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.
One of the best things about living in a walkable place is that the concept of a weekly shop is basically dead - access to grocery shopping is available enough that I can go as many or as few times to shop as is warranted.
Granted, this usually adds up to once a week or less, but yeah. Big benefit.
This is an important concept to be imparted on those who do not understand the benefits of walkable places - a frequent question is how they can manage to complete their weekly shop without a car, since the car is in their mind needed to transport enough groceries to last the entire week. This is of course necessitated by the fact that their ideal location to shop for groceries is a significant distance away that can only be completed in a practical manner by car.
With where I live, this is unwarranted because I have access to convenient grocery shopping about 200 meters away by foot, and for ideal pricing I go 1 km away on a bike with storage on the rack. I do not want for variety either, I’ve got multiple speciality shops and 5 different grocery chains within a 1 km radius.
Notjustbikes had a whole episode on how nice it is to decide each day what you want to eat, and just buy it on the way home.
It’s nice to be able to, done get me wrong, but if I could stock up for 6 months I would. Who wants to waste time getting groceries every day?
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.
is a few hours of walking
Hmmm, I dont think people want to walk for hours to complete a grocery shopping trip? Walkable means you’re done in 20mins max, that’s a reasonable standard given what some urban areas already have.
Fucking hell… I’ll walk all day for fun but I HATE grocery shopping, I’m not walking an hour each way and carrying shit… I’m so lucky to have a little bodega about three minutes away from me, where I can pick up a bunch of dope stuff. But actual grocery shopping? I noticed the community I’m commenting it (I only browse /all/) but I’m driving a few minutes, not hauling all that back over a 30+ minute walk.
I can walk endlessly in dirt trails, even mid to advanced hiking trails while hauling shit in a huge backpack, but the moment I touch pavement I can only manage a couple minutes.
A few hours!? I live in a walkable city and the nearest store is 3-4 minutes and 3 others within 20 minutes.
Not that you posted to be judged on your weekly shop, but given you’re on this sub and interested in social issues, thought you might want to know that brewdog are kinda arseholes to their staff:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/10/brewdog-staff-craft-beer-firm-letter
Immediately the first thing I noticed too. I also work at a brewery and the fallout from brew dog sent shockwaves through many breweries.
I’m most interested in the Dinosaur Quiz.
I got you fam
Glad you post here using ASCII and not handwriting - but keep up the practice!! 🦖✍️
Y’all really eat like this?
Like what
Very little meat and dairy and good stuff, no bacon, no Cumberland sausages, no eggs, no burger patties but lots of veg (and nothing for it to go with).
You’re gonna grow up small and thin on this stuff, just my 2 cents.
Yep, it’s fine. I don’t like being the “I’m vegetarian” guy, but there’s nothing wrong with his/her setup.
I’ve done 200 mile bicycle rides in a single day, relatively tall, very slightly heavier than I like, but doing great sexually, physically, and mentally. No animal products other than dairy and honey.
There’s milk, chocolate milk, eggs, three kinds of fish, two kilos of chicken, two blocks of butter, two kinds of cheese, single cream, and I’m a grown man 3 stone overweight as it is. Honestly wouldn’t mind if my life of lavish excess could turn me into a scrawny little thing.
Nice! But you probably want some bacon with that. Beef and Pork are important
God you’re weird
Are there cities that aren’t walkable? I assume that you can do this in any city because there’s shops everywhere.
Walkable as is in “enjoyably” walkable. Walking across a Walmart parking lot across a 6 lane road, and then to across another large carpark of nothingness to maybe a bus stop, all the while trying to not get hit by a car is not a classification of a walkable city.
Worth a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ
![[discussion] This is what walkability means for me](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/16951e3f-e3ab-4b79-b2b9-9c2710bdf45d.jpeg){kind=link}