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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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In most dense cities the walk to the grocery store is more like 5 minutes than 15

Not a chance, unless you're counting convenience stores.

When I lived in a big dense city, I had two convenience stores within a 30 second walk of my apartment and five grocery stores within a five minute walk. One of them was pretty big.

To be fair, until just last year the authoritative North American Industry Classification System did include both supermarkets and convenience stores within the overarching "grocery stores" category, so there is precedent for this nomenclature. (The 2022 edition of the NAICS now calls the overarching category "grocery and convenience retailers".)

5 minutes is true for my experience of urban Europe and Asia. In both one can drive further to a big box store and do weekly shopping, but walkable grocery stores are near major walking commute routes and sell quantities of food that the single person can carry back to their home.

I usually buy fresh groceries daily 5 min from my house (but 10 seconds off my route) on my commute home and nonperishables 1.5 hours away by bus once a month.