- Your lifestyle can adjust so that you don’t pick up two weeks of groceries at once and buy in bulk at Costco. You could walk to a fresh market instead. You can get a few days groceries at a time. Getting groceries doesn’t have to be the massive effort it is here in North America. Or there are small electric mobility options.
- Customers and parking. This doesn’t necessarily follow. If a street is very walkable and people use it frequently, people can easily notice a shop and walk in. That doesn’t really happen if you’re driving, as you don’t really interact with or see the outside world. So in theory, a vibrant walkable street can support a lot more local economic activity. Beyond that, the amount of land used for parking in North American suburbs is so vast that there is actually less economic activity because so much land is effectively sitting there empty. If a parking lot is as big as the store… well, that’s one more store that could exist!
- Your lifestyle can adjust so that you don’t pick up two weeks of groceries at once and buy in bulk at Costco. You could walk to a fresh market instead. You can get a few days groceries at a time. Getting groceries doesn’t have to be the massive effort it is here in North America. Or there are small electric mobility options.
- Customers and parking. This doesn’t necessarily follow. If a street is very walkable and people use it frequently, people can easily notice a shop and walk in. That doesn’t really happen if you’re driving, as you don’t really interact with or see the outside world. So in theory, a vibrant walkable street can support a lot more local economic activity. Beyond that, the amount of land used for parking in North American suburbs is so vast that there is actually less economic activity because so much land is effectively sitting there empty. If a parking lot is as big as the store… well, that’s one more store that could exist!