Comment by cogman10
6 days ago
> Walkable cities are too small to have the wealth of options a car (or transit) city does.
It's counter intuitive but it's quiet the opposite. I've lived in the UK for a while and in some pretty walkable cities. Even in the smaller cities, what you'd find is a wealth of different shops and options catering to all sorts of needs.
But then just consider that when you are walking you are being exposed to all the shops in the city.
Cars isolate. You are much less likely to notice the hole in the wall specialty shop and you are much more likely to instead just go to a Walmart or national brand place to get what you want. And you'll much more likely want to stop at all in one stores such as Walmart because you don't want to hop in your car multiple times to get the shopping done. In walkable cities, it's almost like a mall experience in every city center. 3 doors down is the hardware store and 2 more stores is the candy shop.
And because that downtown location is a highly desirable place with lots of foot traffic, any shop that goes out of business gets quickly replaced with another. Which means you generally end up with a lot of pretty high quality stores.
That depends on what you are looking for. There are plenty of shops for the common needs - but if you want an odd niche no small walkable area can support it. How many magic stories can your city support? Even something like a guitar shop need a very dense area for people who live in walking distance to be enough to support it. I can think of dozens of other niches - many smaller the above examples.
> but if you want an odd niche no small walkable area can support it.
You'd be really surprised. I knew smaller cities with shops dedicated to Warhammer 40k. [1] (Surprisingly, still in business :) )
> Even something like a guitar shop need a very dense area for people who live in walking distance to be enough to support it.
A guitar shop just needs enough people interested in guitars. Being walkable doesn't mean there's no transit. Usually, walkable cities will have a city center where the shops are concentrated and if the city is big enough, you'll end up with a bus station in the city center. In fact, the referenced city has several of those shops. [2]
This isn't a large city, it's around 100,000. It's also fairly isolated. Nobody is coming to this city to get a guitar.
[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/nzmGkPKBCJi9xCAb7
[2] https://maps.app.goo.gl/gB46tVVRa195NkNs8
My comments (this thread) were in context of 120 years ago when cars were a rich person's toy and most people lived on farms and so didn't have access to the transit that existed. That a store can make it today is different because context is different.
How many of the customers of the Warhammer store walked there from their house? How many came from a different cities because it was the closest store? The store does well because it can draw from a much larger area than a pure walking (or the limited trams of back then)
Similar for guitars - I expect a city of 100k to support 1-2 guitar stores - but I expect the majority of customers are not walking. Maybe they drive, maybe they take transit.
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I live in a city of about 160k inhabitants. I live about 2 kilometers away from the hypercenter. A half-hour walk, which I wouldn't consider "walking distance".
Most of the city center is inaccessible by car. Parking your car is expensive, driving is discouraged.
Removing cars means there's more space for people. It means it's safer, quieter. I'm not in mortal panic if my 4 years old drops my hand. It means the bus isn't stuck in traffic, and is therefore really fast. It's the most vibrant place I've ever lived in. It's full of life and energy.
The city is full of small, independent shops.
A boardgames café:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Boardroom/@52.3864335,...
A guitar shop:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alphenaar+Muziekhandel/@52...
A tabletop store, hosting MTG tournaments on a regular basis:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tabletop+Kingdom+Haarlem/@...
A store fully dedicated to expensive collectibles:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Past+Joys/@52.3798456,4.63...
There's a ton of small shops, whose names I can't remember, that I only discovered because I happened to walk past them. This creates a positive feedback loop. It's rewarding to just wander about, because you may discover something.