accidentally fell into a truly mind-numbing X discussion about what "walkability" means" today

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BDFL of Quilibrium, Eng @ Farcaster, ex-Coinbase, always opinionated, never hydrated

/quilibrium

When you live in a place with nearby markets, your shopping habits change. I often go out every other day to buy groceries I want to make the day of because I love one block from my super market. But I don’t think you’re locked into one mode or another. I do have a car, and I like to do some bulk shopping at a market that’s too far to walk regularly. So I go with my car once a week when I move it for street cleaning and buy a bunch of things, then augment that with fresher produce from my closer market.

I’m certainly speaking from ignorance here, but why would a mother of five "go grocery shopping for her family of five and walk home?" without a car even in a walkable area? What about walkability by virtue of market proximity makes this feasible when accounting for the sheer volume and weight of groceries involved?

/salty /fufu
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With all due respect, that’s not natural! Humans should be able to walk to food

i don't even have a sidewalk in my immediate vicinity, nearest supermarket is 1.2km, terrain is not walkable, tried it once and it's dangerous and horrible, i had to share the road with bikes and cars

just call me /aj, /origami creator, /dcl citizen

Have you checked out walk score? https://www.walkscore.com/

🤣 that thread would kill me. I spent a couple months in EU and it was so nice to get food literally down the street or even downstairs. Went from weekly trips to 2-3 times a week.

Do you think a fix could be allowing for walkable retail in these types of suburban neighborhoods? Or, is scraping the entire suburban format the only answer?