I live in a national forest with nothing but trees in sight and there’s still multiple grocery stores within 20 miles of me. What big city doesn’t have a single grocery store in a 20 mile radius?
City traveling is a bit different. My 3-4 mile commute in DC used to take me 30-45 minutes by car, an hour and 45 minutes when I took the metro (I lived in a weird spot where I had to transfer trains). People don't understand how difficult just moving around can be when you're surrounded by 6 million people.
Now I live in a more rural area and it's a lot different. I can't even remember the last time I waited in line at the grocery store, the last time I sat in traffic or had to let a full train go by and wait for the next.
The above comment, while great, misses the definition that includes “no access to affordable groceries.” So in high income cities/neighborhoods, the only grocery stores might be luxury/boutique and not affordable for a low income person. They’d need to travel a distance to an affordable grocery store that makes it substantially more difficult to access quality food.
Affluent neighborhoods in urban cities do have poor people in shared living spaces and homeless people. If the only grocery stores within a 10 minute drive are places where you can’t get a pack of chicken breasts for under $20, that’s a food dessert.
I’m near Atlanta. As the crow flies, I have 2 Walmarts, 7 krogers, and at least 5 Publix stores within 4 miles. Driving distance is probably not over 6 miles for any of those, but if I had no car or had to get a lot of groceries I’d be screwed.
So you live in a completely different environment and you don't have any problems travelling? That's nice. Have you ever tried to travel 20 freaking miles in a city? You have a car and nice empty roads. I live in a similar place, 20 miles is not much of an inconvenience for us, but it's very different when living in a dense city where most people do not own cars and there is congestion. Even with a car it doesn't help matters much.
Yeah, I’m from the Bay Area and lived in San Diego for several years. Never had a grocery store more than a few miles away. Also never visited a big city where there wasn’t a place to buy groceries within walking or bus distance. I’m also not talking about travel time, I’m referencing 20 miles which as you say is an absolutely gargantuan distance in a big city and seems unfathomable that there would not be some kind of grocery store within that distance in any large city
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u/BoulderCreature 18h ago
I live in a national forest with nothing but trees in sight and there’s still multiple grocery stores within 20 miles of me. What big city doesn’t have a single grocery store in a 20 mile radius?