In cities outside the US, you can live centrally, like downtown or the surrounding areas, and it’s considered the most convenient place to be because you can get everything a short walk around you.
Does this exist in the US and if so where?
And if not, why not?
Do people just drive out to the suburbs to go to Walmart or whatever?
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Central areas mean high-value real estate. Meaning you need to make more $$ per square foot. And large grocery & retail stores take up a lot of space.
Those exist in densely populated cities. Like anywhere else that has densely populated cities.
Big box stores are mostly in the suburbs. I’m sure people in cities sometimes drive to the suburbs to do large shopping trips.
Walmart will not open a location in Seattle city limits because they do not want to pay city level Business Operations taxes.
Downtown Seattle was built up around daytime commuters in mind. With a high concentration of office buildings and fewer things that families would need, like regular grocery and public schools.
Seattle is a city of neighborhoods. The neighborhoods that surround downtown have home good stores (Fred Meyer), grocery stores (Fred Meyer, Safeway, Red Apple, Grocery Outlet, Town and County), and pharmacy stores (Bartell’s, Walgreens), small hardware stores (True Value, Ace Hardware), independent pet stores (Mud Bay, All The Best Pet Care), parks, schools, independent restaurants.
Can you give examples of the American cities that don’t have basic amenities downtown?
Because all the ones I’ve spent time in (Boston, Providence, Las Vegas, Flagstaff, New Haven) do have retail, including groceries, in or near the densely populated areas. Though not necessarily large stores, since square footage can be expensive.
Most of the businesses in my DT are resturaunts along with Office buildings. Its very walkable though.
In the US we have great logistics and delivery so you don’t need to live near a specific store of every little thing to have access to it. And most of us get stuff delivered directly to our door without the hassle of hauling ourselves to a physical locker like DHL often forces on its customers.
[Indianapolis](https://goo.gl/maps/6zZT5ToPyQsEHHaJA) has [three](https://goo.gl/maps/PydYQBwub5uKGSRcA) supermarkets [downtown](https://goo.gl/maps/GJUsesYWmSCXQnbU7). All of them have additional amenities like coffee shops, lunch service or full service restaurants, package pickup and returns, and so on within them.
Electronic stores as in a store dedicated for selling only electronics, spare parts, batteries, etc… have really not been needed in most of the US for 10+ years. If you have the market demand to carry spare parts for local customers I guess you can operate, but most of that is online now. And for other stuff, online and other stores have absorbed the demand. If you need a phone charger or batteries, you can go to a CVS or something like that. Or stores like Best Buy carry computers, phones, laptops, blu rays, video games and more.
It isn’t uncommon for downtown residents of Indianapolis to make occaisonal trips to the surrounding areas. Indy is an easy city to drive in and you can get to a Meijer or Super Target within 10-15 minutes or a Costco or Sam’s within 20. Combine that with other errands, getting dinner, or visiting a park and its easy to build into your weekend schedule.
Even in the UK with their density and ‘walking convenience’ they tend to build these bigger stores on the outskirts of town.
No one wants go to a big store downtown and cart a TV / 10 bags of groceries along with their many kids / elderly relatives on buses/trains/a really long walk.
It’s simple demography. Stores exist where there is demand.
Stores exist within range of consumers that will shop there. There are these stores in Chicago, New York and other cities with dense residential areas.
In other cities in the US, people prefer to live outside of the city. The stores are in the suburbs.
That being said, I know many people in big cities that will drive out to a suburb to visit a big box store. It’s very expensive to operate a store in a city. The Levi’s store in NYC costs $1M a month in rent.
It exists in every major city I’ve been to. I live in one of the top 10 largest cities in the US and our “downtown” area is more of a business area than a residential area, but does still have high rise apartments and condos. It also has grocery stores, electronics stores, video game stores, clothes stores, restaurants, etc. The problem with the big stores like Walmart is just space. We do have a Macys right in the heart of the city and a smaller Target just outside “downtown”, but the Walmart is in a different part of the city. The buildings are older and there’s not a lot of space for the footprint that a large store like Walmart would require, so they build them on the less dense outskirts of the city where there is more room and space costs less per square foot.
Central areas in suburban, or small cities/towns have all those things.
Because that is the purpose of those areas. Both residential and commercial blending together.
It’s also a thing in very large urban areas. New York, Chicago, San Francisco.
i’m curious about where you’re referring to. i’ve travelled to places that had virtually none of the places you mentioned but it had to do with the way the city was planned or naturally developed.
the case here at least, in most large texas cities, is that everything is very spread out and requires a car to travel places but is centrally located. “downtown” just means “the original, old part of the city where you’ll find the most touristy places and old architecture”. everything else follows a pattern of: “people live in the city but don’t like the city. suburbs are made. people miss the city and build walmart, mcdonald’s, etc. closer to them. people are then living in the city again and are tired of the city. suburbs are made… *repeat*” until you have a very spread out, large, every-growing city.
can you get anywhere by walking or public transport? absolutely not. texas is massive and 5 of our cities make it to top 15 largest us cities. 3 make it to top 10. it’s not designed for that, for a multitude of other reasons that are a whole other conversation.
if you want a place that is walking friendly, you don’t need a car (and actually seems somewhat anti-car in design) to navigate the first place that comes to mind is washington dc. however, all of the places you mentioned (huge supermarkets, etc. ) you will have trouble finding. stores are much, much smaller in comparison.
smaller stores = less spaces = less blocks = more walk
Yes this exists in big cities in the US. If you’re not seeing these types of stores when you visit a big city, it might be either because they kinda blend in or because you’re mainly visiting a tourist-centric area and people who live in the city don’t do their essentials shopping in that neighborhood.
When I lived in Chicago, I lived very close to the Mag Mile and you’re not gonna find much other than luxury shopping on that street specifically but there were no less than 6 grocery stores within a mile of my apartment. There were 3 Targets within 1.5 miles, several department stores of varying quality, and countless pharmacies (Walgreens on every corner is only barely an exaggeration). I didn’t own a car for 8 years living there and everything I needed was within a short walk.
Middle of downtown Minneapolis has basically all of those things (except it’s a Target and not Walmart). From large retail stores/grocers to smaller corner type shops. You can even use the [Skyway System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Skyway_System) to get to most of them.
Madison has plenty of grocers downtown, mostly to serve the college people living there (we’re about 20% college students). But that’s the thing – there’s people living there. Where real estate is more for business use, you’ll see restaurants, not grocery stores
I have been to Asia and I have been to Europe, you do not see big supermarkets in city centers either because property is too expensive. Everything is going to be much smaller because land is a premium and that is the same in the United States.
Old usa cities have that but all post ww2 city development have been CAR-centric which why those don’t exist as much as Europe
Business districts don’t always have a lot of residents. If there aren’t enough people to support a business it won’t exist.
Can you elaborate on where you’re referring to and why you think that’s the case? Because I live in the central area of a large U.S. city, and I have all of those things easily available to me within a short walk.
depends what city you’re in
Because of different (and, in my opinion, worse) city growth and development patterns, downtowns in the US and Canada serve a fundamentally different purpose than they do elsewhere. There is much more separation between residential, retail, and office districts. With the growth of suburbs that are almost exclusively residential, downtowns are for work, outer areas are for living, and retail is somewhere in between or elsewhere. Zoning and building practices have reinforced this for decades in almost all major American cities.
Of course, there are clearly exceptions to this, but they generally serve to highlight how strong it is elsewhere.
In my area 4/5ths of the people live in the suburbs. And this is even excluding areas within Minneapolis and St. Paul that have a suburban character.
I live in the suburbs too. Why would I want to drive downtown and have to pay for parking to shop when I can just drive to the local suburban Walmart that’s a lot closer and park for free?
Not sure I’m understanding the question, but the downtown areas of all major cities have supermarkets, electronics stores, video games stores, and anything else you might need. They might not be as gigantic as a suburban Walmart or Costco but they definitely exist, and you wouldn’t really ever need to leave the city and go to the suburbs just to get something from a store. Maybe Ikea would be an exception although even Ikea exists in NYC.
Not every city is walkable though. In many American cities stores are not necessarily in close proximity and you definitely still need a car to get around. Examples would be Miami, LA, and Houston. Examples of more walkable cities would be NYC, San Francisco, and DC.
I disagree on your assessment on big box stores in DC. There are two Targets, and a Walmart, a Costco, plus multiple Giants, Safeways, Harris Teeters, and Whole Foods just off the top of my head. All spread all through the city.