Grocery Stores

[plam]

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.

There are at least two factors here: (a) where you are coming from; (b) where you are going. If a place fails on (b) then it's just not walkable. That plaza does not fail (b). Getting there can fail, depending on where you are coming from. Sure, ideally, it would not be next to two highways. But that doesn't mean that it's not walkable for some number of people, even if small. I would say that a place doesn't have to be walkable to from everywhere to be walkable.

(Belmont Village did used to have the Vincenzo's, but it was pretty cramped).