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.
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.