That is very true and it’s wild how fast it changed. I remember still having small grocery stores in the 90’s, but they’ve all closed down now. A few still exist as discount stores, but they aren’t true full service grocery stores, mostly frozen stuff and junk food. It definitely exacerbated the “food desert” problem a lot of the US has… a lot of folks with limited mobility only have access to these shitty faux-grocery stores, it’s kind of no wonder so many people eat like shit.
I’m not in the US anymore but that big box transformation was well and truly completed by the time I left.
I had a friend who had an apartment in Hamburg, roughly 600m from an S-Bahn station. within 50m of that station was the neighborhood grocery. You walk up to take the train to wherever, and on your way home you stop off in the Biergarten first, have a few, then stop in the grocery before walking home - downhill no less for the arms full of packages side of the trip. Not a bad layout, but about half the residents still had cars parked all over the streets which they used more or less daily. So, in some ways, the US arrangement just doesn’t bother with the under-utilized trains, but it also eliminates them as an option which really sucks when you want to go to the airport, or take an inter-city train somewhere…
That is very true and it’s wild how fast it changed. I remember still having small grocery stores in the 90’s, but they’ve all closed down now. A few still exist as discount stores, but they aren’t true full service grocery stores, mostly frozen stuff and junk food. It definitely exacerbated the “food desert” problem a lot of the US has… a lot of folks with limited mobility only have access to these shitty faux-grocery stores, it’s kind of no wonder so many people eat like shit.
I’m not in the US anymore but that big box transformation was well and truly completed by the time I left.
I had a friend who had an apartment in Hamburg, roughly 600m from an S-Bahn station. within 50m of that station was the neighborhood grocery. You walk up to take the train to wherever, and on your way home you stop off in the Biergarten first, have a few, then stop in the grocery before walking home - downhill no less for the arms full of packages side of the trip. Not a bad layout, but about half the residents still had cars parked all over the streets which they used more or less daily. So, in some ways, the US arrangement just doesn’t bother with the under-utilized trains, but it also eliminates them as an option which really sucks when you want to go to the airport, or take an inter-city train somewhere…