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by spijdar 220 days ago
I don’t think it’s about being “places of financial transactions” so much as it’s about places of shared necessity. Everyone has to eat, so everyone goes to the grocery store.

Community centers are great and I’m not going to argue against having “non-commercial recreation”, but the thing about having local stores as social hubs is they might be the only universally shared place of a community. Not everyone is going to want (or be able!) to visit a library, but everyone does need food and other consumables/goods.
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bunderbunder 220 days ago
The "shared necessity" factor also means that you regularly meet acquaintances there by accident. It just doesn't happen at the Wal-Mart or Home-Depot 15 miles away anywhere near as often as it would happen at the town general store or the local main street shopping district. Possibly because nobody actually spends time at a big box store or strip mall; they're such deeply unpleasant spaces that you basically just do what absolutely must be done and get out. So now a little extra stroll around to window shop has been replaced by extra time in the car to drive 15 miles across town in the other direction to go to some other big box store.

It's not just a small towns thing, either. The main street shopping district I had in mind just now is in the middle of Chicago. And it doesn't happen so much there, either, anymore, in the post retail apocalypse era. Now it's all bars and restaurants so people go there for a very reduced range of reasons.

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localhost 220 days ago
I would say that "don't let perfect be the enemy of the good" here. Would universal be better? Sure. But what I saw is so much better than what we currently have here in the US.

The point is that OPEN (the name of the Delft library) is really a community center and not a library. Yes, it happens to have books. But it also has a stage for musical performances, art rooms, tables, wifi, washrooms, coffee. I would say that the only thing that is missing is a gym; there are small dance rooms in there but that's not quite the same.

But the essence here is walkable communities. Suburbs and exurbs are hostile to even small local stores because you have to drive everywhere to do anything. There is no community in visiting my Costco or even my QFC.

Take a look for yourself: https://www.opendelft.info

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hollerith 220 days ago
Quality Food Centers, Inc., better known as QFC, has 59 stores in western Washington and northwestern Oregon.
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