Grocery Stores

[danbrotherston]

I don't know if I'd say that any suburb I've lived in has had a walkable grocery store, I don't think I've ever been to a walkable suburban grocery store on this continent. Just to be clear, I don't consider a grocery store that I can technically walk to, but which is surrounded by miles of parking and dangerous roads, "walkable", but I'm sure that's a question of definition, it's certainly not pleasant to walk to.

But leaving aside the lack of a grocery store, DTK is generally a walkable, car-light place. Yes, I do complain aboout jackasses racing their noisy cars up the street, but at the end of the day, it's mostly not the 4-5 lanes of traffic that virtually every other part of the city gets to deal with (mind you, I live well away from Weber and Victoria), we have less cars and traffic violence than your average suburb, and I can walk to far more places than I could in any suburb I've ever lived in. I am able to live car free and feel relatively unencumbered by doing so. Even in winter, at least one direction from my home has clear sidewalks.

Is Richmond a suburb? I've walked to T&Ts there. Walked past 3 going from point A to point B.

Normally I live 5 minutes from the Sobey's on Weber and Bridgeport. Neither of those streets are walkable, but happily I need to cross neither of them to get to the grocery store. I really dislike the window treatment at the Moore's which hides cars that might hit you, but other than that, I'd say that it is reasonable to walk to that Sobey's if you live on the right side of Weber and Bridgeport.

I have walked to the Sobey's plaza at Bridgeport and Weber. It is extremely unwalkable. When you suggest that you must be "on the right of the road" that is a very strong indicator that a place is highly unwalkable.

As I will now have said 3 times, "walkable" does not mean to me "it is physically possible to walk there". For a place to be "walkable" it has to be at least as accessible, pleasant, and safe by foot as it is by car.

I too routinely walk all over our city, and to grocery stores, to many places which I do not consider walkable. I do so because I live here, and I don't own a car, so I make the best of it, but I have also seen what it could be like, and I don't mean in other countries, I mean even in Uptown Waterloo, visiting the Valumart for example, or to pick a more suburban experience, but without a supermarket...Belmont Village.

As for Richmond, I have never been there, so I cannot speak to it, but to clarify, my use of the term to specify a suburban context, not a city defined as a suburb of a larger metro area. AFAIK Richmond is a suburb of the Greater Vancouver Area, and I would assume that like most larger suburbs it would have both more suburban and more urban areas. But I have never been there so I cannot speak to it.