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You are describing a really small town and a Northern American one. Larger ones (≈100k pop.) don't have these problems and tiny ones (≈3-10k pop.) in Europe, As

by ivm 8y ago

You are describing a really small town and a Northern American one. Larger ones (≈100k pop.) don't have these problems and tiny ones (≈3-10k pop.) in Europe, Asia or Latin America usually have multiple stores in a walkable range.

alxlaz 8y ago
I'm describing a European town with more than 20k people (albeit only slightly). Edit: certainly a slightly larger city (50k-100k) is better but the parent comment was about country life, hence my comment
- ivm 8y ago
  It's strange for me because I lived in a 1.5k town on Balkans that had two stores and a tiny open market. The bigger one was a chain store, so it always had everything. In Chile we have lots of stores and services even in quite poor 10-20k towns.
  - alxlaz 8y ago
    > It's strange for me because I lived in a 1.5k town on Balkans that had two stores and a tiny open market. The bigger one was a chain store, so it always had everything. When I was a kid, my grandmother's neighbourhood had two stores. Understandably, besides the basics (bread, oil, flour, sugar, stuff like that) they carried different items, since there was little room to compete on price. So my grandpa, for example, had a veritable stash of his favourite cigarettes, because only one of the shops had them. I'd have to go to both of them in the morning, because my grandfather would send me to buy him cigarettes, and I'd buy myself a 7up -- but the shop that had the right cigarettes only had that dreadful Sprite thing :-). The first chain store there opened somewhere in the late 1990s, but it was pretty expensive for the locals and it was quite far (~20 minutes walk). Nowadays there are two chain stores and one of them is a little closer (maybe 10-15 minutes of walking). I found out about the one that's closer the hard way -- my mom has long grown unaccustomed to small town life so obviously she ran out of cigarettes in the evening, only to find out -- much to her horror -- that the shops in the neighbourhood close at 18:00. Guess who valiantly had to chase the ferral dogs away when crossing the railroad :). Edit: to clarify the mechanism: what happened, in this and in many other small towns, was that a larger chain store in a slightly larger city, or on the city's edge, monopolizes much of the trade. The small family shop is all but extinct in my grandma's town. There is only one left in her neighbourhood, and it carries only the most basic of basics. Oil, sugar, flour, a few brands of cigarettes, water and Coca Cola. Wide access to cars, coupled with frequent commuting and town growth mean that people spend enough time in their cars anyway, so they don't mind stopping to shop. The children shop for their elderly parents and their neighbours once a week or so. There's not much of a need for shopping because almost everyone grows their own vegetables and the like. tl;dr if a shop is out of ketchup, you're out of ketchup :)
learc83 8y ago
With respect to walkability, that doesn't describe a really small town in North America, it describes almost every city and town in the US. If you look at cities of 100k+, in the vast majority of them, only a tiny fraction of their residents can walk to a grocery store in 5 minutes. In fact, there are only a 3 very large cities (500k+) in the entire country where the majority of the population is a 5 minute walk from a grocery store. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/03/27/the-5-cities-where-its-easiest-and-hardest-to-walk-to-the-grocery-store/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/03/27/the-5-cities-where-it...

by ivm 8y ago

alxlaz 8y ago

I'm describing a European town with more than 20k people (albeit only slightly). Edit: certainly a slightly larger city (50k-100k) is better but the parent comment was about country life, hence my comment

ivm 8y ago
It's strange for me because I lived in a 1.5k town on Balkans that had two stores and a tiny open market. The bigger one was a chain store, so it always had everything. In Chile we have lots of stores and services even in quite poor 10-20k towns.
- alxlaz 8y ago
  > It's strange for me because I lived in a 1.5k town on Balkans that had two stores and a tiny open market. The bigger one was a chain store, so it always had everything. When I was a kid, my grandmother's neighbourhood had two stores. Understandably, besides the basics (bread, oil, flour, sugar, stuff like that) they carried different items, since there was little room to compete on price. So my grandpa, for example, had a veritable stash of his favourite cigarettes, because only one of the shops had them. I'd have to go to both of them in the morning, because my grandfather would send me to buy him cigarettes, and I'd buy myself a 7up -- but the shop that had the right cigarettes only had that dreadful Sprite thing :-). The first chain store there opened somewhere in the late 1990s, but it was pretty expensive for the locals and it was quite far (~20 minutes walk). Nowadays there are two chain stores and one of them is a little closer (maybe 10-15 minutes of walking). I found out about the one that's closer the hard way -- my mom has long grown unaccustomed to small town life so obviously she ran out of cigarettes in the evening, only to find out -- much to her horror -- that the shops in the neighbourhood close at 18:00. Guess who valiantly had to chase the ferral dogs away when crossing the railroad :). Edit: to clarify the mechanism: what happened, in this and in many other small towns, was that a larger chain store in a slightly larger city, or on the city's edge, monopolizes much of the trade. The small family shop is all but extinct in my grandma's town. There is only one left in her neighbourhood, and it carries only the most basic of basics. Oil, sugar, flour, a few brands of cigarettes, water and Coca Cola. Wide access to cars, coupled with frequent commuting and town growth mean that people spend enough time in their cars anyway, so they don't mind stopping to shop. The children shop for their elderly parents and their neighbours once a week or so. There's not much of a need for shopping because almost everyone grows their own vegetables and the like. tl;dr if a shop is out of ketchup, you're out of ketchup :)

learc83 8y ago

With respect to walkability, that doesn't describe a really small town in North America, it describes almost every city and town in the US. If you look at cities of 100k+, in the vast majority of them, only a tiny fraction of their residents can walk to a grocery store in 5 minutes. In fact, there are only a 3 very large cities (500k+) in the entire country where the majority of the population is a 5 minute walk from a grocery store. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/03/27/the-5-cities-where-its-easiest-and-hardest-to-walk-to-the-grocery-store/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/03/27/the-5-cities-where-it...