7 ms·

I have a question about cities in North America. I know you don't have many apartment buildings, the urban sprawl etc. In fact I studied a bit of urbanism so I

I have a question about cities in North America. I know you don't have many apartment buildings, the urban sprawl etc. In fact I studied a bit of urbanism so I got the gist of it (I think). But I always wonder why don't you have more smaller supermarkets closer to where people lives, instead of larger ones that require so long trips. I guess it wouldn't make it walkable, because cities are not designed like that, but it would be a 5 minute trip maybe. In my mind that is probably more efficient. People may come more often, so more opportunities for cross selling, real state is probably cheaper and the only downside I see is that would probably require more labor. If I had to hop in the car for doing anything I think I'll die of laziness.

99_00 5y ago
I doubt that many small trips per week is more efficient than one big trip per week.
epicureanideal 5y ago
> But I always wonder why don't you have more smaller supermarkets closer to where people lives, Maybe we’ll leapfrog that step straight to Amazon Fresh delivery to the door.
blamazon 5y ago
I'm not sure why this is the case, but American consumers have come to expect (have been trained to expect?) a wide variety of choice at the supermarket. I'm talking like, you want honey? You've got 50 different brands/sizes of honey available. Repeat for every expected type of product, and you need a big centralized building for this to work out economically. Of course, all problems in NA urbanism seem to stem from land zoning. Building a small grocery store in a residential neighborhood is illegal in a distressingly huge percentage of urban land here, and it's been this way since the 50s. So that's probably part of why the megamart has succeeded. The concept of 'mixed use' is a new idea to many cities, and it's not well distributed on the zoning maps.
- spaniard89277 5y ago
  Do people really make use of this choice? Or is more like companies conditioning customers?
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    I think consumers really do make this choice, and aren't very compromising. People have a high expectation for both the variety of products, and the variety of a single product. As a result, the different people have very diverse diets, and it is unlikely that a small store would satisfy most of them. For example, each week I shop from 2-3 different supermarkets that are 60k ft^2 each (6k m^2).
    - ghaff 5y ago
      And an individual consumer probably doesn't take advantage of all the choices on a weekly basis but in aggregate they do. I have a couple of convenient supermarkets and I don't shop at both weekly but I recognize that each is better for certain things. And Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are even better for others although neither are close enough to make a special trip for the most part.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > You've got 50 different brands/sizes of honey available. ...and all of it is from three different companies?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The why is because once you have a car, the marginal cost of using the car is only $0.40 to $0.60 per minute of travel. That means if you are running errands, it makes sense to shop at big box stores that can sell for 10%+ cheaper due to efficiencies of scale. Hence Costco/Target/Walmart/Home Depot/Lowes/Best Buy/Staples/etc succeed over a small business that might be a walkable distance. You are already in the car going to and from work, what difference does a detour make.
  - 5y ago
bombcar 5y ago
Probably because grocery store margins are low, and the number of employees for a small one vs a large one is pretty similar, so it's cheaper and easier for the company to build larger ones. We do have "convenience stores" some of which are effectively very small grocery stores (produce, fresh meats, etc). But usually significantly more expensive.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Convenience stores aren't really more expensive small grocery stores. I'd challenge you to regularly pickup the ingredients for a tasty healthy dinner from a typical US 7-Eleven.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Our local equivalent has bacon wrapped steak, potatoes, with some avocado on the side. Or you can get the 1.5 lbs of chicken breasts (boneless) for $7. Of course I’m actually only a block from a normal grocery store so I don’t need to worry.
  - JJMcJ 5y ago
    If you're lucky they may sell not quite ripe bananas at the front counter. Otherwise the healthiest is going to be cheese from the cooler, orange juice, and tortilla chips.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      Ours adds carrots, lettuce, avocados, apples, oranges, potatoes and sweet potatoes, along with other stuff I can’t recall.
      - JJMcJ 5y ago
        This s 7-11? I may have seen a few with a wider selection, now that I think about it. Independent stores sometimes are better, sometimes worse. Of course NYC-style bodegas are a completely different thing, but you don't see that outside of the biggest and densest cities.
cameronpm 5y ago
In Vancouver, you'll usually have a few grocery stores in <10min walk because of the zoning. Commercial is usually every 4-6 blocks. It takes 10 mins to walk 4 blocks, as they are small in comparison to other cities I've lived in. Most American cities were designed to do everything by car.
- blamazon 5y ago
  Vancouver is also notable for having mostly resisted the "urban interstate highway addiction" that incentivizes longer (distance) car trips in a lot of American cities.
  - cameronpm 5y ago
    Going to Toronto and seeing their highway along the water makes me sick. I can't believe they are cool with that. Boston at least realized their mistake and reversed it.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Thank you Tip O'Neill.[1] It's nice to get the rest of the country to pay for your urban planning mistakes. The Big Dig was sort of awful to live through. But getting rid of the elevated highway that cut off the North End was a huge win for Boston. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_O%27Neill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_O%27Neill
      - blamazon 5y ago
        The eternal sadness is that in part due to that reliance on federal money, we were unable to put real rail infrastructure in as part of the project and could only get Bus-'Rapid'-Transit which led to the mediocre Silver Line. In some parallel universe Boston is yukking it up with a high frequency train from Roxbury to the South End (along the original elevated Orange line route) to South Station to Seaport to the Airport and I hate them for it. I just know they demolished Central Parking at Logan and built a gleaming rail terminal in its place.
munk-a 5y ago
See, hopping in a car to do everything is sort of the modus operandi in the Americas and something I absolutely can't stand. The east coast cities are spared somewhat from this by virtue of being older with more entrenched infrastructure that predates cars but west coast cities are often oriented around cars as the primary method of transportation. Vancouver is one of the better of these but it still suffers greatly from a constant flow of traffic through the downtown core.
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  > The east coast cities are spared somewhat from this by virtue of being older Note that <100 years ago basically every US city had somewhat similar density to New York or Boston. It’s not that they were built for the car so much as they were rebuilt for it. So I don’t think the reason can be as simple as ‘because they’re older’.
  - ryukafalz 5y ago
    Yup. This was LA: https://twitter.com/dmtrubman/status/1512498617831018497?s=21&t=bnTms4INZkVX0Iv0v6rr9A https://twitter.com/dmtrubman/status/1512498617831018497?s=2...
ghaff 5y ago
>But I always wonder why don't you have more smaller supermarkets closer to where people lives, instead of larger ones that require so long trips. It's a reasonable question but I don't really know the answer. In the US you tend to have sort of a bifurcation between (a few) supermarket chains (possibly somewhat downscaled in an urban environment) and convenience stores/bodegas/small food departments in places like urban Targets that tend to have minimal produce etc. Whereas in someplace like London, you're have Tesco's and smaller Sainsbury's which are somewhat in-between. Certainly there are exceptions with various local markets/specialists but that's the general pattern one sees.
alephxyz 5y ago
I used to live in a canadian suburb and the reasons I heard the most often to opposecommercial development near their houses were that they didn't want additional traffic, loud trucks making late night deliveries or people parking on their street. Basically making it impossible to rezone residential or vacant lots as commerces.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Demand: I live near small supermarkets, but many in North America choose not to. We also have to pay for the privilege (since such walkable areas are generally not cheap).
bubblethink 5y ago
>why don't you have more smaller supermarkets closer to where people lives You will find smaller supermarkets (publix, trader joes, etc.) within 5-10 mins of driving time in a lot of cities.
- _dain_ 5y ago
  >within 5-10 mins of driving time and what about within 5-10 minutes of walking time? I think that's what was meant in the GP comment.
  - bubblethink 5y ago
    I think that depends on where you choose to live. To give the ideal case scenario, in a city like Atlanta which has sprawl, you can choose to live close to midtown/downtown, and you'll get that proximity. You can also live further away and drive. This is far more sustainable in terms of quality of life, cost of living etc., than forcing everyone to make one trade-off v/s the other. Personally, I like the choice and options that this brings, rather than shopping at an overpriced corner store or a high-end local grocery store in cities like SF.
    - _dain_ 5y ago
      Look I get that HN is a North American-dominated site, but you have to understand that what you just posted is sheer lunacy from the perspective of someone not from that continent. In the UK, the trade-off you described does not exist. Unless you live in a genuine rural area, there is almost always a supermarket (or mini version of a supermarket chain) within a 10 minute walking distance of where you live. Even in suburban areas. And they aren't overpriced, I've never noticed a significant difference in pricing between the mini versions of e.g. Tesco and the big versions. I live in the suburban outskirts of a medium-sized city, there are about half a dozen decently sized food shops in a ten minute walking radius of my house. From what I've seen, this is purely because of zoning laws. You can't walk to buy milk in American suburbia because it's illegal to build retail in residential areas. It's that simple.
xyzzyz 5y ago
You have to live in rather remote place in US to not have a supermarket within 10 minute drive. There are plenty of places like that, to be sure, but in the suburbia you’re thinking of, large supermarkets are typically within 5-10 minutes drive. For example, I live in Seattle, in a single family house in a single family house neighborhood. I have 3 large supermarkets within 5 minute drives, and at least 6 within 10 minutes. Given that, why would I want to go to a store that has smaller selection and higher prices, if I can get to a proper one in 5 minutes?
- _dain_ 5y ago
  Another answer that assumes "close" is synonymous with "close by car". >Given that, why would I want to go to a store that has smaller selection and higher prices, if I can get to a proper one in 5 minutes? Because you might not have a car.
  - bnjms 5y ago
    The thread OP assumed themselves “close by car”. I think it wasn’t obvious to them that supermarkets are all relatively close by even at their size.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  I do think 5-10 minutes by car is really bad benchmark, but I think a lot of people do feel like that's tenable. I've lived most of my life in places that are 5-10 minutes by car from a store, and it makes for a very isolated social experience, but also it means that if I don't have a car, getting groceries is a planned 1.5 hour experience. Now that I'm living within walking distance, I buy a majority of my food multiple times per week, only for a few days at a time, which means I can also go to the coffee shop and see people doing the same thing, have a talk with them, socialize etc..
_dain_ 5y ago
Because they are illegal to build in residential areas, per zoning laws.
- drivers99 5y ago
  To back up what you said: The Lively & Liveable Neighbourhoods that are Illegal in Most of North America (Not Just Bikes channel) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ
nightski 5y ago
I don't know about other areas but where we live there are 3 grocery stores within a few mile radius. I do think this is quite common. I am in a smaller city as well, of about 250k. My wife & I walk or bike to them quite regularly in the spring/summer/fall.
brailsafe 5y ago
It's for the obvious reasons you'd derive from what you studied, and it is absolutely soul-crushing. However, this is less-common in the more central areas of Vancouver, at least where I live, and I could never go back. If you drop into street view and go up and down Commercial Drive, there's 5-10 grocery stores that are easy to walk to. This absolutely isn't the case in most of the suburbs though.
lawkwok 5y ago
I hate this about Vancouver and North America. Even if you are lucky enough to live near grocery store, the way the city is designed drains your soul as you walk. There are no beautiful buildings, wide sidewalks, or points of interest along the way. Just cars zooming by loudly, bumpy sidewalks or gravel, or large stretches of the back fences of single family homes.
jamal-kumar 5y ago
I'm close to Vancouver right now and I'm happy to see the local source of drunks, the old government liquor store, is now a small grocery store with a lot of really high quality stuff in it. I got some pretty good steaks for a decent price in there. It's generally a bit more expensive than the larger one that was already in the area but damn is it nice. I've noticed this in a bunch of other neighborhoods, too. They have stuff like European import candies and stuff. They didn't exist about a decade ago when I was living here last.
refurb 5y ago
Because if given the choice many people will exchange distance (driving or transit) for selection and price. I have a local grocery store that I can walk to in 5 min but I’m not paying double for food when the alternative is to drive 10 min.
Phrodo_00 5y ago
I'm not an urbanist, but my feeling is that the size of the lots and the winding paths of suburbs make the paths from any house to any shop a lot longer overall, so you end up with the need to drive to a store, which leads to parking lots and being in a main road. In a tight grid (like where I grew in Chile), a small store can survive off the foot traffic of a few square kilometer of houses, because they're more connected and just more fit in the space.
flomo 5y ago
> smaller supermarkets closer to where people lives Back when these places existed, they were terrible leaches on poor people. High prices, almost rotten meat and produce and etc. Desperate oasises in the "food desert". Many cities had a social program to clear land to build full service groceries and box stores in transit dependent areas. The modern versions are pricey stories for wealthy urban professionals.

99_00 5y ago

I doubt that many small trips per week is more efficient than one big trip per week.

epicureanideal 5y ago

> But I always wonder why don't you have more smaller supermarkets closer to where people lives, Maybe we’ll leapfrog that step straight to Amazon Fresh delivery to the door.

blamazon 5y ago

I'm not sure why this is the case, but American consumers have come to expect (have been trained to expect?) a wide variety of choice at the supermarket. I'm talking like, you want honey? You've got 50 different brands/sizes of honey available. Repeat for every expected type of product, and you need a big centralized building for this to work out economically. Of course, all problems in NA urbanism seem to stem from land zoning. Building a small grocery store in a residential neighborhood is illegal in a distressingly huge percentage of urban land here, and it's been this way since the 50s. So that's probably part of why the megamart has succeeded. The concept of 'mixed use' is a new idea to many cities, and it's not well distributed on the zoning maps.

spaniard89277 5y ago
Do people really make use of this choice? Or is more like companies conditioning customers?
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  I think consumers really do make this choice, and aren't very compromising. People have a high expectation for both the variety of products, and the variety of a single product. As a result, the different people have very diverse diets, and it is unlikely that a small store would satisfy most of them. For example, each week I shop from 2-3 different supermarkets that are 60k ft^2 each (6k m^2).
  - ghaff 5y ago
    And an individual consumer probably doesn't take advantage of all the choices on a weekly basis but in aggregate they do. I have a couple of convenient supermarkets and I don't shop at both weekly but I recognize that each is better for certain things. And Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are even better for others although neither are close enough to make a special trip for the most part.
jhgb 5y ago
> You've got 50 different brands/sizes of honey available. ...and all of it is from three different companies?
lotsofpulp 5y ago
The why is because once you have a car, the marginal cost of using the car is only $0.40 to $0.60 per minute of travel. That means if you are running errands, it makes sense to shop at big box stores that can sell for 10%+ cheaper due to efficiencies of scale. Hence Costco/Target/Walmart/Home Depot/Lowes/Best Buy/Staples/etc succeed over a small business that might be a walkable distance. You are already in the car going to and from work, what difference does a detour make.
- 5y ago

bombcar 5y ago

Probably because grocery store margins are low, and the number of employees for a small one vs a large one is pretty similar, so it's cheaper and easier for the company to build larger ones. We do have "convenience stores" some of which are effectively very small grocery stores (produce, fresh meats, etc). But usually significantly more expensive.

ghaff 5y ago
Convenience stores aren't really more expensive small grocery stores. I'd challenge you to regularly pickup the ingredients for a tasty healthy dinner from a typical US 7-Eleven.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Our local equivalent has bacon wrapped steak, potatoes, with some avocado on the side. Or you can get the 1.5 lbs of chicken breasts (boneless) for $7. Of course I’m actually only a block from a normal grocery store so I don’t need to worry.
- JJMcJ 5y ago
  If you're lucky they may sell not quite ripe bananas at the front counter. Otherwise the healthiest is going to be cheese from the cooler, orange juice, and tortilla chips.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Ours adds carrots, lettuce, avocados, apples, oranges, potatoes and sweet potatoes, along with other stuff I can’t recall.
    - JJMcJ 5y ago
      This s 7-11? I may have seen a few with a wider selection, now that I think about it. Independent stores sometimes are better, sometimes worse. Of course NYC-style bodegas are a completely different thing, but you don't see that outside of the biggest and densest cities.

cameronpm 5y ago

In Vancouver, you'll usually have a few grocery stores in <10min walk because of the zoning. Commercial is usually every 4-6 blocks. It takes 10 mins to walk 4 blocks, as they are small in comparison to other cities I've lived in. Most American cities were designed to do everything by car.

blamazon 5y ago
Vancouver is also notable for having mostly resisted the "urban interstate highway addiction" that incentivizes longer (distance) car trips in a lot of American cities.
- cameronpm 5y ago
  Going to Toronto and seeing their highway along the water makes me sick. I can't believe they are cool with that. Boston at least realized their mistake and reversed it.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Thank you Tip O'Neill.[1] It's nice to get the rest of the country to pay for your urban planning mistakes. The Big Dig was sort of awful to live through. But getting rid of the elevated highway that cut off the North End was a huge win for Boston. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_O%27Neill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_O%27Neill
    - blamazon 5y ago
      The eternal sadness is that in part due to that reliance on federal money, we were unable to put real rail infrastructure in as part of the project and could only get Bus-'Rapid'-Transit which led to the mediocre Silver Line. In some parallel universe Boston is yukking it up with a high frequency train from Roxbury to the South End (along the original elevated Orange line route) to South Station to Seaport to the Airport and I hate them for it. I just know they demolished Central Parking at Logan and built a gleaming rail terminal in its place.

munk-a 5y ago

See, hopping in a car to do everything is sort of the modus operandi in the Americas and something I absolutely can't stand. The east coast cities are spared somewhat from this by virtue of being older with more entrenched infrastructure that predates cars but west coast cities are often oriented around cars as the primary method of transportation. Vancouver is one of the better of these but it still suffers greatly from a constant flow of traffic through the downtown core.

dan-robertson 5y ago
> The east coast cities are spared somewhat from this by virtue of being older Note that <100 years ago basically every US city had somewhat similar density to New York or Boston. It’s not that they were built for the car so much as they were rebuilt for it. So I don’t think the reason can be as simple as ‘because they’re older’.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  Yup. This was LA: https://twitter.com/dmtrubman/status/1512498617831018497?s=21&t=bnTms4INZkVX0Iv0v6rr9A https://twitter.com/dmtrubman/status/1512498617831018497?s=2...

ghaff 5y ago

>But I always wonder why don't you have more smaller supermarkets closer to where people lives, instead of larger ones that require so long trips. It's a reasonable question but I don't really know the answer. In the US you tend to have sort of a bifurcation between (a few) supermarket chains (possibly somewhat downscaled in an urban environment) and convenience stores/bodegas/small food departments in places like urban Targets that tend to have minimal produce etc. Whereas in someplace like London, you're have Tesco's and smaller Sainsbury's which are somewhat in-between. Certainly there are exceptions with various local markets/specialists but that's the general pattern one sees.

alephxyz 5y ago

I used to live in a canadian suburb and the reasons I heard the most often to opposecommercial development near their houses were that they didn't want additional traffic, loud trucks making late night deliveries or people parking on their street. Basically making it impossible to rezone residential or vacant lots as commerces.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

Demand: I live near small supermarkets, but many in North America choose not to. We also have to pay for the privilege (since such walkable areas are generally not cheap).

bubblethink 5y ago

>why don't you have more smaller supermarkets closer to where people lives You will find smaller supermarkets (publix, trader joes, etc.) within 5-10 mins of driving time in a lot of cities.

_dain_ 5y ago
>within 5-10 mins of driving time and what about within 5-10 minutes of walking time? I think that's what was meant in the GP comment.
- bubblethink 5y ago
  I think that depends on where you choose to live. To give the ideal case scenario, in a city like Atlanta which has sprawl, you can choose to live close to midtown/downtown, and you'll get that proximity. You can also live further away and drive. This is far more sustainable in terms of quality of life, cost of living etc., than forcing everyone to make one trade-off v/s the other. Personally, I like the choice and options that this brings, rather than shopping at an overpriced corner store or a high-end local grocery store in cities like SF.
  - _dain_ 5y ago
    Look I get that HN is a North American-dominated site, but you have to understand that what you just posted is sheer lunacy from the perspective of someone not from that continent. In the UK, the trade-off you described does not exist. Unless you live in a genuine rural area, there is almost always a supermarket (or mini version of a supermarket chain) within a 10 minute walking distance of where you live. Even in suburban areas. And they aren't overpriced, I've never noticed a significant difference in pricing between the mini versions of e.g. Tesco and the big versions. I live in the suburban outskirts of a medium-sized city, there are about half a dozen decently sized food shops in a ten minute walking radius of my house. From what I've seen, this is purely because of zoning laws. You can't walk to buy milk in American suburbia because it's illegal to build retail in residential areas. It's that simple.

xyzzyz 5y ago

You have to live in rather remote place in US to not have a supermarket within 10 minute drive. There are plenty of places like that, to be sure, but in the suburbia you’re thinking of, large supermarkets are typically within 5-10 minutes drive. For example, I live in Seattle, in a single family house in a single family house neighborhood. I have 3 large supermarkets within 5 minute drives, and at least 6 within 10 minutes. Given that, why would I want to go to a store that has smaller selection and higher prices, if I can get to a proper one in 5 minutes?

_dain_ 5y ago
Another answer that assumes "close" is synonymous with "close by car". >Given that, why would I want to go to a store that has smaller selection and higher prices, if I can get to a proper one in 5 minutes? Because you might not have a car.
- bnjms 5y ago
  The thread OP assumed themselves “close by car”. I think it wasn’t obvious to them that supermarkets are all relatively close by even at their size.
brailsafe 5y ago
I do think 5-10 minutes by car is really bad benchmark, but I think a lot of people do feel like that's tenable. I've lived most of my life in places that are 5-10 minutes by car from a store, and it makes for a very isolated social experience, but also it means that if I don't have a car, getting groceries is a planned 1.5 hour experience. Now that I'm living within walking distance, I buy a majority of my food multiple times per week, only for a few days at a time, which means I can also go to the coffee shop and see people doing the same thing, have a talk with them, socialize etc..

_dain_ 5y ago

Because they are illegal to build in residential areas, per zoning laws.

drivers99 5y ago
To back up what you said: The Lively & Liveable Neighbourhoods that are Illegal in Most of North America (Not Just Bikes channel) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ

nightski 5y ago

I don't know about other areas but where we live there are 3 grocery stores within a few mile radius. I do think this is quite common. I am in a smaller city as well, of about 250k. My wife & I walk or bike to them quite regularly in the spring/summer/fall.

brailsafe 5y ago

It's for the obvious reasons you'd derive from what you studied, and it is absolutely soul-crushing. However, this is less-common in the more central areas of Vancouver, at least where I live, and I could never go back. If you drop into street view and go up and down Commercial Drive, there's 5-10 grocery stores that are easy to walk to. This absolutely isn't the case in most of the suburbs though.

lawkwok 5y ago

I hate this about Vancouver and North America. Even if you are lucky enough to live near grocery store, the way the city is designed drains your soul as you walk. There are no beautiful buildings, wide sidewalks, or points of interest along the way. Just cars zooming by loudly, bumpy sidewalks or gravel, or large stretches of the back fences of single family homes.

jamal-kumar 5y ago

I'm close to Vancouver right now and I'm happy to see the local source of drunks, the old government liquor store, is now a small grocery store with a lot of really high quality stuff in it. I got some pretty good steaks for a decent price in there. It's generally a bit more expensive than the larger one that was already in the area but damn is it nice. I've noticed this in a bunch of other neighborhoods, too. They have stuff like European import candies and stuff. They didn't exist about a decade ago when I was living here last.

refurb 5y ago

Because if given the choice many people will exchange distance (driving or transit) for selection and price. I have a local grocery store that I can walk to in 5 min but I’m not paying double for food when the alternative is to drive 10 min.

Phrodo_00 5y ago

I'm not an urbanist, but my feeling is that the size of the lots and the winding paths of suburbs make the paths from any house to any shop a lot longer overall, so you end up with the need to drive to a store, which leads to parking lots and being in a main road. In a tight grid (like where I grew in Chile), a small store can survive off the foot traffic of a few square kilometer of houses, because they're more connected and just more fit in the space.

flomo 5y ago

> smaller supermarkets closer to where people lives Back when these places existed, they were terrible leaches on poor people. High prices, almost rotten meat and produce and etc. Desperate oasises in the "food desert". Many cities had a social program to clear land to build full service groceries and box stores in transit dependent areas. The modern versions are pricey stories for wealthy urban professionals.