Specifically: In the parts of W. Europe I have visited I observed mostly small grocery stores (esp in towns and cities) that folks visit daily or nearly so for food. People may stop on thei walk home to get dinner items each night! Contrast that with the U.S., where you are more likely to encounter a large grocery store- except perhaps in the densest inner city (but then maybe no grocery store at all, which is another story)- where people visit once a week or so. When people go to the grocery store, they stock up. Stores are optimized for buying multiple (more than you can carry at once) bags of groceries, which you then necessarily would load into your car and drive home.

Most folks would not willingly opt to take a long risky walk through unpleasant surroundings, traverse a giant parking lot not designed for walkers, then have to march through a large grocery store for many minutes to leave with just what one could carry. Sure, folks could bring a personal hand trolley or something but this really does not address other underlying problem.

So, in the case of grocery stores the basic culture of shopping at a very large center less frequently would also have to shift for people to leave their cars. And, I would argue, so it goes with many things. Shifts to a more pedestrian-oriented culture and environment may happen with time or in certain areas, but I don't think it would be simple, quick, or widespread any time soon in the U.S. for reasons that go beyond sidewalks.

I'm glad that people who want that have that option, but that sounds incredibly unpleasant to me. I'd much rather minimize the total amount of time spent shopping.

stopping by and for small shopping while walking with dog and or biking from gym to buy few fresh things for this tonight is hardly a unpleasant chore... so it's a matter of perspective

The latter is the perfect illustration of the problem. The mall was designed with a nice cut-through for pedestrians, but it got bricked up because teenagers used to hang out there and smoke.

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.

Yes. My grocery store often has sales where you have to buy 5 of a large and/or heavy product to get the discount. As a pedestrian I have to either forego the savings or have an awkward trip home.

I have not, which is why I asked. The commenter I replied to suggested that the problem was that Americans prefer to drive, intrinsically, and not that the problem was road layout. This surprised me because reading HN I got the idea that road layout very much is the key problem, so I asked.

Yes. Many Americans would absolutely choose a 5 minute drive over a 5 minute walk.

“I have too much stuff to carry. I have to take the kids. It’s too hot/cold/windy. I’ll be late to… I have to…”

A developer purchases large plots of agricultural land, and colludes with government to put a sprawling system of widely-separated four- to six- lane roads through it (often by widening and paving country roads until they are unrecognizable). Then, to hide this ugliness and block the resulting noise, they ring their newly-acquired fields with large earthen berms, which they cover with evergreen shrubs and chemically-treated wood-chips. At gaps in the berms they put gatehouses, with unarmed guards. Within these fortifications, they then build fanciful, curvilinear, branching systems of slower roads, like the endoplasmic reticulum of a cell, and around these fractal structures they put large, cheaply-constructed houses and driveways, which sell for $800k and above. Compared to the cities nearby, this is affordable.

Outside the berms, on the other side of the stroads, often without sidewalks, are, at best, strip malls, and, at least as often, are instead big-box stores surrounded literally by acres of blacktop parking lot. An "acre", you may recall, used to mean that which a man could farm in a day. Not this.

Now suppose you find yourself inside one of those houses inside the berms, and that you want to buy a vegetable. As the crow flies, it's possible that you are only a mile and a half from the nearest supermarket (not a very short distance, but achievable). But to get there by walking along the roads, you must first get to the gatehouse along the berm (which may or may not be in the direction of the store), and, to get there, you must traverse this fractal system of roads. The arclength may exceed the Euclidean distance from A to B by a factor of three or more. Either that, or you must violate peoples' sacred property, by cutting across yards and next to houses (which are not very far apart), and then finally scramble over the berm, amidst a shower of wood-chips.

Having achieved your escape from the "community", you must then find a way to cross four lanes of 45 MPH traffic (on a slow day). If you are lucky, there is a sidewalk, so you can walk half a mile to the nearest crosswalk. You do this separated from the whizzing death-machines by about the eight inches of grass that separates the sidewalk from the road. Do not let your mind wander. Keep your arms and legs inside the pathway at all times.

Upon finally crossing the street, you finally enter the shopping complex. It is surrounded by parking lots. Sweating and relieved that you have gotten this far with your life intact, you step into the air conditioning.

Then you buy that one vegetable you wanted for your supper, steel yourself, and conduct your return expedition.

Which, of course, is why you don't just buy what you need for today's supper. No, you didn't walk there at all. You drove there in a car, loaded the trunk with food for at least a week, and drove it home, to be preserved in your oversized fridge. Because venturing out in all that is a chore.

Back within your "community", there may be a nice, parklike atmosphere, full of what look like walking paths. But you may find that this is actually a golf course around which the houses have been built, and that -- ostensibly for safety from golf balls, or perhaps from golf carts -- these paths are often closed, in principle, to the "little people" who merely live there without additionally paying to whack a ball around. There are then petty conflicts between the golfers who have purchased special rights, and the simple pedestrians, who have the unseemly desire to locomote with their God-given feet.

An overwhelming proportion of the American landscape is like this. It can hardly be described as a culture or a way of life. It's just what people do when they have no identity and no ambition to create a worthwhile future. These people are deskilled, demoralized, and incapable of anything but consuming garbage.

A friend from Europe used to complain that, in America, the cows just stand there, whereas in Poland, the cows were mischievous and frisky. The process of domestication is further along in the US, and it degrades the people as much as it does the cows.

The good news is that these people will not have grandchildren and their houses will decay within 100 years. The bad news is that a shithole mess is going to be left behind.

Anyway, that's why they don't walk to the grocery store.

Our governments recommend storing several days' worth of food and water in case of emergency. Your supply chain had better be very reliable without it.

How much food do you keep at home? In the US many people have room for quite a bit of food at home and on most grocery runs they are filling the trunk or at least buying enough that carrying it home would be difficult.

Walking might require them to go to the store 10+ times a month whereas driving might only require 4 trips so even if walking is as fast as driving they can spend much less total time traveling to and from the store if they drive.

But also the car culture makes it so that a car is a big part of your identity and also a sort of adjunct living space; a personal safe shelter and place where you can keep your stuff. It's pretty common for people during their breaks at work to go sit in their car and eat.

People used to having cars get very anxious without it, even for a few minutes. They'll drive around in circles in a parking lot for half an hour waiting for a closer parking space to open up so they can save 2 minutes of walking, but also so that their car won't be scarily far away.

If you're not a car person, other people think you're that weird oddball who actually walks to the store and maybe there's something wrong with you.