Edit: of course this is satire. The power of the reading comprehension devil grows stronger every day 😢
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Do American suburbs not have the concept of a “corner shop”? Somewhere you can grab some basics by walking there in 5 to 10 minutes?
No because they’re quite literally illegal in most neighborhoods. This is starting to change but developers don’t want to do anything different or innovative so they’re still rolling out the same moronic plans we have for the past however many decades.
No. They exist, but they basically only have beer, cigarettes, chips, and candy. No actual food.
They’re also very badly overpriced.
They basically only exist in more urban areas, not suburbs. And, as someone else mentioned, they mostly sell garbage.
They don’t. It sucks.
Yes we have that concept. We just don’t often have that reality.
Most are gone. T a combination of being zoned out and people being willing to drive 30 minutes to a big box store instead of walking 5 to a corner market nuked most of them.
I have a map of where they used to be in my city 100 years ago. (We do transit advocacy and need data on city history.) They used to be every 400m or so across the entire city, but now? Only a few remain.
Yes. We have these, they are generally at gas stations! But as I said earlier, I have never been more than a few blocks from a corner store. They are not groceries though. Beer, diet coke, the Wawa by me has also reasonable food and fancy coffee. But if you need flour and produce, no. It’s only stuff you eat without cooking, ready to go things.
The Walgreens does have more regular stuff, cat food and tape, shampoo, etc. So may be closer to what you are thinking of. There is one of those near me also, but one vs. 3 gas station shops.
I’m neighbors with my gas station/liquor store combo but the bus service makes almost the whole town in my reach… Furthermore I can’t think of a single place that isn’t walkable if you’re willing to cover the distance at least here. City limits hit and pedestrian access stop.
Furthermore I can’t think of a single place that isn’t walkable if you’re willing to cover the distance at least here. City limits hit and pedestrian access stop.
You can walk on dirt, can’t you? You don’t need a sidewalk. Just be willing to walk 30 miles in the dirt. 🤷🏻♂️
I’m not sure if this Mason guy is being serious or not
Lol this has gotta be the satire
Of course it’s satire. I’m kind of shocked how many people don’t recognize it as satire.
Nope. My city is both trying to make the old streetcar suburb neighborhoods walkable again while also annexing places that are miles of road with nothing but sterile housing along it.
When develops buy some farmland, plunk a bunch of terribly build single family houses on it, sell it all off, and walk away the people who bought the houses find out that they’re not in a municipality. They wanted a house and low taxes and their own yard, but there’s no schools, fire dept, police, real water services, or road maintenance. So… They start begging to be annexed into the city to have the old downtown’s taxes pay for their services.
It looks good on paper to add land and population, plus shiny new roads don’t cost much for about 15 years, which is longer than most city council members stay on the council. It’s someone else’s problem when the bills come due. Our city council have been pushovers for decades and just keep adding shithole tax burden neighborhoods to the city and it’s all starting to die fast.
The post is satirically calling this walking, not that the situation itself is satire.
If this is satire, well just know that this still exists in the United States… I’ve seen this nonsense. It’s like they don’t even bat an eye. Like car culture is so ingrained in our society that people look at us probably like we’re freaks. And it affects how we operate as people.
hi European here!
what the fuck?
i’m here complaining how it’s hard to walk to a big shopping mall or an ikea and you’re out there without even a small grocery store around most corners? how do you lot do that? i’d seriously just starve to death if i couldn’t get up, walk for 5min, and buy food for a whole meal (or a frozen pizza)
They all want to live in a detached single home (is that how you call it?), so not enough density for a store to make profit. Glad I don’t live there tbh.
Single family home is the common term here.
I’m starting to think I need one myself because Americans are generally such loud fucking wankers that you need both a detached house and yards to get any peace.
Another thing is that the US is so car brained that nearly all attached homes (even townhouses in the city) have a garage somewhere. In my current condo, there’s alleyways with garages that face each other. The amount of fucking noise coming from the garage alleys make it impossible to sleep for lighter sleepers.
Probably doesn’t help that a lot is wood and panels, instead of brick or concrete. If you live near a busy street with insulated windows you can almost completely block out the noise nowadays (Although you’re still stuck with the pollution and can’t really open the windows), but technology can really counter some of those problems. But i wouldn’t fight the system on my own, so I probably would do the same in your position.
We tend to shop for days worth of food at a time.
This does exist in major US cities, especially the older (by US standards) one. I’m in San Francisco, in a “good” neighborhood, and restaurants, groceries, bars, and multiple forms of public transit are all a short walk away. This is very different in car centric suburbs/cities though.
The contrast between eg Manhattan and Los Angeles is wild. First time in LA I went out walking, looking for a restaurant. The footpath vanished and suddenly I was on the edge of what seemed like a freeway. Relatives in Santa Monica were horrified to learn that I had taken a bus from my hotel downtown to visit them (it was perfectly fine).
As an American I need you to understand that what you’re saying sounds like a deep parody here. We have some major cities that are comfortable to live in without a car, but they’re few and far between.
To us a grocery store is a place you go to rather than swing by real quick. Its changing in some cities, and I’ve even lived in a suburb with walkable groceries, but its really not the norm.
We drive
Everywhere
In a way that can’t really be described to Europeans. If you live in a suburban area, people think you’re weird if you do anything other than use your car to get anywhere for any reason. Almost everywhere in the US is designed around the idea that you have a car and you use it every day.
This is about my city:
And it’s absolutely true. Our buses are mostly useful for driving to a Park & Ride/Transit Center and then to work and back. That’s about it.
Now depending on context from how old that post is, it’s really saying something.
2023, so yeah
Oh yeah I can confirk Columbus is a fucking nightmare for bus transit. Its kinda bikable in some parts, and by that I mean possibly safer than Kyiv. But I’ll say this about it, its definitely better than a lot of other places in America. I will never understand its resistance to light rail.
There are parts of America that are reasonable. Cities like New York, D.C., and Seattle have people who can afford a car choosing not to own one. But then you’ve got places like Houston and most small cities where even Columbus looks walkable.
I live in the EU but used to live in the US. In a nice part, too!
I lived like 400m from a small store. Never drove once. Insanely dangerous to walk on such a busy road with no sidewalks, no crossings, etc.
I walk a ton and bike ~80-100km/week now and don’t think twice about it.
You’d think the people living in this ‘walkable’ neighbourhood would end up starving and being underweight … when in fact they all just end up overweight with diabetes and heart disease
Only a couple of hours to get a snack! You’ll burn off the calories as you get home!
Ok. I live in a car centric city but never have lived where I couldn’t walk to a corner store. Even out in the suburbs when I was a kid, we could walk to the store, the library too.
Not to say there aren’t house farms in the exurbs, ringed by impossibly wide and fast roads. But it’s not so prevalent that you can’t avoid it.
I agree on zoning - there’s an empty lot a couple houses down, and another on the river, wouldn’t it be nice if I could build a pub so people didn’t drive to the bar? But truly, there are 3 gas stations/corner stores within a mile of our house, 4 barbershops, restaurants, 2 laundromats, a tattoo shop, a pharmacy, all without crossing any road with more than 2 lanes and 25mph speed limit. We just got a taqueria too, it’s so good! I just want a neighborhood bar because I hate hate driving somewhere for a drink!
Too many people dont recognize satire.
Why don’t the just build a new liquor store in the middle of the new houses? That solves it all
Considering reality do you blame them? This is hardly satire, just sarcastic pointing out (US) reality.
Yea. The Onion has been out-satired by reality lately, I’ll give you that.
When I played The Sims 2, the first thing I’d do is create a small public lot where everyone could get all their needs met and buy food and a cell phone (since starting characters didn’t have one). There were some oddities, since Sims get dirty quickly, I’d replace sinks with showers, and would make sure coffee was available everywhere.
Eventually, sims could walk from their home, rather than investing in a garage and a car or taking a cab.
Can this be done in sims 3?
No, that when the American government intervened to make cars mandatory in the Sims
Ah yes, they can walk to (checks notes) a gas station. Makes sense.
To be fair, it has my next pack of smokes, beef jerky and beers, not just gas.
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I often walk (checks notes) over 5km just to get to a convenience store.
I believe he might be doing a comedy
"Why does everyone want to live in pre-existing postwar suburbs? what is the magical x factor that makes people want them?? "
I think it is a few things and mostly centered on raising a family. I also think its lame but these are the reasons as I see them.
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They tend to have good schools
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They have front/back yards for children to play
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The buildings are physically separated so the chance you hear your neighbors is low
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The neighborhoods are much more quite
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The neighborhoods have low crime
…
Did i really need to add an /s? I thought the quotation marks were a clear enough indicator.
People want older suburbs because they’re planned to be walkable
Asking a very regular question, getting an answer, and then being sassy and saying “that was sarcasm”
Lol, your head just disappeared up your own ass.
You know you can just say “i misread that comment”. You’re allowed to do that.
You don’t have to abuse people. That’s a choice you made
Yeah, their response was unnecessarily caustic. Your reply was reasonable and I understood the intention of the original comment from the quotation marks.
Modern house features
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Sidewalks check! ✅
don’t take them for granted in the States
Satire and on point.
Walking is alien to the vast majority of suburbanites and rural people. Walking ~6 miles round trip is a little over 2 hours at a modest pace.
