In a small neighborhood, that would shatter the illusion that you never need to leave, at which point the distant walk to your car for actual shopping becomes a problem. (Or, alternatively, the lack of delivery services because they can't actually reach both your home and the place they shopped using the same mode of transportation.)
You have a bus stop with buses getting to city center every 3-5 min, and the supermarket store around a corner has literally all grocery things I needed when I lived around (it’s the size of 3-4 medium Wallgreenses)
The post I was responding to suggested that it wasn't necessary to arrange for at least one grocery store in the walkable neighborhood, and that leasing to retail establishments could be entirely up to the building owners. I was observing that if that results in no grocery stores located in the neighborhood, that would make the neighborhood much less walkable.
(Even if there's one in walking distance, hopefully it has an excess of carts and doesn't mind them going home with people...)
And unless you want to go out for groceries far too often, you're going to end up with a quantity of groceries that's incompatible with taking a bus. You'd need a car, or a bike trailer for a very dedicated cyclist, or a delivery service and the ability for them to deliver.
I live in a London suburb. I don't have a car, or even have a drivers license because I've always lived places where having a car isn't important enough to weigh up the cost and nuisance (to me).
Before delivery services, I'd walk to the grocery store every few days. It was perfectly fine. When I commuted I'd just pop by on the way home from work. There are at least 4 small-ish shops within 10 minutes walk, and half a dozen bigger ones within 20 minutes walk or a short bus ride (that would also coincide with the commute for a large portion of the people living around me).
And I live in perhaps the worst location locally in this respect - I'm pretty much equidistant from three 3-4 different shopping areas, dead centre of a very low density residential area with few shops.
Overall, the key thing to maintain a walkable neighbourhood is simply that enough people who live there actually want to walk. In that case there will be enough shops nearby. The problem occurs when too many of the people in these neighbourhoods like to live in an area that is walkable, but still prefer to use the care.
I think the key to make such neighbourhoods work is fewer parking spaces to explicitly ensure a sufficient portion of the people living in them actually bring foot traffic to the nearby retail spaces. Do that and you get grocery stores without any need for detail regulation.
Where I live the council won't approve planning applications with more than 1.5 parking spaces per living unit on average. It could probably be significantly lower.
Zoom Google Maps into almost any town in continental Europe[0] and search for "grocery store" or "supermarket". [1]
Or look at one supermarket and see how many shops they have [2].
Depending on the size of the household and personal preference, people might use these shops every 2-4 days, perhaps using a bicycle or trolley to take things home.
[0] I'm sure there are exceptions, like Arctic areas, mountains, tourist towns, etc.
> And unless you want to go out for groceries far too often
I know carless Londoners whose commute takes them past a grocery store on foot every day. So they will literally go into the store for a single item.
However, you're right that this isn't a good solution for everyone - for example, people who are starting a family. Even if you can fit a week's groceries for one person into a backpack, that's no help for four-person households. Grocery delivery services are widely used in London for this reason. As is moving out of the city in order to start a family.
For a grocery store, it's location location location. A grocery store is going to want to be located there. It'll happen organically. I've lived in Europe, there always seems to be a grocery store of some sort nearby. Nobody centrally planned it.
For much the same reason I don't want an hour-long commute: I don't want to waste the time. I enjoy taking a pleasant 5-minute (or 20-minute) walk regularly, but I'd much rather spend 90 minutes grocery shopping a month rather than 10-20 minutes every day or every few days.
