this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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People really need to commute for groceries? Like, I have the store 1 block away. Americans don't know they can walk?
I live in the U.S. (for less than one more week now!) and currently, the closest place for me to buy groceries is five miles down a four lane highway. No sidewalks, obviously. You would be safe from cars walking on the median, less safe from poison ivy, ticks and lime disease since they don't exactly care about keeping them well-mowed in the summer.
I can already see that things will be different in the place where we will be temporarily living in the UK (Blackburn).
The closest (and not my preferred because it's kind of expensive) grocery store would be a 2 hr round trip walking distance from me
That's just fucked up, I'm so sorry.
Food deserts are a thing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
They impact millions of people.
Yeah, it's fucked up.
TIL
Most Americans leave too far away from any supermarket, even if there were roads that could take you there, either by walking or cycling.
I say it's a business opportunity, why don't Americans just open a small general store in their residential areas? Not everything need to come from a supermarket, here we have people that literally sell you vegetables in a rented garage.
Seems like the only acceptable usage of garages for you people are tech startups and maybe teenager bands lol.
I hope the answer is not "due to some obtuse regulation, residential areas can't have business operating in any shape or form, unless is a tech startup or an ice cream truck".
I want to also mention that smaller grocery stores used to exist but Walmart effectively outed them
https://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/1bpbgia/how_bad_did_stores_like_walmart_kill_small/
I watched a video about the topic some time ago, it sheds some light upon the stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVwBuMX2mD8
It's not obtuse regulation, it's explicitly by design. In most places in the US, you cannot operate a business in a residential area that serves the public. Businesses that do not do serve the public (like a tech startup or someone working from home) are fine. Ice cream trucks are also not allowed unless you have a proper business license / permit.
That laws sounds exactly like obtuse regulation to me. Why you cannot have a grocery store in your neighborhood? I really can't think of a good reason. If there is a case for ice cream trucks, proper business license/permit and all that, it makes even less sense for other business types.
C'mon, you really need to commute to the supermarket to buy some bananas? That's nonsense.
As an American that wishes for having stores just that close, the zoning laws are like that for a reason. That reason is to keep people dependent on cars. That is good for the fossil fuel industry.
I know it's nonsense. A fair amount of people know it's nonsense. But also a lot of people don't know, because they can't imagine a life without cars (or a life where you don't need to drive to do every mundane task). They only know no car = no job, food, or socialization and they will fight hard to guard it.
In the US our culture has mostly adapted the grocery store routine to our car culture. The typical trip to the grocery store involves filling a large shopping cart with all the family’s food for the next week or two. People get in the car and drive a far distance to a big grocery store that sells everything. They buy more than they could ever carry, and they load it all into the car.
Also exacerbating this is how much we love shitty processed food. The big grocery stores have nice produce sections, but 80% of what’s in the store is shelf stable and in a box.
Zoning laws and NIMBYs
Well if they leave so far why don't they return?
slow clap
It turns out that, despite allegations to the contrary, the United States is actually small. Like, really, really tiny. We just don't have the room to put supermarkets in places near where people live.
I usually stop at a grocery store on my commute, but if I just need something real quick I just walk to one of the three grocery stores down the street, but loading up the car on the way home is just much easier