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Detroit has the concept of twenty minute neighborhoods and they've created several. The idea is the basics of what you need are all within a twenty minute walk
by rmason 5y ago
Detroit has the concept of twenty minute neighborhoods and they've created several. The idea is the basics of what you need are all within a twenty minute walk. The idea is unless you're doing something out of the ordinary you won't need to use your car. Or even own a car.
They have executed pretty well with one glaring exception. Nearly everyone needs a weekly supermarket visit. Until fairly recently the city had no supermarkets for a population of 650,000 people. Recently a Whole Foods opened downtown as well as a couple of supermarkets on eight mile on the edge of the city.
Those eight mile supermarkets were created to cash in on a multi-million dollar incentive offered by the state. However it was poorly worded, so while they're technically in the city the suburbs are right across the street.
Many affluent highly educated people live in downtown Detroit and are forced to own a car so they can travel to the edge of the city to buy groceries.
https://detroitgreenways.org/twenty-minute-neighborhoods/ https://detroitgreenways.org/twenty-minute-neighborhoods/
- FerociousTimes 5y agoWhat about grocery delivery services in the city like Instacart?
- wasmitnetzen 5y agoThere's no intrinsic need to use a car for your weekly groceries, if the infrastructure is built accordingly. A lot of European families in big cities manage that without having a car.
- lovemenot 5y agoEven framing shopping as a weekly activity is inherently car-biased. A family of four consumes more in a week than could realistically be hand-carried in a single trip by both parents. Better to do shorter and more frequent visits on foot or bicycle. Combined with delivery services which are much more resource efficient than private cars for this purpose.
- namibj 5y agoYeah, 1-2 trips a week with a cargo backpack do the trick, for the person carrying said backpack. Bonus: replaces some gym visits.
- kiliantics 5y agoI regularly do large grocery runs by bicycle. I have a cargo trailer I can hook on to my bike and it lets me carry easily 2 weeks worth of food for two adults, probably more.
- nsgi 5y agoThat seems like a pretty big oversight? All errands within a 20 minute walk except for the most basic and car-dependent errand there is
- rmason 5y agoIn Michigan we've got a Walmart style set of stores known as Meijer's. After Target built a small style grocery store in East Lansing Meijer's created one in downtown Lansing near the Capitol. Neither city had a grocery downtown in over fifty years. Locals just accepted you had to drive out to the suburbs to shop. Both stores appear to have a very strong business. So why doesn't either company create one in downtown Detroit where the demand would be a multiple of that in Lansing and East Lansing?
- bluedino 5y agoThere is a Rivertown Meijer. Different format but still.
- belval 5y agoProbably because there is an upper limit to how much grocery you can haul back to your house on foot/bus. It's a completely different lifestyle. Living in downtown Vancouver, I would go to the grocery store every 1-2 days to get food, because it was close by so there was no reason to "stock up". However growing up in the suburbs, we would go to the grocery store once a week to get all the food for the entire week. A large scale grocery store/costco style simply doesn't make much sense as the place you go shopping every 1-2 days. So its better to put it in the suburbs and have people from downtown go out of the city every few weeks to stock up on specific items.
- bluedino 5y agoIt gets to be 0f in the winter in Detroit. That's a 20 minute walk I'd like to avoid
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoI don't see the problem with that, if the wind is not too strong, and it doesn't rain or snow. I've been on my bicycle for hours during the few days I had it that cold. It was fun! There is no bad weather. There is only bad clothing!
- soared 5y agoPost-car industry Detroit is such an interesting place. 20 minute neighborhoods exist naturally in some places around Denver where there are occasional 1 block sections of grandfathered in retail zoning. But it is wild how easy it is to see Detroit's lack of grocery stores: https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+store/@42.4272993,-83.2599494,10.37z/data=!4m2!2m1!6e6 https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+store/@42.4272993...