They have over 3,400 stores at ~180,000sqft. There are three within a short drive from my home. They have ~190 around 40,000sqft. The ~800 mid-sized "discount" stores are mostly closing and don't have groceries, they're ~100,000sqft.
Big American stores are absolutely massive, and they're all over the place.
You mentioned you had like one of these massive stores at the edge of your town, and it was still only half as big. I've got several of these monsters within 8mi of my home.
I'll update the size of American supermarkets in my mind by 100% : )
There are broadly 5 big shops within comfortable distance of me - one of them is between 150-200,000 sqft [1], so I guess a mid-sized American store. But I've only been to one of them, when I needed some electronics, because I don't see the point otherwise. Presumably other people do or the shops wouldn't exist...
Unrelated - does "town" mean something different in American English? To me it means a place bigger than a village but smaller than a city. The city I'm in has 300k - 1m people in it, depending on how you draw the boundaries.
[1]: its car park extends onto its roof which I guess might be amusing to an American. Land is expensive here.
I said "town" due to the geographic size of ~3km^2. My "town", really a small city, is ~70km^2 and a population of ~100k. It is surrounded by other towns/cities forming the Dallas/Ft Worth Metroplex, which metro area is 24,000km^2 with ~6 million people in that space.
I just checked Google Maps, there are almost a dozen of these 180,000sqft Walmarts within a 10min drive (a "comfortable distance" here) from my home. And that's just Walmart, there's also probably another six or so Target locations of similar size. I do agree this is absolutely excessive and insane though, there's such a massive amount of real estate of just big box retail.
The reason why these stores are seemingly dominating local retail is the same reason why cars are dominating travel in the US or why Amazon seems to be dominating internet retail. Apparent convenience. Why bother going to a clothier, then go to a cobbler, then go to the electronics store, then go to a video store, then go to the furniture store, then go to the auto parts store, then go to the butcher, then go to the baker, then go to the grocer. Instead, you can do practically every bit of your shopping in a single store, all at once. Find some new linens for your bed, then go grab a new pair of shoes, better stock up on some fresh underwear, maybe that 40" TV we got a few years ago isn't cutting it get a bigger one, then grab some milk and eggs and we'll check out in the Auto department to pick up the car after the oil change.
Hah, I've actually looked at Dallas-Fort Worth before and been horrified at how so much of its residential green space is golf courses. Is most of the conurbation as well served by non-car transport or is your area a special case? It looks so low density that it's hard to imagine anything being economically viable. Then again, bike lanes and bike racks are so cheap that they're pretty much free.
I do understand consolidating regular purchases into one trip - I just go to the supermarket for food (and occasionally Asian supermarkets for non-perishables that French supermarkets don't sell). I don't see the added convenience in doing the same with once-in-5-year purchases. If anything I'd probably get fed up with walking past loads of things I wasn't remotely interested in buying. Maybe there's some spontaneity to buying stuff that I just don't have.
> Is most of the conurbation as well served by non-car transport or is your area a special case?
I'm definitely in the more special case kind of area, by choice. There were many reasons why I picked the place where I live, and transit options were one of the key ones.
> Maybe there's some spontaneity to buying stuff that I just don't have.
I feel you on this idea. I'm not really a huge fan of these ridiculously giant stores with absolutely massive parking lots, I'd like for smaller grocers to be more popular. In the US at least, smaller grocers are dying, and grocers surviving are building bigger stores to try and compete more on the level of those 180,000sqft behemoths. The death of the smaller grocers leave behind 15-20,0000sqft largely empty retail storefronts around, at least in the big cities.
> horrified at how so much of its residential green space is golf courses.
There's a municipal golf course real close to my house, at the edge of my neighborhood. What is so horrifying about it? This land was prairie land, so its not like we're greenifying the desert or something like that. It would have been a bunch of small rolling hills, creeks, small ponds, and grasses before it was a golf course. The people in the area like to golf, why is it any worse than it just being a more generic park? Would you have also expressed such horror if it was filled with frisbee golf courses, or soccer fields?
That said, within my neighborhood there's a several acre park that is a bit more of generic greenspace. It has playgrounds for kids, a fishing pond, a soccer field, a baseball field, a softball field, etc. It also has a bunch of picnic tables and grills scattered at the tree lines. These kinds of parks are pretty common around where I live as well. It is not like all parks are golf courses. Certainly more than what you'd see in France, but golf is also significantly more popular here than in urban areas of France I'd imagine. If nobody was using them I'd get the point of them being horrified at the waste, but for many of the golf courses you need to book your tee time days in advance.
I don't have anything against golf as such, it's more that from a distance they looked like really nice little parks that people could use to walk between neighbourhoods, socialise, walk dogs, picnic in etc. Then I zoomed in and realised it was probably only for people playing golf. Football pitches are less well camouflaged from satellite pictures, so they wouldn't be as disappointing. Golf courses are kind of inherently low density too - you can't really cram many more than five people onto each hole at once.
FWIW we do have golf clubs here - Cannes / Antibes in particular has loads - but that's unrepresentative of France as a whole.
Your park does sound nice. I'd heard stories of Americans in suburbs having to drive their dogs to places where they could be walked - maybe it was an exaggeration.
Big American stores are absolutely massive, and they're all over the place.
https://247wallst.com/retail/2014/03/22/walmart-now-has-six-...
You mentioned you had like one of these massive stores at the edge of your town, and it was still only half as big. I've got several of these monsters within 8mi of my home.