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Average distance to a supermarket in Amsterdam is 400 meter or 1300 feet

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Re: Average distance to a supermarket in Amsterdam is 400 meter or 1300 feet

#61

Post by beaeglebeach »

kleiba wrote: post #58
noduerme wrote: post #26

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…

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 hol…

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.

Re: Average distance to a supermarket in Amsterdam is 400 meter or 1300 feet

#62

Post by dalai »

ars wrote: post #28

I would like to see how many SKU's are in these stores compared to places where the stores are further apart.

Where I live (in Germany) there are 8 or 9 supermarkets within half a mile distance, two of which organic and one a "center" (i.e. big). I find that the inventory is limited only in 1 or 2 of the smallest ones. In all the others I typically find everything I need.

Re: Average distance to a supermarket in Amsterdam is 400 meter or 1300 feet

#64

Post by glimshe »

Living in the US and within walking distance (5-10 min walk) of a grocery store, I'd much rather drive because I can buy more things, thus making fewer trips over the month. It's the same 5 min by car, but it's just a lot more convenient. I have plenty of exercise, so I prefer to not carry a bunch of bags to stay fit...

Re: Average distance to a supermarket in Amsterdam is 400 meter or 1300 feet

#66

Post by AniseAbyss »

noduerme wrote: post #26

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…

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Re: Average distance to a supermarket in Amsterdam is 400 meter or 1300 feet

#67

Post by DrBazza »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #59
DrBazza wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

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 tim…

It's not so much 'the way they were', rather, I'd prefer to live in a small town with a butchers, bakers, and grocers, so that I'm spending my money in the local economy, and that I'm getting higher quality produce, and back to the original post, shops that are within reasonable walking distance. The number of towns or villages in my area that have this are vanishingly small.

In fact, my medium sized town (20-30,000 people) has no butchers or bakers left. It also does not have a town centre supermarket. It does however have McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, Costa, kebab shops, and so on. You can probably guess correctly, that my local town centre is like ghost town.

It is extremely depressing that the UK is becoming like this, whilst at the same time planning rules and regulations (or lack thereof) are encouraging the centralization of shopping habits into large supermarkets in the chase for profits by the house builders.

Re: Average distance to a supermarket in Amsterdam is 400 meter or 1300 feet

#68

Post by mytailorisrich »

DrBazza wrote: post #67
mytailorisrich wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

It's not so much 'the way they were', rather, I'd prefer to live in a small town with a butchers, bakers, and grocers, so that I'm spending my money in the local economy, and that I'm getting higher quality produce, and back to the original post, shops that are within reasonable walking distance. The number of towns or villages in my area that have this are vanishingly small. In fact, my medium sized town (20-30,000…

Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops.

Independent butchers and grocers have mostly disappeared because they are expensive and less convenient. Places were you can still find some are usually either 'posh' or where the local demographics has special meat/dietary requirements, shall we say...

The advantage of an independent butcher is that you can order in advance or ask them to source/prepare special things (in my experience that's the only way to find fresh lamb kidneys, for instance). But that is less and less the case, and people are less and less interested. And, again, it is much more expensive.

Re: Average distance to a supermarket in Amsterdam is 400 meter or 1300 feet

#69

Post by sofixa »

ant6n wrote: post #39
dtech wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the difference? In Europe we call basically everything a supermarket and its a synonym for grocery store. The only exceptions would be minimarket which are extremely tiny and hypermarket which is your US Walmart-style extremely large store that also sells electronics and clothes etc.

Not exactly true. There’s the notion of a corner store, in different languages. But these things don’t really exist anymore since supermarket chains have taken over, some in really small spaces. Btw, the chain stores are often franchises, so owner operated like in the old days, but with scale, brand and prices of big chains.

> There’s the notion of a corner store, in different languages

The person you're responding to mentioned them as "minimarkets which are really small". They still exist and are very important as a last resort thing, or for exotic stuff.

In France sometimes they're called "arab stores" or something along those lines, because they're often held by people of visibly foreign origin (tbf I've seen more Indian/Pakistani/Sri Lankan/Bangladeshi than Arab-held ones), and are great for emergency shopping on Sunday/late at night when you realise you're missing something, but also for exotic products you wouldn't find in a regular supermarket like exotic spices or even high quantities of rice.

Re: Average distance to a supermarket in Amsterdam is 400 meter or 1300 feet

#70

Post by sofixa »

rsynnott wrote: post #27
malermeister wrote: post #9

As somebody who's lived in both Amsterdam and the Bay Area, the list of things that Bay Area car advocates say are impossible that I've seen work with my own eyes is endless.

I mean, when I’ve visited San Francisco, it seems to have supermarkets all over the place too (albeit rather expensive, not-very-good ones), so they even have a local model.

When I visited SF I found that to be the case in some neighbourhoods, but in others like... everything West of the downtown, e.g. towards Golden Gate Park, Richmond, Sunset, Twin Peaks, etc. was extremely barren from anything other than single family houses, with the occasional street with restaurants and shops.
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