonsensic like trying to declare eaters responsible for some depraved cannibal eating an infant!
If your only or main KPI ignores the social consequences , then you're doing it
> Despite de social consequences.
But I get your point, it's a well known school of thought based on selfishness, I'd guess.
And still we have expansive shopping malls outside of town which is heavily in favor or cars. We still have the downtown shopping but it can barely hang by, and parking is very expensive. It would not really have been possible to build all this shopping in the city center, so there is the physical limitations. I think this is the main problem, that the cities outgrow themselves, and it is just so much cheaper and economical to build mega-malls instead of smaller centres for shopping and amenities. They do exist here, but are very small. So you can often get by with walking of bicycling but the "big" shopping is done using a car, the local shops are 99% food-related or restaurants.