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Well, how many people can physically live as close to those things as you do without having a 1-hardware-store-per-100-feet or 3-grocers-per-square-mile density

Well, how many people can physically live as close to those things as you do without having a 1-hardware-store-per-100-feet or 3-grocers-per-square-mile density?

oftenwrong 8y ago
I don't really know, but I would say that, in areas where people largely walk and bike, businesses tend to have a smaller area that they draw regular customers from, and it is easy for a few businesses of the same type to coexist relatively close to one another. There are duplicates of many types of businesses in my neighbourhood. Walking is the most distance-sensitive major form of transportation. People who mainly walk tend to shop at the closest possible place. Nothing in walking distance will match the selection of a big store like Tractor Supply or Home Depot. I use Zip Car when necessary, but it is pretty rare, especially now that everything can be ordered online.
jacques_chester 8y ago
I'm on the Upper West Side. 42,000 per square kilometre. More people live in these 500 hectares than the hundreds of square kilometres of Darwin where I grew up. At the end of my street there is a cleaner, a hardware store, grocery store and restaurant. Within view of the grocery store is another grocery store. A street over from the hardware store is another hardware store. Two streets down? Another restaurant. You get the idea. And then if I need something really specialised, I hop on a train and go to one of the mini-districts where I can find a whole street of something. Or I ring them, or visit their website, and get it delivered. A month ago I was in a three-story cloth store with a friend. On a street full of cloth stores. I had no idea such things existed. But they do. There's a curtain district. A street where I find several places selling mattresses. Famously, a street of jewelers. Again: you get the idea. Living a middle-class life in a dense city is a kind of convenient normally reserved for the rich.

Well, how many people can physically live as close to those things as you do without having a 1-hardware-store-per-100-feet or 3-grocers-per-square-mile density?

oftenwrong 8y ago

I don't really know, but I would say that, in areas where people largely walk and bike, businesses tend to have a smaller area that they draw regular customers from, and it is easy for a few businesses of the same type to coexist relatively close to one another. There are duplicates of many types of businesses in my neighbourhood. Walking is the most distance-sensitive major form of transportation. People who mainly walk tend to shop at the closest possible place. Nothing in walking distance will match the selection of a big store like Tractor Supply or Home Depot. I use Zip Car when necessary, but it is pretty rare, especially now that everything can be ordered online.

jacques_chester 8y ago

I'm on the Upper West Side. 42,000 per square kilometre. More people live in these 500 hectares than the hundreds of square kilometres of Darwin where I grew up. At the end of my street there is a cleaner, a hardware store, grocery store and restaurant. Within view of the grocery store is another grocery store. A street over from the hardware store is another hardware store. Two streets down? Another restaurant. You get the idea. And then if I need something really specialised, I hop on a train and go to one of the mini-districts where I can find a whole street of something. Or I ring them, or visit their website, and get it delivered. A month ago I was in a three-story cloth store with a friend. On a street full of cloth stores. I had no idea such things existed. But they do. There's a curtain district. A street where I find several places selling mattresses. Famously, a street of jewelers. Again: you get the idea. Living a middle-class life in a dense city is a kind of convenient normally reserved for the rich.