6 ms·

Planning works great for public utilities- roads, libraries, parks etc. The moment we cross that are have a planned bank, grocer, retail I think it falls apart.

by harikb 5y ago

Planning works great for public utilities- roads, libraries, parks etc. The moment we cross that are have a planned bank, grocer, retail I think it falls apart. The grocery shop needs guarantee on revenue to be setup, and then they will slack off because they won’t need to compete or innovate. People will realize once the HOA bill runs in to several hundred dollars and have to deal with shitty services. In the real world, depending on the area, one grocery chain will die and another will take its place.

caslon 5y ago
Alternatively in the real world, one grocery store will die because a Wal*Mart opened an hour away and is replaced by an hour's drive instead of a brief walk to pick up groceries because people can't resist a dollar cheaper and ten more in gas.
- kortilla 5y ago
  No, that’s not how the real world works. People go to the Walmart and deal with that misery because groceries for the week cost $100 instead of $200. People on a budget absolutely pay attention to the cost of gas.
  - caslon 5y ago
    That absolutely is how the real world works. I'm not well-off myself, I keep track of prices, and this recently happened in my own town.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Yes, the shoppers went to Walmart. No, they didn’t pay a net of $9 extra as a result of that choice.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      No, you either didn’t read what I wrote or you haven’t been living on a budget. Poor people don’t waste more money on gas than they save by going to Walmart. They go to Walmart because it’s significantly cheaper to do weekly shopping there than even other big retail grocery outlets, let lone little ones. My parents absolutely fucking hate going to Walmart but they go there weekly because it’s $50/week difference just for the two of them vs Kroger.
      - eyelidlessness 5y ago
        You’re both not wrong. I’ve seen both. I’ve lived both. One of my earliest memories was being chastised by my family for spending a tiny fraction more than the lowest price on something; same brand, twice the volume, didn’t have a shelf life, wasn’t over budget. I got in trouble as a poor kid in a poor family for listening to advice my family had given me to shop smart. I also got the same in reverse for being less thrifty and more considerate. Big shrug emoji. I know poverty so much it scares and traumatized me. I appreciate that not everyone does, but I also don’t think it should be represented as something uniquely rational. Poverty is duress. People make all kinds of good decisions because they have survival instincts, and all kinds of bad decisions because they have a bunch of incentives. They often do both and everything in between in a single outing because, yep, gas is expensive. And they’re tired. And the world is hard and expensive.
      - caslon 5y ago
        I definitely have been living on a budget, having been literally born into poverty and never quite able to move up a level. It's been with me my entire life and I assume it'll continue to be so for the rest of it. Kroger's a rich people store; there are plenty of stores that aren't that have been actually driven out of business by Wal*Mart.
        kortilla 5y ago
        Because their prices weren’t competitive, it’s that simple. Shopping at Walmart is not fun. People flock there because it’s cheaper than everyone else. You’re suggesting that poor people lose more money by going to Walmart than they would shopping locally, which is just ridiculous. It implies poor people have no basic math skills on a average, which isn’t the case. Walmart doesn’t crush local competitors with shitty warehouse lighting and angsty employee vibes. They do it by being far cheaper with their massive logistics. Poor people shop where the money will go the furthest, full stop.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    > People on a budget absolutely pay attention to the cost of gas. People on a budget do for certain levels of "on a budget". If you only have $5 to buy food (and no credit) and a full tank of gas, it doesn't matter if it costs more in the long term. You burn extra gas now or your kids don't eat.
- hellotomyrars 5y ago
  I find this pretty insulting to the average persons intelligence and out of touch with the pricing realities in many locations. I have two local grocery stores. One is in town and the other the next over. Both are less than 3 miles. The prices are between 2-4x compared to me driving 30 miles in either direction to visit Cost Co/Walmart. I don’t mind paying more for local or the convenience but I quite literally can’t afford to more than double my grocery budget for the month. So I only buy perishables locally for the most part. The economics of this are problematic in both directions, but I still need to put food on the table.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Doesn't zoning largely let you choose where private businesses go? Maybe you can't select exactly where to put the bank versus the grocery store, but you can select categories of businesses, to create the feel you want. (I'm not sure whether zoning is a "good" thing or not in general, but there are certainly lots of successful towns and cities with zoning rules.)
- closeparen 5y ago
  You can try, but there are failure modes. * People don't want the things that are specified in the master plan, so there's no tenant that would be both legal and viable. * Businesses are protected from competition (for their space, and for their niche in the area) so they charge too much and deliver too little. * People want things that aren't in the master plan, and they aren't allowed to exist. (The politically engaged majority can get the plan amended with enough work, but these top-down designs can miss the long tail of niche interests, none individually powerful enough to get itself on the agenda).
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    I feel like 1 and 3 means your "master plan" just sucked all along. >:) It's certainly a hard thing to get right, though.
    - deleted 5y ago
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  - p_l 5y ago
    The solution in most of the world is to not create too detailed plans, and often to minimize the amount of zones with pretty much all of them having multiple uses. This means for example that people obsessed with house prices can't stop a grocer from existing within walking distance.
11thEarlOfMar 5y ago
Rather than national businesses that take the profit out, how about an accommodation for small business owners to live in the community as well? But not subsidize them so they actually have to be viable businesses. In many cities, there are plenty of first floor shops with the proprietors living upstairs. It seems that collectively, they'd keep the planning and policies in favor of active and vibrant lifestyle, focus on keeping crime in check, promote community cohesion.
truenindb 5y ago
I am one hundred percent certain that both the locatelli grocer that has almost nothing I want to eat in it ever and has nothing but mexican standoff intersections with people walking around really slow, and the 'california' grocery that I really have to work hard at not just eating all the food in inside the store are both heavily planned, in terms of where exactly they are and all of the ridiculously excessive lighting and product placement inside of the stores. There is some vague pretension to a capital market and some vague notion that some of the great many retail businesses which are essentialy a second form of rent extraction may go out of business, but by and large it would seem extremely clear that there is a great deal of planning going on with information that business people are not supposed to have access to. Whether or not there is a viable alternative to said situation is a more complicated question, but there is no question that there is not some kind of innovation() support system where if you just figure out how to build a better mousetrap or run a better grocery store or sandwich shop, you will succeed and grow. () or even just hard work and reliability
WalterBright 5y ago
Instead of mandating a grocer, mandate that the first floor of buildings be for retail. Let the owner lease it to whatever business he wants to.
- JoshTriplett 5y ago
  In a small neighborhood, that would shatter the illusion that you never need to leave, at which point the distant walk to your car for actual shopping becomes a problem. (Or, alternatively, the lack of delivery services because they can't actually reach both your home and the place they shopped using the same mode of transportation.)
  - kolinko 5y ago
    Walkable neighborhoods don’t need to be small, and they can have car traffic - it’s more about how you design that car traffic. This is a main corner and main street in neighborhood near my home place. It has car traffic, but it is perfectly walkable. The main street has ground floor dedicated to commerce. https://goo.gl/maps/W46KUsJtAtto2yUE7 https://goo.gl/maps/W46KUsJtAtto2yUE7 You have a bus stop with buses getting to city center every 3-5 min, and the supermarket store around a corner has literally all grocery things I needed when I lived around (it’s the size of 3-4 medium Wallgreenses)
    - JoshTriplett 5y ago
      The post I was responding to suggested that it wasn't necessary to arrange for at least one grocery store in the walkable neighborhood, and that leasing to retail establishments could be entirely up to the building owners. I was observing that if that results in no grocery stores located in the neighborhood, that would make the neighborhood much less walkable. (Even if there's one in walking distance, hopefully it has an excess of carts and doesn't mind them going home with people...) And unless you want to go out for groceries far too often, you're going to end up with a quantity of groceries that's incompatible with taking a bus. You'd need a car, or a bike trailer for a very dedicated cyclist, or a delivery service and the ability for them to deliver.

by harikb 5y ago

caslon 5y ago

Alternatively in the real world, one grocery store will die because a Wal*Mart opened an hour away and is replaced by an hour's drive instead of a brief walk to pick up groceries because people can't resist a dollar cheaper and ten more in gas.

kortilla 5y ago
No, that’s not how the real world works. People go to the Walmart and deal with that misery because groceries for the week cost $100 instead of $200. People on a budget absolutely pay attention to the cost of gas.
- caslon 5y ago
  That absolutely is how the real world works. I'm not well-off myself, I keep track of prices, and this recently happened in my own town.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Yes, the shoppers went to Walmart. No, they didn’t pay a net of $9 extra as a result of that choice.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    No, you either didn’t read what I wrote or you haven’t been living on a budget. Poor people don’t waste more money on gas than they save by going to Walmart. They go to Walmart because it’s significantly cheaper to do weekly shopping there than even other big retail grocery outlets, let lone little ones. My parents absolutely fucking hate going to Walmart but they go there weekly because it’s $50/week difference just for the two of them vs Kroger.
    - eyelidlessness 5y ago
      You’re both not wrong. I’ve seen both. I’ve lived both. One of my earliest memories was being chastised by my family for spending a tiny fraction more than the lowest price on something; same brand, twice the volume, didn’t have a shelf life, wasn’t over budget. I got in trouble as a poor kid in a poor family for listening to advice my family had given me to shop smart. I also got the same in reverse for being less thrifty and more considerate. Big shrug emoji. I know poverty so much it scares and traumatized me. I appreciate that not everyone does, but I also don’t think it should be represented as something uniquely rational. Poverty is duress. People make all kinds of good decisions because they have survival instincts, and all kinds of bad decisions because they have a bunch of incentives. They often do both and everything in between in a single outing because, yep, gas is expensive. And they’re tired. And the world is hard and expensive.
    - caslon 5y ago
      I definitely have been living on a budget, having been literally born into poverty and never quite able to move up a level. It's been with me my entire life and I assume it'll continue to be so for the rest of it. Kroger's a rich people store; there are plenty of stores that aren't that have been actually driven out of business by Wal*Mart.
      - kortilla 5y ago
        Because their prices weren’t competitive, it’s that simple. Shopping at Walmart is not fun. People flock there because it’s cheaper than everyone else. You’re suggesting that poor people lose more money by going to Walmart than they would shopping locally, which is just ridiculous. It implies poor people have no basic math skills on a average, which isn’t the case. Walmart doesn’t crush local competitors with shitty warehouse lighting and angsty employee vibes. They do it by being far cheaper with their massive logistics. Poor people shop where the money will go the furthest, full stop.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > People on a budget absolutely pay attention to the cost of gas. People on a budget do for certain levels of "on a budget". If you only have $5 to buy food (and no credit) and a full tank of gas, it doesn't matter if it costs more in the long term. You burn extra gas now or your kids don't eat.
hellotomyrars 5y ago
I find this pretty insulting to the average persons intelligence and out of touch with the pricing realities in many locations. I have two local grocery stores. One is in town and the other the next over. Both are less than 3 miles. The prices are between 2-4x compared to me driving 30 miles in either direction to visit Cost Co/Walmart. I don’t mind paying more for local or the convenience but I quite literally can’t afford to more than double my grocery budget for the month. So I only buy perishables locally for the most part. The economics of this are problematic in both directions, but I still need to put food on the table.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

Doesn't zoning largely let you choose where private businesses go? Maybe you can't select exactly where to put the bank versus the grocery store, but you can select categories of businesses, to create the feel you want. (I'm not sure whether zoning is a "good" thing or not in general, but there are certainly lots of successful towns and cities with zoning rules.)

closeparen 5y ago
You can try, but there are failure modes. * People don't want the things that are specified in the master plan, so there's no tenant that would be both legal and viable. * Businesses are protected from competition (for their space, and for their niche in the area) so they charge too much and deliver too little. * People want things that aren't in the master plan, and they aren't allowed to exist. (The politically engaged majority can get the plan amended with enough work, but these top-down designs can miss the long tail of niche interests, none individually powerful enough to get itself on the agenda).
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  I feel like 1 and 3 means your "master plan" just sucked all along. >:) It's certainly a hard thing to get right, though.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- p_l 5y ago
  The solution in most of the world is to not create too detailed plans, and often to minimize the amount of zones with pretty much all of them having multiple uses. This means for example that people obsessed with house prices can't stop a grocer from existing within walking distance.

11thEarlOfMar 5y ago

Rather than national businesses that take the profit out, how about an accommodation for small business owners to live in the community as well? But not subsidize them so they actually have to be viable businesses. In many cities, there are plenty of first floor shops with the proprietors living upstairs. It seems that collectively, they'd keep the planning and policies in favor of active and vibrant lifestyle, focus on keeping crime in check, promote community cohesion.

truenindb 5y ago

I am one hundred percent certain that both the locatelli grocer that has almost nothing I want to eat in it ever and has nothing but mexican standoff intersections with people walking around really slow, and the 'california' grocery that I really have to work hard at not just eating all the food in inside the store are both heavily planned, in terms of where exactly they are and all of the ridiculously excessive lighting and product placement inside of the stores. There is some vague pretension to a capital market and some vague notion that some of the great many retail businesses which are essentialy a second form of rent extraction may go out of business, but by and large it would seem extremely clear that there is a great deal of planning going on with information that business people are not supposed to have access to. Whether or not there is a viable alternative to said situation is a more complicated question, but there is no question that there is not some kind of innovation() support system where if you just figure out how to build a better mousetrap or run a better grocery store or sandwich shop, you will succeed and grow. () or even just hard work and reliability

WalterBright 5y ago

Instead of mandating a grocer, mandate that the first floor of buildings be for retail. Let the owner lease it to whatever business he wants to.

JoshTriplett 5y ago
In a small neighborhood, that would shatter the illusion that you never need to leave, at which point the distant walk to your car for actual shopping becomes a problem. (Or, alternatively, the lack of delivery services because they can't actually reach both your home and the place they shopped using the same mode of transportation.)
- kolinko 5y ago
  Walkable neighborhoods don’t need to be small, and they can have car traffic - it’s more about how you design that car traffic. This is a main corner and main street in neighborhood near my home place. It has car traffic, but it is perfectly walkable. The main street has ground floor dedicated to commerce. https://goo.gl/maps/W46KUsJtAtto2yUE7 https://goo.gl/maps/W46KUsJtAtto2yUE7 You have a bus stop with buses getting to city center every 3-5 min, and the supermarket store around a corner has literally all grocery things I needed when I lived around (it’s the size of 3-4 medium Wallgreenses)
  - JoshTriplett 5y ago
    The post I was responding to suggested that it wasn't necessary to arrange for at least one grocery store in the walkable neighborhood, and that leasing to retail establishments could be entirely up to the building owners. I was observing that if that results in no grocery stores located in the neighborhood, that would make the neighborhood much less walkable. (Even if there's one in walking distance, hopefully it has an excess of carts and doesn't mind them going home with people...) And unless you want to go out for groceries far too often, you're going to end up with a quantity of groceries that's incompatible with taking a bus. You'd need a car, or a bike trailer for a very dedicated cyclist, or a delivery service and the ability for them to deliver.