Living in a walkable city means my weekly shop is a few hours of walking or biking instead of being stuck in traffic, and I'm only mildly tired afterwards since I use a bike with pretty large pannier bags. Since I have no car related costs I can afford more fresh food, a healthier diet, and I can afford to be more choosy about the ethics of what I buy. There's a twice weekly farmers market about a ten minute walk away, and quiet walks through parks to get to the shops. Living somewhere with car centric infrastructure, as I used to, this lifestyle was far less feasible.
Have your experiences been different with moving to walkable/bikeable cities? Any questions or points to be made? I'm not very up on the theory side of city planning, but my experiences line up with the whole "fuck cars" thing.
Ever since I first lived in the city center during nursing school I always make it a priority to live somewhere walkable with public transport. But I do sacrifice apartment space for it.
Right now I have several supermarkets (including Aldi) and a tram stop in my immediate walking distance. I do all my shopping by foot and I guess I would have to go twice for that amount OP carried home on their bike.
But I have to say, that I mostly drink tap water (+Tea/Koffee) which is very good quality at my location. If I had to carry crates of water and other beverages it would be much harder. Not everyone has that choice unfortunately.
@norimee @Gradually_Adjusting Another problem of the politics of austerity and obsession with low taxes at any cost. We’ve defunded water infrastructure almost as much as we’ve defunded public transit. There’s no excuse for a wealthy society to create an environment where many of its residents don’t feel safe drinking tap water and access to any tap water in major cities is periodically cut off by 100 year old pipes predictably breaking.
That’s one thing I missed when I lived within easy walk of a grocery. I’d generally drive, just for carrying the drinks. I noticed people taking taxis, but that didn’t seem useful ….. until many years later when I got hit by the obvious that I could have walked one way and taken a taxi back. This was before cargo bikes