In many European cities, at least NL where I live, there isn't such a big distinction between the downtown and the neighbourhoods where people live. Sure, if y

In many European cities, at least NL where I live, there isn't such a big distinction between the downtown and the neighbourhoods where people live. Sure, if you want a big electronics store, you go to the centre of the city (10m biking), but for groceries, coffee, takeaways, restaurants, doctors, DIY stores, pharmacies, etc there's tons of these scattered around the city. It's quite multi-polar, there are many shopping streets, for these kinds of needs you're rarely more than 10 min walk or 2-3 minutes cycle away from those. Where I live, for example, there's even 2 branches of the same chain of supermarket within about 400m, so <5 min walk, about 1 min on a bike. (Handy on the rare occasion that one of them is out of something!)