This is the question posed on CityNerd video titled “Walkable Cities But They Keep Getting More Affordable”
If you ditched your car, could you afford to leave the suburbs for a great urban neighborhood?
Ray Delahanty answers the question in the 26 biggest US cities.
The analysis assumes the all-in cost of owning and operating a car is $1,000 per month, including purchase, insurance, fuel, and maintenance.
In the city, transportation costs might total about $250 per month for transit passes, biking, ride-hailing, and other small expenses.
This results in an effective $750 per month increase in the housing budget for city center residents who do not own a car.
The results of the video are quite interesting, as you can get more m² in walkable areas in most cities
Question I have for city dwellers. What do grocery trips look like? I’ve only ever lived in the suburbs and I’ve always been interested. Do you bring it all on the subway? Go more then once a week? Walk it home in a cart? Eat out more instead?
If you dont have a car, you just go more often getting smaller amounts of stuff. Or you bring a cart. Grocery stores are more freqent, but smaller.
I can fit 2 paper bags of groceries in my bike basket. There is not a grocery on my short commute route or I would go on the way home. But really I can haul a few days stuff in the bike if I want to.
The car was essential when the kids were little, but as a couple the e-bike does more of the heavy lifting.
My nearest supermarket is is a 3 minute walk away. I walk to the supermarket. We probably shop 3-4 times a week.
Buy food to cover 2 dinners and breakfast. Lunch is leftovers from previous dinner. I have a small fridge, so I can’t fit a week’s worth of food in there anyway.
Oh, and we transport everything in a backpack and / or shopping bags (with handles, only seen those paper bags without handles in American films).
I stop by the grocery store on the way home and grab ingredients for dinner. I can fit a weeks worth of groceries on my bike but I tend to just go like 3 times per week on average.
I can’t imagine needing to plan for a whole week of food at a time tbh. Being close to the store means I can just grab whatever I am in the mood for on a given day. Do you just force yourself to eat what you have at home even if you aren’t feeling it that day?
All the time. Often just to get it out of the fridge. A lot goes to waste though as fresh fruit and veggies just don’t last.
Lots more frozen meats. But at the same time I’ll make something new just cause those are the ingredients I have.
I’ve never lived in a huge city, but where I live (Estonia), city planning is much better than much of North America so usually you wouldn’t live too far from a grocery store, walking is usually an option, otherwise there’s public transit. There’s literally nothing weird about bringing your grocery bags on a bus or train or whatever.
If you don’t have a car, you just shop for one or two days at a time usually. This way you can actually get fresher ingredients sometimes and you don’t have to plan an entire week ahead at once. In fact, I’m lazy and just shop for one or two days at a time despite having a car and sometimes using it to go to the grocery store. I just don’t know what I’ll want to eat 2 days from now!
I have several supermarkets within walking distance. I can carry groceries from there in a cart or bag, usually approximately once or twice a week.
Occasionally I also transport groceries on public transport, mainly because I went to a supermarket elsewhere in the city on the way home, but this isn’t the norm.
All of the above, depending on exact conditions
Actually now that I live in an urban suburb, I could do a lot without a car but carrying groceries is not worth the fight to find an alternate way