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After spending a few weeks back in Europe (after 8 years in the US), it quickly came back to me how much easier it is to live a healthy daily pattern of life th

After spending a few weeks back in Europe (after 8 years in the US), it quickly came back to me how much easier it is to live a healthy daily pattern of life there than it is here. In particular: Shopping for food in the US is almost always a separate trip in a car or a bus or on foot. Whereas in Spain it's common to go meet friends, pick up some bread and veg from the store, meet more friends and pick up things from a butcher on the way home, then you start cooking and go out again later. Ane you can do this every day. In Amerca... you have to plan a trip with a car to buy more than you want to spend and stock it away, and at the end you want to go out and you don't even want to cook

rsynnott 3y ago
Is this just an urban vs outer suburb thing, tho? My experience of the US is largely limited to San Francisco and Seattle, but there did seem to be supermarkets within walking distance most places in the city.
joshghent 3y ago
Absolutely, design of cities dictates behaviour. The secondary effects of this are interesting too. For example, european kitchens can be smaller because they don’t need to store as much.
a_c 3y ago
This is also why I think and hope electric vehicle is not the global solution to the too much ICE cars problem, nor is archieving self driving on those cars. A popular solution doesn't make it the best one, it is just the best solution under certain circumstances. Yes I'm talking about tesla.
- ignormies 3y ago
  "The future of the car is self-driving, but the future of transportation is not the car"
mavamaarten 3y ago
Indeed! I was in SF for a few months. Finding affordable food was insanely hard. Fast food was both really cheap and everywhere. Fresh produce and basics like bread were expensive or hard to find, a long bus / tube drive away. Of course it's much easier to fall into that trap of shitty and cheap food. Where I live the balance is much easier. Vegetables, fruit, meat, ... it's all relatively cheap and easy to get, there's supermarkets and bakeries everywhere. Fast food is relatively expensive, so you get something to think about: (expensive+unhealthy but easy) || (cheap+healthy but you need to cook)
- alphakappa 3y ago
  Curious to know where in SF you lived. Generally there’s bodegas all over the place and you can find fresh produce there. Not to mention, the city has good bakeries everywhere. Fast food (the well known chains) are quite hard to find in most neighborhoods.
  - mavamaarten 3y ago
    Right in the center of the tenderloin area.
DrBazza 3y ago
In the UK, the supermarkets, the Internet, and modern 'town planning' have largely caused the demise of the UK high street. In the 70s towns were smaller, fewer people had cars, and there were hardly any supermarkets, so people walked into the town centres and did their grocery shopping there. Then in 80s we started getting the first out-of-town supermarkets with free parking. You have always had to pay for parking in UK town centres since I can remember. And the UK government relaxed Sunday trading laws. Many family owned stores stayed closed on a Sunday - having 1 day a week off. Then supermarkets started offering more 'range', to the point now where many UK supermarkets are like mini-shopping malls. Clothes, music, opticians, locksmiths, pharmacy, and so on. And they started closing their town centre supermarkets and moving everything to the new out-of-town ones. At the same time UK planning laws now favour developers building 1-2000 homes with a couple of small shops, no High St. or Main St., and as many houses as possible built on all the remaining space for profit. These developments are unsurprisingly nowhere near town centres, so people need to drive. And they don't want to go into a town centre where there's no supermarket, and you have to pay to park. I don't really understand what we're trying to build over here. Towns that have prevented mainstream chains (Sainsbury, Tesco, Starbuck, MacDonalds) from setting up, have faired far better. Butchers, bakers and greengrocers, small convenience stores (mom+pop groceries) all still exist in those towns, unlike those towns with nearby supermarkets. So in part, we're not as bad as the US, but we love our cars, and just blindly go to supermarkets now.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  On average this saved people a lot of time and money. One thing to remember is that most women were stay-at-home mums and were grocery shopping every day. But once you have a car and a fridge (1970s) you can go to the supermarket once a week only, which saves a massive amount of time, especially when you now also have a job. High streets need to be attractive. Old, dodgy shops are dead, clothing shops have a hard time. That's the way it is and best to go with the flow than trying to put things back "the way they were". New housing developments are awful, though. The price gap between nice neighbourhoods with "old houses" and those will just keep growing.
  - 3y ago
kleiba 3y ago
I suppose you're talking about one certain life style where this kind of pattern fits well. I used to follow this exact description for many years when I was younger and did in fact live right in the center of a small city. It worked great for me. I remember one weekend where I suddenly craved a boiled egg and so just had to walk 5 minutes from my door to a farmer's market to buy a single egg which I carried home holding it in my hand. (The guy selling the eggs gave me a surprised look, but hey, I was single back then, one egg was enough...) But later in life, with three little children, I just simply couldn't imagine a trip to the grocery store every day. Having moved out to the suburbs, public transport or walking wasn't an option any more, and I was already doing enough driving around what with the kids going to school and all kinds of afternoon activities. I would have actually loved the more car-centric design of North American cities where at least the driving is made easy. No squeezing through small alleys, tiny parking lots (if any) and 3+ stops to get all the things you need for the week. The reason the North American car centric design works (too) is that it optimizes for convenience rather than environmental concerns (and it's not like European cities optimized for the latter either, they were simply built in pre-car times). Even if the driving distances are further, that doesn't necessarily mean that the overall shopping trip is much longer in practice. And even in cases where it is, I just find it much less stressful to drive in North America. Of course, your mileage may vary. When I lived in the city center many years ago, there was one larger grocery store about 5 minutes away from me on foot and a couple of smaller stores specialized in one thing or another in the same area. And while that was very convenient for me, it also meant that there was constant traffic in front of my house from people driving to these stores. There wasn't much zoning rules, apparently, the stores where all just mixed in among the residental houses.
- beaeglebeach 3y ago
  This describes to a T my experience. The insane hassle of packing up a temperamental 1 or 2 year old, who will probably spend half the time screeching while everyone gives you nasty glares, and their bag of goodies to go anywhere really kills the desire to do anything but a megabulk run in a bulky McAmerican car every couple weeks.
  - 3y ago
AniseAbyss 3y ago
[dead]
deafpolygon 3y ago
> Whereas ... common to go meet friends, ... meet more friends I live in the NL, but I can hardly meet any friends. Maybe a difference in culture in Spain?

rsynnott 3y ago

Is this just an urban vs outer suburb thing, tho? My experience of the US is largely limited to San Francisco and Seattle, but there did seem to be supermarkets within walking distance most places in the city.

joshghent 3y ago

Absolutely, design of cities dictates behaviour. The secondary effects of this are interesting too. For example, european kitchens can be smaller because they don’t need to store as much.

a_c 3y ago

This is also why I think and hope electric vehicle is not the global solution to the too much ICE cars problem, nor is archieving self driving on those cars. A popular solution doesn't make it the best one, it is just the best solution under certain circumstances. Yes I'm talking about tesla.

ignormies 3y ago
"The future of the car is self-driving, but the future of transportation is not the car"

mavamaarten 3y ago

Indeed! I was in SF for a few months. Finding affordable food was insanely hard. Fast food was both really cheap and everywhere. Fresh produce and basics like bread were expensive or hard to find, a long bus / tube drive away. Of course it's much easier to fall into that trap of shitty and cheap food. Where I live the balance is much easier. Vegetables, fruit, meat, ... it's all relatively cheap and easy to get, there's supermarkets and bakeries everywhere. Fast food is relatively expensive, so you get something to think about: (expensive+unhealthy but easy) || (cheap+healthy but you need to cook)

alphakappa 3y ago
Curious to know where in SF you lived. Generally there’s bodegas all over the place and you can find fresh produce there. Not to mention, the city has good bakeries everywhere. Fast food (the well known chains) are quite hard to find in most neighborhoods.
- mavamaarten 3y ago
  Right in the center of the tenderloin area.

DrBazza 3y ago

In the UK, the supermarkets, the Internet, and modern 'town planning' have largely caused the demise of the UK high street. In the 70s towns were smaller, fewer people had cars, and there were hardly any supermarkets, so people walked into the town centres and did their grocery shopping there. Then in 80s we started getting the first out-of-town supermarkets with free parking. You have always had to pay for parking in UK town centres since I can remember. And the UK government relaxed Sunday trading laws. Many family owned stores stayed closed on a Sunday - having 1 day a week off. Then supermarkets started offering more 'range', to the point now where many UK supermarkets are like mini-shopping malls. Clothes, music, opticians, locksmiths, pharmacy, and so on. And they started closing their town centre supermarkets and moving everything to the new out-of-town ones. At the same time UK planning laws now favour developers building 1-2000 homes with a couple of small shops, no High St. or Main St., and as many houses as possible built on all the remaining space for profit. These developments are unsurprisingly nowhere near town centres, so people need to drive. And they don't want to go into a town centre where there's no supermarket, and you have to pay to park. I don't really understand what we're trying to build over here. Towns that have prevented mainstream chains (Sainsbury, Tesco, Starbuck, MacDonalds) from setting up, have faired far better. Butchers, bakers and greengrocers, small convenience stores (mom+pop groceries) all still exist in those towns, unlike those towns with nearby supermarkets. So in part, we're not as bad as the US, but we love our cars, and just blindly go to supermarkets now.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
On average this saved people a lot of time and money. One thing to remember is that most women were stay-at-home mums and were grocery shopping every day. But once you have a car and a fridge (1970s) you can go to the supermarket once a week only, which saves a massive amount of time, especially when you now also have a job. High streets need to be attractive. Old, dodgy shops are dead, clothing shops have a hard time. That's the way it is and best to go with the flow than trying to put things back "the way they were". New housing developments are awful, though. The price gap between nice neighbourhoods with "old houses" and those will just keep growing.
- 3y ago

kleiba 3y ago

I suppose you're talking about one certain life style where this kind of pattern fits well. I used to follow this exact description for many years when I was younger and did in fact live right in the center of a small city. It worked great for me. I remember one weekend where I suddenly craved a boiled egg and so just had to walk 5 minutes from my door to a farmer's market to buy a single egg which I carried home holding it in my hand. (The guy selling the eggs gave me a surprised look, but hey, I was single back then, one egg was enough...) But later in life, with three little children, I just simply couldn't imagine a trip to the grocery store every day. Having moved out to the suburbs, public transport or walking wasn't an option any more, and I was already doing enough driving around what with the kids going to school and all kinds of afternoon activities. I would have actually loved the more car-centric design of North American cities where at least the driving is made easy. No squeezing through small alleys, tiny parking lots (if any) and 3+ stops to get all the things you need for the week. The reason the North American car centric design works (too) is that it optimizes for convenience rather than environmental concerns (and it's not like European cities optimized for the latter either, they were simply built in pre-car times). Even if the driving distances are further, that doesn't necessarily mean that the overall shopping trip is much longer in practice. And even in cases where it is, I just find it much less stressful to drive in North America. Of course, your mileage may vary. When I lived in the city center many years ago, there was one larger grocery store about 5 minutes away from me on foot and a couple of smaller stores specialized in one thing or another in the same area. And while that was very convenient for me, it also meant that there was constant traffic in front of my house from people driving to these stores. There wasn't much zoning rules, apparently, the stores where all just mixed in among the residental houses.

beaeglebeach 3y ago
This describes to a T my experience. The insane hassle of packing up a temperamental 1 or 2 year old, who will probably spend half the time screeching while everyone gives you nasty glares, and their bag of goodies to go anywhere really kills the desire to do anything but a megabulk run in a bulky McAmerican car every couple weeks.
- 3y ago

AniseAbyss 3y ago

[dead]

deafpolygon 3y ago

> Whereas ... common to go meet friends, ... meet more friends I live in the NL, but I can hardly meet any friends. Maybe a difference in culture in Spain?