Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Heavyarms55 @Heavyarms55 I see you're back. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I'm reading all your "revealations" here and I'm thinking....have you not actually read a single text wall I've posted in the past several years in this very thread?

I have mostly agreement and a few disagreements side views to yours. Mostly agreement all the way across.

"Affordable apartments" is an odd subject though. The entire American way of life has been the "suburban house" for a long long time. And that didn't used to be unaffordable. Not building microapartments isn't what went wrong. You shouldn't actually want one - that's not what used to be the cultural desirable norm. It's the fact that actual ho uses that used to cost less than what a car now costs now costs over a quarer million. THAT is what went wrong. OLD America meant you could buy that 2 bedroom house for less money than a modern Jeep Wrangler, and actually OWN it for life - not this new world where it takes 3 incomes to own a house. Desiring cheap apartments is asking for a bandaid while the sores fester uncontrollably. And when they do build them all they do is urbanize and gridlock the area by densifying, calling it better, and the apartments are still more than half anyone's income. It gets worse for the people that scraped by before and doesn't really help the people that didn't.

Agreed otherwise on nearly all the rest, of course, though, as I've been ranting about for YEARS right here.

And I do agree. Maybe it's 5 years. Maybe it's the past 10 years. I can't tell. But this is absolutely a different society than it was 10 years ago. I thought it was just regional on the East Coast, but apparently it's worse than I thoguht and is everywhere, even in the boonies. Unless you're just in an area where all the New Yawkers went....which seems to be "everywhere" and if so, yeah....I feel that pain. But the society today is absolutely not the same one it was in 2010.....I never even left here and I feel like a foreigner completely. It changed all around me while I didn't, to the point that I don't feel like a citizen, I'm just a foreigner getting by.... Without having ever left. And it's the worst imaginable feeling - imagine if you left your country and it got nuked, occupied, and is entirely gone and erased from maps while you were gone? That's how I feel - my actual culture no longer exists. It's on maps, but it doesn't exist there anymore. I don't know what exactly happened to it either. But one day it was just gone, and I didn't see it happen. Maybe it started around 2000.....maybe it was cell phones that did it. It seems to conincide...

The only caveat I'll give "everyone else" is people not saying hello and looking strangely...I mean you do realize there's a plague going on? I'd flip you off if you tried to say hello right now, too....that's respiratory droplets that didn't need to be shared, after all...

American humor always sucked, though. It's gotten progressively worse. But it was never good. At least not since Bob Hope and Henney Youngman died. That one's just repatriating.

FWIW, though, no, you're not ever going to feel comfortable here. You have the same problem I do, and it has nothing to do with having been in Japan. You're one person - you went one way based on how you were raised, and society around you here went another. You can either somehow convince yourself to become just like them, or you'll always be an outsider and nothing more. And a decade ago, that wasn't the case. "Welcome back." Worse, I tend to say I'm "culturally Japanese" despite not being ethnically Japanese or having ever been to Japan. It's kind of a misnomer, of course, but the idea of the "politeness culture" is precisely how I was raised...in that regard I was raised for Japan's society, accidentally. Unfortunately, apparently, none of the West is like that. "Bad parenting". We should have been raised to be hoodlums.

@WoomyNNYes The flip side of that is population needs to be managed around the way of life. The US way of life involved the home the beef, whatever. To allow exponential population growth to the point that's seen as unsustainable then requires people to "vote" to steamroll over the way of life people that were already there lived. It effectively means the new, younger, larger population declares war to end the way of life of the rest, either by pricing it out and making life harder and harder and harder, or by actively regulating it out (or manipulating it.) Which is probably a big part of why the politics is where it is. You have a whole faction declaring that an entire other faction's way of life, that was always the way of life, now has to end.....to accommodate them. Sounds like the Spanish Inquisition in reverse....so people will fight tooth and nail AGAINST them - rather than promoting any given cause of their own. They're perpetually on the defensive against invasion more or less. And they aren't wrong. There's no escape from a mess that needed to be quelled in the 60's, not now.

@Octane Not Canada, but for the US, yeah. Now where I am we have a few normal supermarkets...within a 10 minute drive...which is rare. And they're more conventional than the tool warehouse ones. But that's still too far, with traffic. I do have one very close one but due to the layout it still isn't a 3 minute bike ride, even though I can see it from here (and you can't really keep going there. You house does have to be a mini warehouse, and at this point I couldn't imagine living any other way. Especially post-covid I'm just used to a 3 month stockpile of food now. Anything else is unimaginable.

But it's not just regulations that keep stores from opening in residental areas. Most of it is cost. They keep re-zoning commercial space to be residential because commercial never moves in. Retail is dead. Online replaced it. It's seen as a liability. And the cost of real estate in any populated area is so astronomical no business could really survive except the ones making 500% profit. So nearby all you get is highly expensive luxury things, small boutiques things like that. Any real shopping is at the big cheap-land shopping districst.....and that is a MINIMUM of a 30 minute ride each way by car. It's best avoided....so you just replace it with more online. And before you know it, there's no need for shopping stores, because everything is done online. But the alternative is a 1 hour travel time by car just to buy a plastic cooler you could have bought on Amazon. And that's if you don't get stuck in traffic. And you WILL get stuck in traffic. So 1-2 hours to buy that one item you want, or just click on Amazon and get it in a day or two. How COULD retail survive? All because retail left the areas where people actually are and make you go to THEM instead. Walmart started it. They bought super cheap land in the middle of nowhere in rural america and forced everyone to them in open country with cheap prices. By the time they were done, no one was left, and you HAD to go to them. And then the other stores built around them.

I know who TheBlackDragon is, not the others.

@NEStalgia I don't think it's inevitable. It works over here, so I don't see why I can't work in the US or any other place for that matter. I'm certain it requires a lot of structural changes. By the sounds of it you're essentially giving up the free market for giant mega-conglomerates to dominate the online retail industry, and what's left of the actual retail industry. But hey, being stuck inside a car in traffic means freedom, right? And the rest is communism, so let's create also this system where only a handful of companies rule and dictate the country. Sounds lovely

And don't get me wrong, it's happening over here as well. Amazon opened their online store here earlier this year, and they've been trying to crush the competition with incredibly low (and unfair) prices. But I have some hope left that the smaller shops can endure this. But really that's another global problem we're facing, and not too many people are bothered by it it seems. Anyway, it's another topic entirely.

On my way home from work, or uni, I stop at the greengrocer, the supermarket, and sometimes the butcher. I do it all on my bike, and it probably takes less than 20 minutes, the ride included (which is about a 3km ride). I can't imagine it any other way really. Shops are allows to open up anywhere AFAIK. It probably requires a request at the municipal level, and you have to be registered at the chamber of commerce, but it's possible. Anyway, I rarely buy groceries for more than a day or two in advance as a result. And it works, because you also don't need a ton of space to stockpile all the extra food. And most of the vegetables are fresh every day.

3 pages in like 12 hours? Okay.

@Apportal Ha, Yeah, we’re both relatively new, but I think I’ve managed to gather that the thread won’t die anytime soon.

@Anti-Matter OMG, you read my mind. I always am mad at this for having sandwiches. I don’t even know if it’s possible to have sandwiches when your a player, and it annoys me so much. You’re drawings are wonderful. I always thought you did them completely on a website, I didn’t know you draw them IRL. I’m not too good at drawing. I’m better at piano.

@Eel I know The Black Dragon, Chicken Brutus rings a bell and I know nothing of a James Newton. You see, I have a habit of reading old, locked or dead threads, so I know lot’s of the old users.

@Apportal Gah, I do that all the time. It never let’s me because it says “You already posted that.”

There's also BellGoesRiiing

@MarioLover92 I still remember the day Resetti appeared for the first time. Cool, I haven't played too many Mario Party games, before that it was Mario Party 4. Funny how Super Mario Party and New Horizons ended up being the first time playing new entries since GameCube entries. I haven't tried the main mode to Super Mario Party, I just been having fun in mini-game mode.

Nice to see someone else enjoy the Riders series, I also did like Zero Gravity as well. I haven't played Free Riders because I don't own an Xbox 360, in fact I played Sonic Generations on PC being a PC gamer too.

It was mostly because of ThanosReXXX’s rants.

Nah I’m joking. A lot of people have had stuff to say and/or having direct conversations with someone else.

And I love reading locked threads too! I don’t know why. Just a weird habit.

@Heavyarms55, sounds rough.

Yeah, politics have definitely become insufferable over the past few years. My father & brother are on opposite sides of the spectrum, to the point that the remote control has been flung once or twice during the arguments.

Also, the fact that protecting yourself from a pandemic (by wearing a mask) is somehow seen as a political statement over here does my head in. My father thinks it's going to "magically disappear" after election day (he doesn't think it's a hoax per se, but believes the media is overplaying it to "make Trump look bad"), and my family is going to try and hold a wedding this weekend with no safety rules in place, inviting 300 people to a Church that already feels full with just 50 (I have to go to, otherwise I'll be seen as rude or disrespectful).

@Octane The physical structure here was unfortunately (and forcibly) designed in a way that doesn't facilitate improving it without tearing it all down. And don't get me wrong, absolutely nobody on earth despises cars any more than I do. I'm the one that said I won't be happy until every last car is melted to slag. They can't be gone soon enough and I will be thoroughly miserable until the day the very last one is gone.

So I'm not defending it. I'm at war with it. I'm just not seeing an real route to fixing it without obliterating everything and staring from 0. And then that presents hosts of other problems.

And retail is already dead here. It was on life support before covid. Now it's just vanishing in real-time. The problem we have isn't that "Amazon is crushing small retail." In fact Amazon only accounts for, like 10% of all retail still. the problem is that 15, 20 years before Amazon even existed, Walmart, followed by a few others already crushed normal retail and created a mega-corporate socialist economy to replace the free market. We already lost retail from race to the bottom pricing via Walmart. Amazon just took Walmart's own strategy, managed to shave a few more pennies off via logistics advantages, and used it against them. There really wasn't anyone else left in the battle by then. There wasn't much of normal retail left by the time Amazon arrived. Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, Target, and a handful of others killed retail and built a mega-corporate National Store system. Every town has the same shopping centers with the same stores, most of which are owned by the same few companies. And all of those are an hour away, round trip from almost anyone. Heck it takes 10 minutes just navigating the parking lot in and out, so that's 20 minutes round trip even once you get there. Amazon only arrived to then wage war against Walmart and friends for supremacy. Technically Walmart still accounts for more retail than Amazon here. Significantly more....Amazon's the underdog in the US, comparatively!

I certainly don't even go those places any more. It used to be at least somewhat fun to "get out" from time to time. But then they overbuilt the whole area (another 500+ new homes! Coming soon 250 luxury apartments! Next to the other 300! 250,000 sq foot office complex! Next to the 10 others! All at the same intersection that already took 12 minutes to get through on a good day!

And for the love of anything holy never ever try to shop on a shore day! We're not that close to the shore here, but of course on a Friday everybody's heading that direction to the shores. I made the mistake last year of trying to go to the one shopping center for one restaurant for a birthday on a Friday afternoon. it took an HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTES in total gridlock just to get there. Then another half hour back. Almost 2 hours of travel time to get to the freaking shopping center and back home. And it was 93 degrees.. ...

So I don't leave home. Ever except special events and work. Other than grocery shopping, covid life is identical to normal life..... There's no point. Why go anywhere if the whole time is spent angry and frustrated in a car, and you're worn out by the time you get where you're going?

At least one nice thing about online shipping is we actually CAN buy from a ton of mom & pop and smaller companies....including through Amazon's "digital mall". In the physical realm you really can't do that. You have a choice between local upscale boutiques and paying 100x the price for anything, or driving an hour+ round trip just to go to Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, Target, or the few clones. All the interesting stores closed 15, 20 years ago. And the few leftover mom and pop shops are long gone post covid.

I can't imagine the misery of buying groceries more than once a week. In summer I'd buy twice just because poultry would go bad and such if bought for a whole week...but here.....like I said I can literally see the supermarket (which is a VERY rare luxury in this country!) - but by the time you have to wind the road to get there. Wait at two perma-clogged intersections that are a minimum 7 minute wait each way, longer during busier times (which is about 4-6 hours a day....and usually when you want to go).....it takes about 15-20 minutes to get in there and park. Then do your shopping for however long that takes (the store itself is overcrowded and carts don't fit down the aisles with someone else's.....then waiting at checkout is a good 10 minute wait because they have 2 checkout lanes open and 20 people in line, and one needs a price check and another has a credit card problem), then another 15 minutes to travel like 1/2 mile home... A simple trip around the corner to the supermarket is a minimum 45 minute trip, and that's if it goes REALLY speedy. The same trip used to take like 15 min total 20 years ago. How can I not loathe anyone that's moved into the area in the past 20 years. Their very existence makes my daily life more miserable. To me, the area should have been capped at the population level that allowed a functioning daily life. After that, nobody else enters.

@NEStalgia It must be awful to feel so miserable.

@NEStalgia I don't think you have to start from zero. Clever designing around existing infrastructure can save a lot. But yes, it takes a lot of effort. However, the thing is, my country wasn't much different 70 years ago when they were preparing for a car-centric world. The government took measures against it and has been rebuilding the country ever since. Even to this day roads are rebuild to make it more pedestrian or bicycle friendly. You can't change it overnight, but I think that if the US started today, it would be vastly improved 20 or 30 years from now. The same happened to public transport, because AFAIK that's also non-existent in North America.

It looks like the solution has been to build more roads to encourage car traffic, but that's not right solution I think. If alternative transport isn't promoted and allowed for, the problem is only going to get worse. One observed paradox is that the average commute time by car between two places is just as fast as the same journey by public transport (the Downs–Thomson paradox). And there's quite a good reasoning behind it. Braess's paradox is another observation that more lanes, or roads will also slow traffic down. Even though it seems to be the easiest solution to manage traffic. But then again, if the buses are stuck in traffic as well, it's not really a good alternative. And it requires a change in mindset as well.

More commercial opportunities in residential reduce commute time. This opens up the opportunity for alternative transport, like walking or bicycling. Buses, trams, and trains are great for longer distances. But such infrastructure must be supported first, then used by the general public because they are faster, and as a result car traffic will slow down, and the car will be a viable alternative for when there is no other option. But it's going to be difficult to convince people that think their car means freedom. Being stuck in traffic with no option isn't freedom however.

By the way, if you can see the supermarket, how far away is it really? Is going by foot or bike an option? Though I guess you'd spend the same amount of time waiting at the traffic lights, so it's probably not really an option.

@Octane Yeah, they make "new urbanism" claims about more pedestiran friendly, bycicles etc. But the problem is, when they build that what they do is build new construction enclaves, targeted very specifically at the 6-figure earners. It's always luxury apartment blocks on top of the restaurant and shopping hub/nightlife, and access to airports for the frequent jet setters, etc. Then they actually make things worse and MORE distant/difficult for everyone who isn't the 6-figure earners, because now the places you go or go through have been densified with high concentrations of wealthy population in this "urban luxury terrarium" - so the more they do that, and make it a sign of exclusivity, the worse things get for most people. Generally everything gets continuously worse at all times, except for this new wave jet setter, no-roots, urbanist cult. They can bike and walk to Whole Foods and get their Organic food, and experience the finest in dining all within biking distance. And everyone else gets to wait an EXTRA 15 minutes to go get their microwave at Walmart because of it. As always "better" always means "for someone else, at your expense."

Agreed with all the paradox theories. They keep making the old 2 lane roads into REALLY REALLY NARRROW 3-5 lane roads. And it just bottlenecks more and gets even more miserable. The other problem is alternate transport is generally associated with poverty-level population....and who wants to ride every day with the dregs of society when you could get in your climate controlled SUV by yourself, pre-heated to the right temperature right at your door, to your destination. Convincing anyone that can afford that to give it up isn't going to happen, and anyone that can't afford it doesn't really get a say - they're not the economy. But the fact that the average bus will be filled with used diapers, trash, needles, bottles, and generally very "undesirable" people....its not going to convince a change.

Here we don't have a lot of problem with commercial opportunities in residential areas....it's not a regulatory problem but a practical one. Sure, there are some communities that ARE anti-business....I have a neighboring one. They allow nothing commercial at all beyond professional (medical offices etc.) But generally that's not the problem. The office land developers like concentrating land all in one giant campus for the region. The retail land developers (and chains) like concentrating land all in one giant campus for the region. It's cost effective for them. Real estate tends to be much cheaper as well...and far more square footage for the store and the parking lot is available.

There's the saga of Kmart versus Walmart. Kmart has been on the brink of failure for a decade and has closed most of their stores in the past few years. Walmart thrives. They were founded in the same YEAR in the 1960's (as was Target.)

One of Kmart's biggest liabilities (beyond bad management) was their footprint. They had MANY mid-sized stores in generally residential areas which meant expensive real estate and a spread footprint. Walmart had relatively few stores that are humongous, generally far from where anyone actually lives and people had to travel to them. Kmart ended up spreading inventory to many locations with high logistics costs, and paying high premium for real estate in populated areas. Walmart could concentrate their logistics to few warehouse-stores in big empty areas with cheap real estate on land they bought on the cheap when it was rural nowhere land.

Guess who became one of Earth's most profitable companies, and one is on the virge of collapse at any moment and has been for a decade?

Who would open a mid size store at premium real estate and compete with Amazart with spread logistics? Nobody. You can't compete. So the land earmarked for commercial in residential areas sits abandoned for years and finally the land owners convince the government to rezone it to residential so they can build another 500 apartments on the empty land and make money. It gets approved. Now you have 500 MORE people with LESS local stores, and all of them have to head to the SAME shopping area, generally at the same peak times, feeding the problem more, permanently removing more of the limited commercial real estate, driving up the land values even more, and increasing the back and forth traffic even more.

Same with office parks. They build a big new office park where "too much retail was" - now the commuters come from the surroudning areas every day and clog it more!

@Sunsy Oh that's good. There's a nice feature in Mario Party 4 that lets you make a custom list of what minigames will appear while you're playing in the boards. So if there's any minigames that you don't like, you can just not add them. Kinda surprised that feature didn't come back in the later games - I don't particularly enjoy minigames where all you do is rapidly tap A. MP4 has some really good minigames, by the way! Booksquirm and Toad's Quick Draw are just a few of my favorites.

I have Sonic Generations on PC as well, that's definitely the best version of the game. I originally played it on PS3. I used to have an Xbox 360, but it got the dreaded red ring of death and there weren't that much games I was really into. A lot of well-known 360 games were shooters, I did play a few but I never got into them. Always liked Nintendo's games the best.

@NEStalgia Expecting people to read all that is pretty cray-cray 😜

@NEStalgia I think I agree, but I also think you're not looking at the root of the problem. Expensive real estate for commercial buildings in residential areas is a problem the local and/or national government should be looking at. This point to a structural problem. But it's not an unsolvable problem.

And yes, public transport like buses are indeed stigmatised when it's 1) not more efficient than a car, 2) generally looked down upon, because only poor people use it who don't have the means to drive, and 3) isn't properly maintained, on all levels. And you need to tackle all of those problems at once to change the situation. When I look at the buses over here, they are generally new buses that look good, and cleaned regularly (I don't really recall any littering). Everyone uses them, from all classes of society, so there's no stigma. And dedicated bus lanes and smart traffic lights, that prioritise buses, make it so that it's often faster than going by car (definitely in the city).

@NEStalgia Another thing that lead to Kmart's troubles was that they were to interested in buying other business up rather then updating their own stores. Places like Sports Authority, Venture and Borders Books. Alot of their stores it was stepping into a time machine from the 80s to mid 90s cause they were so out of date. I kid you not there registers were PCs from the 80s and we're that mucky green screen and their receipt printers still used dot matrix. Alot of people said that Kmart employees are registers were slow compared to Walmart and Target and really that was no fault of there own it was their equipment.

@Octane Oh and as to the previous question, the walking/biking time to the store, unfortunately means having to wind through the same roads (which would be much slower than car by the residential roads, but that part is doable and I have done it over the years) - but there used to be a shortcut (which honestly shouldn't have been there, it amounted to pseudo tresspassing in someone's yard, but officially sanctioned, which was weird, but then the commercial property on the other side put up a fence....which probably isn't the wrong thing to have done, but it made the walking route about double the length because you have to walk all the way to the end of the residential area, to a different side street on the other side of a different intersection.)

But when you get out there, yeah, then you have to cross the convenience store/gas station traffic (which is ever flowing) through a big intersection that DOES have a pedestrian crossing, but it's actually worse, because to cross the bigger road you have to wait for one light to use the crossing across the first road (to the wrong side of it!), Then wait another 3 traffic lights to cross the bigger road. Then wait another several lights to cross the smaller road again back to the side you started on. (Not that it's much better in the cars, because whenever a pedestrian crosses and activates the crossing you have to wait for a whole other cycle of lights because then the bigger road gets priority again from the beginning.....you can wait for 12 minutes at the intersection if you get 2 lights AND a pedestrian is crossing. If you're a pedestrian you have to wait probably 12 minutes standing there between crossing all 3 sides (or more.)

So the more practical solution is to jaywalk across the busy road on which everyone speeds like a maniac and run like h--l across the 4.5 lanes. Doesn't work well with groceries though. And it's one of those heart pounding moments you try not to relive TOO often. You can go the back route and cross on the less busy street too, it's safer (not safe, but safer, and less illegal since there's no real crossing there), bu then you pop up in the back of the parking lot and you have another 5 minute walk (and 5 back) just through the parkinglot and shopping center alone. So by car it's going to be 45 min round trip, by walking probably 60 minutes round trip with a mix of standing and waiting for crossings, and going in the wrong direction because of the particular layout of the streets (that can't be fixed without tearing thorugh people's homes, which is also wrong, and when those homes were there, we didn't have all this congestion, it ws everything built AFTER that that created the problem, and solving the problems caused by people that have been there 20 years shouldn't come at the expense of "fixing" it by harming people that have been there 50 years because they're now a minority in comparison.

There's no good fix without thoroughly screwing people - and usually the screwing means me. They'll never screw the people that arrived in recent times and caused the problem because that's the wealthier set they courted to begin with.

And , yeah, expensive real estate for commercial is absolutely a problem. Commercial real estate is a bubble that makes the 2008 crisis look like a slump. Real estate in general is once again a giant bubble. The cost of rent/real estate is absurd. It's also the reason the malls are pretty much all closing. They leveraged them out in the 90's at "how's high is high" economy prices. They can't drop rent. The land owners leveraged out on the potential value of the properties. If they lower rent that means they reduce the potential value on paper, which means the banks will come collecting on debts they can't repay.

But it's 2-fold. If we're talking "commercial building" keep in mind that invariably becomes just medical, office, restaurant/entertainment, gyms, industrial/warehousing etc. Talking retail is silly. Retail is dead. No small retailer exists and can compete with the giants, and no giant retailer is going to build small stores in prime real estate, not just due to the real estate cost, but the lack of large space to build large stores, to streamline their logistics fully. Local shopping is expensive and has to be priced expensive...which just raises the cost of living further.

But even that is the old problem. The new problem is as a result of 20 years of that, all land located near the residential areas has been built up with non-retail. Every square inch was bulldozed to build endless housing complexes and office parks. What was once shopping centers then were gutted by the 2008 crisis and then online shopping, sat empty (at high rents) for years, and then they tear them down and repurpose them as mixed use new urbanist complexes (luxury apartments, dining/entertainment, office space, and some shopping which almost always means cell phone stores, premium hair salons, and some restaurants - all in a walkable complex. If you can afford a luxury apartment - where the advertising clearly states in so many words its geared toward "high earning millennials.") - And they call that "affordable housing" compared to the quarter million dollar tiny homes that used to cost about what a car costs now....

Ultimately once they built endless office and residential where commercial retail used to be or could have gone, it can't ever be anything but that ever again. And retail is focused on only the largest, most centralized stores. They focused on "regional shopping" rather than local shopping....because it's much more efficient. Unfortunately where I am, I'm smack dab between 3 of those "regional" shopping areas. It's equidistant to all of them, at least by time vs distance. So to me, Amazon is basically the only store other than grocery.

That said, over here despite the "densification" that makes life miserable, it's never (ever) going to be profitable to run public transportation in a way that actually reaches everyone. Everything is too far apart. And any attempt to "densify" it generally also means an attempt to "gentrify" it, which pushes the regular people ever farther out, which leads to developing the rural areas ever more rapidly, which means they have even longer commutes on longer treks on longer highways just to function in work and live in an affordable place........and the Walmart with grocery is always 15 miles away.....

I'm thinking the only really practical solution is fast tracking automated cars (and associated automated roads) and creating a large uber-like rental system with a centrally guided "railroad of cars." Normal public transit can't work with the layout here. "Fixing" the layout generally requires what amounts to forced relocation, either by pricing people out and gentrifying areas, or at the barrel of a gun....I don't doubt they'd try that at all, but it's not an ethical solution in any way. The only way to "fix" it without screwing over anyone not rich enough to be the gentry is to bandaid around it....and the only way I see that is a hybrid car-public transportation that amounts to automated, renta-rides. The problem with THAT, is the freedom-loving mask-hating public wouldn't go for it even if it was a bargain. Maybe include a Switch in the seat to occupy them. Everyone loves ACNH, right?

@Tasuki Oh yeah, there's an entire case study to be had with Kmart. It was a lot of problems and a lot of management problems. Keep in mind into the 90's they were Walmart. They were king. And their management was so overconfident in their near monopoly they invested in all of those other stores instead of their own, absolutely. They missed Walmart sneaking up and considered that a "rural" store. Which it was...at first.

They also had a legacy distribution system of merchandise distributors fulfilling stores, while Walmart focused primarily as a logistics company instead of a retailer. (Amazon before Amazon.)

Plus while Walmart was buying cheap land in the boonies, Kmart was renting at premium neighborhood prices.

All that being said, they really failed, what, 15+ years ago. When they went bankrupt under the Enron-type embezzling scandal under the prior CEO (who is the same guy who put CVS on every single street corner in the country.....), Eddie Lampert bought the whole thing basically for peanuts. The "real" Kmart was gone by that point. Eddie's just been floating it along for whatever real estate games he's playing, leveraged what funds Kmart had out to buy Sears - which had no reason to do so, except it fit into his real estate hedge scheme. And then idiotically sunk all the money into keeping a dead Sears floating instead of funneling it into Kmart, at a time when Kmart could have really rebounded into one of the big stores. And Sears, that was Amazon 100 years before Bezos was born somehow never brought their catalog online until far too late. Everyone credits Amazon with the everything-by delivery system. Everyone seems to miss that Sears was already doing what Amazon does back during the Red Dead Redemption era.....

Shame, it's still a brand that could and should be properly saved. But it's too late for the real estate. Most of it is residential, offices, or various professional services now. Nobody will be shopping that close to home ever again.

But that real estate problem and the cost was a serious problem. They'd have to charge 10% more in general just to offset their real estate difference with stores like Walmart, both due to real estate cost and due to and their spread logistics with more small stores than few big stores. And in the Amazon era, whoever charges 10% more can't compete.

@NEStalgia I appreciate reading it. I guess I'm a bit more optimistic than you are. I think it's possible, it's just going to take a long time. But none of this sounds efficient at all. And I've seen images of the American suburbs, long winding roads with housing as far as the eye can see. You don't get those kinds of neighbourhoods over here. The whole neighbourhood is always within walking distance (<5 minutes). And there's always at least one bus stop, but there's usually a bus stop within walking distance. In rural areas it can be worse, but that's expected I guess.

But yeah, it all comes to urban planning. Our houses aren't that big. We can't, there isn't even enough space. Most people have a front and back yard, but are usually terraced houses, or semi-detached houses. And multiple floors as well, because you don't want to waste that precious land area. City centres are mostly apartments, except for the small and older rural towns, most still have the old houses that date back to the Middle Ages. But generally people have to be a lot more efficient with space, which makes transport also relatively easy. According to Wikipedia the population density is almost twenty times higher than in the US.