Weird take.

No, you don’t have to stack people at all. A small store with 2-3 employees servicing a neighbourhood would very easily be profitable and convenient. You’d need to walk 10 minutes instead of 30 seconds if people were more spread out, but much better than the US big box store surrounded by the parking moat.

Assuming you’re talking about US suburbs, the only change would be some franchise buying a single house in a neighbourhood, bulldozing that and building a small store. That is, if it wasn’t illegal to do that due to zoning laws.

I live in a neighbourhood with a mixture of apartment blocks, parks and stores. When I step outside my apartment block, I can either walk 30 seconds to the store, the park, the vet, etc. People who live down the road from me might need 5 minutes to get to those places as they’re a bit farther away from our local store hub.

Of course big stores with much more variety and less commonly bought things exist, for that you do need some form of transport, even here. It’s just not necessary to go there to buy pasta and sauce to cook for dinner, for example.