Don't forget to include a modernized delivery system.
It's kind of stupid to have our goods delivered to a store where we then have to travel to in order to get the goods the last mile. Stores, no matter how big, need to go by the wayside like the small shops for milk, bread meat etc. did when the supermarket Walmart concept caught on.
Having local stores makes perfect sense when you don't have to drive to get to one. I recently returned from a three week tour with my band across France. We played in six cities from tiny to gigantic, but at no point was I farther than a convenient walk from groceries and any number of other everyday businesses. Now, these businesses don't have to be resupplied by smog-spewing, overpowered, highway capable trucks. Electric cargo LSVs would beer more than adequate for that job. But tolerating a few loud stinky nauseating trucks per day would be easier than coping with a constant barrage of lethal motor traffic throughout daylight hours and into the night.
The problem with cars isn't limited to their horrible direct effects on our lives (whether we choose to use them or not). Car-centric planning has deranged our land use and made every element of life worse than necessary. In France, even the tiniest village has its houses packed close together, along with whatever retail and service businesses exist there. If you're not leaving town, there's scarcely any reason to start up an engine. Farm fields come right up to the back yards, pretty much everywhere. With that kind of development pattern, it's not a coincidence that their food is so much better then Americans'. Growing it hasn't been offshored, or delegated to deep flyover country, with perverse incentives regarding shipping qualities versus eating qualities. And they haven't buried their best farmland under half acre lots, big box stores, sprawling highwayside businesses, and most of all parking.
Sidewalk cafes, restaurants, bars are everywhere in French cities. But stand next to any commercial street in the USA and it's easy to figure out why they're far less common here. It's because car traffic has ruined the experience of simply being present outside a building in a city.
Don't get me wrong-- French traffic customs still bend over backwards to accommodate car drivers at everyone else's expense. But car manufacturers and car drivers didn't despoil (as much) the physical layout of their cities. The French didn't obviously bulldoze their city cores for freeways and parking lots like USA did.
Cars have uncivilized us more than they've civilized us, by far. They've conditioned their drivers with contempt for the commons and contempt for their fellow citizens. Car-dependent urban design has exaggerated institutional racism, class stratification, and de facto segregation. And cars have turned city streets from the best places to be, into places few people want to spend their time in.
