something a lot of people miss is, that some people have to shop for more than 3 or 4 people, when I grew up we were 5 plus a somewhat big dog, you can't really do weekly shopping without some kind of help under these circumstances
I use public transport to get everywhere I can, which is pretty easy where I live, but having 4 full shopping bags on a tram sounds like a horrible experience
People in countries and cities with good public transport don’t really do “weekly”. They stop in to the local market on the way home daily or every other day. There’s literally an express type grocery store every block or three, and a full serve store probably 10-15 minutes walk.
I spend a lot of time overseas for work, and getting groceries is without a car is zero trouble.
I mean, there's a bunch of factors to this some social some geographical, but it turns out, the US has almost uniqiely bad design of towns and city with the auto-lobby holding a firm grip on their balls.
I'm not in a particularly desirable area... I'm also not in the US though.
A bug reason why the only desirable areas tend to be walkable in the US is just because there are so few.
If you promoted widespread walkable city-design, then prices will become more accessible to everyone. Even the poorest areas lf my city are super walkable, even moreso than many of the richer areas.
I mean, being poor sucks everywhere, but there's a lot of intermediate steps between dense well-designed city and car-centric hellhole.
Arguably the latter is way worse if you can't afgord a car.
Just shop daily instead of weekly. A grocery store just opened three blocks from me so I just walk down with a single canvas bag and grab what I need for the next day or two. For the dog, we walk down to the pet store together to grab his food and a treat or toy for him.
Obviously not possible in many suburbs, but when you live in a walkable area it works great.
Have you heard of grocery caddy? It has wheels and can carry more groceries than one person can lift with their own hands.
The heaviest thing I often see people load in their car is a 6-pack of water or soda bottles. It's better for health and just simpler to drink tap water. Drinking from a plastic bottle means drinking microplastics. And I don't need to explain why water is better than sodas.