This is not a seismic shift in the grocery game, but it is fairly significant change to our neighborhood.  The quick walk to get a gallon of milk or the one final ingredient to a family meal, will now be met with car keys and not walking shoes.

While it’s easy to look at and criticize the coop for their move to a bigger space which will have “a really big meat and cheese section,” according to one employee, the move creates a void in the village commerce.

In the book Home from Nowhere, J.H. Kunstler cites reputable research studies that point to a correlation between commute length and heart disease. There are many contributing factors, but our dependence on autos, strip malls, stoplights and sprawl do indeed take us out of a more active lifestyle.  Will my expanded cheese and meat section expand my waistline?

One of my major satisfiers with our neighborhood is the walkability of it all.  I may need to drive for work, but once home the need to drive diminishes.  On most nights, we cram our three children into a double stroller and cruise to the coop or another community point.  You can find entertainment, food and other non-essentials without the use of your car.  A pretty nice way to live.

If it isn’t obvious, I am merely trying to distract myself on this subject.  Citing heart disease and commute correlations and other medical research, is a way to advance my argument.  An argument, incidentally, that I cannot win.  All thriving communities go through some form of change and it took some excellent leadership to navigate this Market move.  Perhaps the coop move won’t be a significant change to the neighborhood, maybe we can plan a little more and eliminate the gallon of milk stroll, but here’s one coop member that is mourning the move and not excited about having his cheese moved.

The book Home From Nowhere by J.H. Kunstler addresses some of the shortcomings that sprawl have yielded in our communities. In addition to an increase in heart disease and obesity as a result of longer commutes, we have lost the identity of place. Colleges and Universities have long understood the individual need to ‘organize’ through clubs and fraternities, but some municipalities have missed the impact of creating identity in smaller groups.

Starting in a one-bedroom apartment, buying a 500 square foot condo then a 900 sq foot condo and finally the single family residence we call home, I have for the past fifteen years called Linden Hills home. While some see the name and have a picture in their mind of either boulevard trees, rolling hills, shops and lakes, others see a pretentiously Liberal neighborhood with over-educated soy latte drinking inhabitants. Whatever your take, the neighborhood has done many things incredibly well and has developed a sense of place that is immersed not just in the charming small town village, but in many other indicators. Great school, great walkability and active residents are three that seem particularly noteworthy. Some of this can be attributed to having a neighborhood name and unique landmarks that surround us.

This past weekend we attended the winter festival held at our neighborhood park. Without spending a dollar, we were able to do some snowshoeing, sledding and take a horse-drawn carriage ride around the park. Regardless of the picture or stereotype that emerges for a City or a Neighborhood, at an experiential level, the impact is that living in Linden Hills makes me want to be a better neighbor.