Mixed use zoning is just about the best case situation for everyone.
- Less reliance on cars, which results in less parking, which results in less traffic... it becomes self-perpetuating.
- Better walkability
- Knowing your corner store clerk or at least having a rapport with them
- Healthier citizens, due to them walking everywhere (Go to NYC and see how few overweight people you see... not many unless they're tourists. I gained like 10lbs after I moved out of NYC, you get exercise constantly in that city)
- Happier citizens, due to them walking everywhere, things are nearby, their life is more integrated...
etc etc.
I think basically all spaces should be residential / light business mixed. This idea of sprawling suburbs with light business being 10 - 30 minutes away is horrifying and bad for everyone health-wise, time-wise and economically.
---
Where I live, the city doesn't really hesitate to shut down sections of roads for festivals, farmer's markets, whatever.
Currently we have a bunch of one ways because all of the restaurants took over half the road for outdoor dining... and honestly, it's pretty nice. The traffic is slightly more congested, but meh... don't drive through the center of the city as a transit option, go around.
As far as I can tell, "zoning" is just a bad idea. There's no such thing in the UK [1] and it still surprises me that it's quite a common approach. (As a kid I thought it was a game device employed to make urban planning in Sim City manageable. I still wonder if that series of games hasn't increased its prevalence.)
Instead, in the UK you require 'planning permission' to change the land use of any building. This is discretionary and may refer to some overall plan realting to the feel, density, etc. of an area but is not prescriptive over specific types.
As a result I don't know anyone in this country, urban or rural dwelling, who can't walk to a shop or a pub, though I'm sure some such unlucky places exist.
In reality, the financial system is oriented towards big capital. My aunt ran a coffee shop that was established by grandparents in 1939. It was in the lobby of a office building in he central business district of our little city. The building was bought by a Chinese investor. Like other similar stores, her rent went up 5x and she shuttered.
I live in a mixed use urban neighborhood. 50% of he storefronts are vacant or populated by death businesses like karate dojo’s.
Generally, I like this a lot. The key is that for it to work, you must build taller, but it doesn't have to be all that tall. I've lived in several places that had great walkability, and they all had one thing in common: They were built before the invention of the automobile.
The best for walkability was Berlin, which, in the inner part, is mostly 5-6 story buildings. Within two blocks there were numerous stores and about 8 restaurants and a few bars. I also lived in an older suburb of mostly single family houses, but the lots weren't that big, and every house was two stories.
The key to walkability is that you need density. For a business to get much foot traffic, you need a good population in the walkable catchment area, and for that you need density. To get density, you need to build up. Unfortunately, building up is more expensive. Another thing that's helpful is alleys. If you put the garage behind the house, you don't need as much frontage width for driveways and garage doors.
Heck yeah, there used to be an amazing sandwich shop just up the street from me. Was super nice being able to walk half a block to pick up something from them. Unfortunately they relocated to a more densely-populated area, but it was good while it lasted. There are other food shops nearby though! Very cool having this :)
The idea of separating business and living into distant zones and forbidding trading within residential areas has always infuriated me with its absurdity. Who could possibly come up with it? It only makes sense when it's about noisy and air-polluting businesses, grocery/whatever stores and offices are absolutely great to be dispersed within residential areas!
Some people actually like cars/driving, some people dont want random people walking in front of their house, and not everyone wants their city to turn into NYC
Sometimes it feels like the people on this site have only lived in SFBA/LA/NYC and nowhere else in the United States. Cars/suburbia work pretty well in most places
Just had this conversation with an architect friend who lives in Palo Alto. The whole idea that there is a "residential zone", "commercial zone" etc needs to go away. Now with people leaving cities in droves there is an amazing opportunity to introduce mixed zoning into office areas by converting many of the empty offices into lofts. This will solve our urban housing problem. Despite what people are saying now about remote work I don't think the majority of people will leave cities long term. Cities offer facilities, infra, amenities, network and culture. We need to make cities livable and walkable.
When I visited Japan, I went to an izakaya with room for maybe 9 people in it, it was smaller than my living room at home. I was hungry and I saw the sign lighting the alley about 40 yards off the main road. I was thinking at the time, if I lived in that area, you bet I'd be there a couple times a week to talk to my neighbors. I wanted to ask those inside if they were all neighbors, because they seemed to know each other and the barman well. It felt almost intimidating, since I don't know any Japanese, but of course Japanese hospitality is top-notch.
I had the exact same thoughts upon reading this article, having spent quite a bit of time in Japan. Businesses are liberally sprinkled all over residential neighborhoods, from bars, cafes and grocers to home electronics and repair shops. The density (and corresponding walkability) of Japanese cities is a big factor that supports this kind of development. The armchair economist in me wants to theorize that this might be a contributing factor in Japan’s exceptionally low unemployment rate: the ease of starting a micro business from your doorstep.
The cities in Japan are, of course, walkable in the extreme, but what really impressed me there was the suburbs and rural villages. Even deep in the countryside many people still can visit local businesses without a car. I think it is not a coincidence that it is so common there to see children walking or biking on their own to school.
There was a stone carver, two tofu makers, a convenience store or two, a bath house with a tiny laundromat on the side (with HE units 20 years before we got them in the States), a pachinko parlor, and who knows how many other businesses my illiterate ass couldn't identify on, or just off, the route from the suburban Tokyo apartment I was a guest in and the train station.
If I got up at a decent hour, I would hear the plink plink of chisel on stone, and then the sound of the propane torch browning the tofu as I walked by.
> since I don't know any Japanese, but of course Japanese hospitality is top-notch
I'm actually really surprised you're saying this. Maybe your Asian? There were a few izakaya I wandered into and got welcomed with a harsh no gaijin. I loved most of my trip to Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka) but that was jarring and off putting.
Japan uses inclusive zoning, and most urban areas are zoned for high density residential/commercial. The only zoning that is truly exclusive is industrial
Some that size in japan have earned 3 Michelin stars, as jiro dreams of sushi famously did, before the stars were withdrawn due to lack of public access.
That happened to me in golden dai, I went on a rainy sad and sketchy night, and the people in the tiny restuarant were just the happiest and curious, they could have been tourists from another part of Japan though, who knows
I mean Japanese can keep to themselves too
But the point is that the intimidate, accessible nature has other redeeming qualities
This ends up being one of the biggest reasons I enjoy living in Thailand. The unplanned layouts of cities makes for a colorful and convenient experience everywhere you go. Most every building in towns is at least two stories with shops under the tenant's quarters. You also can't forget about the prevalence of street carts for food and other small things. It's usually worth exploring alleys as there will be some curious little shop or restaurant. It doesn't match my you-must-have-a-car, strip-mall experience in the US.
You can contrast this to Laos where the LPDR has focused on zoning on new development. One example was ປາກເຊ, Pakse, where multilane roads were built whigh probably not be fully utilized for another 50 years. When you go to a residential area, there's much less businesses. From what I gathered, the government there was looking across the Mekong at it's developing sister country and is trying to 'correct' her mistakes when trying to emulate growth. However, there's much more beauty in allowing the natural chaos.
How did we slip away so far from this being fairly obvious? Cities have worked well this way for hundreds of years.
Maybe the industrial revolution made cities too unpleasant? Were we too spoiled by the automobile industry and government roads? White flight from cities into the suburbs?
I've found that it is typical for people who run these small types of businesses also live in the neighborhood, or close by.
Another improvement is that people who both live and work in the community have time for more community engagement, but it their children's schools, local government, or local volunteer efforts.
The first chapter of The Death and Life of Great American Cities touches on this topic a lot. Community safety is enhanced by mixed use, because there are reasons for people to naturally be there at all hours of the day/night. This contrasts with single use areas, which are essentially ghost towns in their off-hours.
When people spend money at a locally-owned business, that money at least has a chance of staying in the community. When people spend money at a big national or multi-national chain store, a lot of that money is leaving the community, and never returns.
The more people within "walking distance" the less need for a parking lot. There are a number of successful businesses in my neighbourhood with zero parking or minimal parking. Many customers can arrive by foot (or bike or bus). Even a small scrap of land can be a prime location.
If you visit the outskirts of the city, there is a large difference. The parking lot is like an ocean. After all, every customer must arrive by car. You need a massive tract of land to have a successful business in such an environment.
Next time you visit a business, pop open your maps app on your phone and look at the satellite view. Note the size of the building in relation to its parking lot. It is not unusual for the parking lot to occupy more land than the actual store, even in urban areas.
I currently live in New Orleans, which is very mixed-use if you're in the city proper. It's really, really nice. I bike everywhere. Groceries, bookstores, head shops, cafes, bars, hardware store (with a super nice housewares department on the second floor), plumbers, auto shops, restaurants, snoball stands, parks, schools[1], dentists, optometrists, lawyers, there's pretty much everything I need in a 20min cycling radius. A lot of these businesses are in buildings that are pretty much indistinguishable from the houses next to them; there's signs and various adaptations for whatever they're selling but so many of them started out as a house rather than something built from the ground up to be A Store.
Leave the actual city and it starts turning into suburbs, where every distance is designed for a car and all business is concentrated on one big road that's got giant parking lots and big boxy buildings all along it. I go out there when I absolutely must. There really aren't many reasons to do that.
1: sadly the city's schools have gone to hell in many ways since I was a kid, but hey, I ain't got kids so I only get to worry about that in the abstract...
I have liquer store under my windows, it is open 24 hours and has outside benches. Basically loud nonstop pub with many junkies. I am going to move soon to get better sleep
Imagine how much better your life would be if one house on your suburban cul-de-sac was a sleepy pub.
I can't tell you any of my neighbor's names. I've been here ten years.
But if I could walk for 6 minutes and get a beer, we'd all know each other's names. We'd all have babysitter coverage, neighborhood watch, a reason to keep the car in the garage, and slightly bigger bellies, overnight.
This was once common in the inner ring suburbs of Chicago. There used to be a small grocery store in the middle of a residential block near where I lived and a bar in the middle of another residential block close to my elementary school. There are houses whose former mixed use (shop in the front, house in the back) are still obvious.
Here's one surviving neighborhood grocery in Berwyn, IL:
Unfortunately, I'm drawing a blank on the locations of some of the surviving retail-to-residential conversions that I've spotted.
These are all largely a relic of an era in which housewives often didn't drive, or if they did, didn't have access to a car while their husband was at work so grocery shopping needed to be within easy walking distance of home. Many of the minor commercial streets in the inner ring suburbs have vanished as well, their customers having been consumed by larger supermarkets. It's somewhat miraculous, really, that there are still a handful of these neighborhood markets still in business.
When Americans talk about how great European cities are, they are often talking about exactly this. Mixed-use neighborhoods full of charming small businesses and dense housing within walking distance to daily needs.
So I've lived in a number of cities and seen many variations on this.
In Perth, Western Australia, there are pockets of this but the extraordinarily high cost of real estate (true across all of Australia since the early 2000s), which existing property owners are keen to protect, slowly kills local businesses. Particularly in popular cafe strips where all the businesses that made the area popular get priced out and commercial property owners would rather sit on empty property for years than notionally devalue that property by taking less rent.
Anecdotally I've heard all the WFH with Covid-19 has been a boon to local businesses.
London as a general rule was (it's been 10+ years since I've lived in London at this point) good for this. It never seemed like no matter where I was (within Zones 1-5 anyway), I was ever that far away from a Tesco and a high street.
NYC is of course excellent for this, at least the more central areas. The more outlying areas tend to resemble more typical Northeast suburbia with 2 car households and the like.
Northeast commuter towns tends to be good for this around the actual train stations although some stations weirdly have nothing around them at all (eg Manhasset).
Most US cities tend to be terrible for this to the point of not even having sidewalks and you might be 10 miles from the nearest shop, even in a large city (eg Las Vegas seems to be like this).
It does seem like public transportation really helps here because it seems like the northern suburbs of Dallas, for example (at least those on DART), have recognizable downtowns such that they more closely resemble tri-state commuter towns.
Large lots really seem to kill any of this. Like there are parts of the Greater Atlanta area where a "normal" lot is 1 or even 2 acres. This is an amount of space that is simply incomprehensible to any European. Even an Australian.
And of course the US has Walmart, which has been a pretty effective way of killing all the small businesses in local neighbourhoods.
In the Boston area many of the nearby towns are what I call "urban suburbs". Very family friendly, many single- or two-family homes, but also very walkable and many shops throughout the town. I'm talking about towns such as Brookline, Cambridge and Arlington. They are really nice towns to live in and in very high demand.
This kind of city planning design was popular in Sweden in the 1950/60s with close community mini centras torg, happy that its re surging. There would usually for example be a grocery store, a hair dresser and a flower shop, usually also a local restaurant.
With a good local community one does not need to use a car very often. There is also spontaneous social interactions with locals, this is something we do not get when buying online. We may also build repair centre for our things. This would be like a bike shop but for devices.
I liked whistler village when I visited. All the cars are parked on the outside. Inside there is only walking, restaurants and shopping. Creates a really nice atmosphere.
Outdoor malls seem to be the closet thing to that. And are pretty great spaces to be in. Maybe will be more prevalent because of covid now. But they even work in cold places, there is one in Michigan that I know off.
I used to live across from a 3 story apartment building, maybe 20 apartments. Pretty run down place, with drug dealers, and just low income people.
Then the apartment building owner decided to do some landscaping. Planted a few trees, and put out some adirondack chairs on the front lawn. Which attracted a guy wanting to play his guitar outside. Which then attracted an audience. Which then turned into a nightly gathering of people on the front lawn playing music from the apartment building.
People with drug and alcohol abuse problems still live in that building. But now that place has real sense of community. And actual happy moments are shared outside nightly. Where as before everyone would rush through the front door to their apartment, now they stop and say hi to each other.
Japan has "shopping arcades" which I really like. It is like a wide pedestrian-only alley with the retail density of a mall, but outdoors and the path is covered. Then side streets are local access only and often have small restaurants or izakayas
Of course the daunting obstacle is changing the mindset of suburban planners and nimbys. The zoning ordinances that have dominated planning in the USA since the 50's ban this in large swaths of America..
New Urbanism made progress creating denser planning in the last 30 years, but focused too much on high density mixed use. Adding small shops to residential streets is definitely the one area that they've really failed on in my opinion. It's the reason older towns and cities still trounce the 'burbs on walkability and will for a long time.
I live in Tokyo, and pretty much every neighborhood has some cafe/izakaya being run from the back of a home by a grandpa or grandma. Usually these places are extremely tiny and can seat max 4 people. I've seen some of them open all night. Not sure if they have to deal with some sort of licensing especially for liquor.
Vibrant downtowns of many American cities were built before the zoning laws. Their desirability is the most obvious proof that mixed zoning has benefits.
For a few years I’ve wondered how possible it would be for large neighborhood associations to own a neighborhood grocery store.
I haven’t bothered yet to run the numbers, but I would expect if the association was large enough it wouldn’t add much cost.
Residents could get a substantial discount while non-residents could pay normal prices. Residents could put in subscription style orders for things they would always regularly need. It would make it easier to order specialty things that normal groceries stores wouldn’t carry, etc...
The problem here is that eventually rent-seeking becomes appealing, someone realizes there's skim/margin/"arbitrage" to be made, and so the capitalism progresses.
[+] [-] madamelic|5 years ago|reply
- Less reliance on cars, which results in less parking, which results in less traffic... it becomes self-perpetuating.
- Better walkability
- Knowing your corner store clerk or at least having a rapport with them
- Healthier citizens, due to them walking everywhere (Go to NYC and see how few overweight people you see... not many unless they're tourists. I gained like 10lbs after I moved out of NYC, you get exercise constantly in that city)
- Happier citizens, due to them walking everywhere, things are nearby, their life is more integrated...
etc etc.
I think basically all spaces should be residential / light business mixed. This idea of sprawling suburbs with light business being 10 - 30 minutes away is horrifying and bad for everyone health-wise, time-wise and economically.
---
Where I live, the city doesn't really hesitate to shut down sections of roads for festivals, farmer's markets, whatever.
Currently we have a bunch of one ways because all of the restaurants took over half the road for outdoor dining... and honestly, it's pretty nice. The traffic is slightly more congested, but meh... don't drive through the center of the city as a transit option, go around.
[+] [-] barnabee|5 years ago|reply
Instead, in the UK you require 'planning permission' to change the land use of any building. This is discretionary and may refer to some overall plan realting to the feel, density, etc. of an area but is not prescriptive over specific types.
As a result I don't know anyone in this country, urban or rural dwelling, who can't walk to a shop or a pub, though I'm sure some such unlucky places exist.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning#United_Kingdom
[+] [-] Spooky23|5 years ago|reply
In reality, the financial system is oriented towards big capital. My aunt ran a coffee shop that was established by grandparents in 1939. It was in the lobby of a office building in he central business district of our little city. The building was bought by a Chinese investor. Like other similar stores, her rent went up 5x and she shuttered.
I live in a mixed use urban neighborhood. 50% of he storefronts are vacant or populated by death businesses like karate dojo’s.
[+] [-] cameldrv|5 years ago|reply
The best for walkability was Berlin, which, in the inner part, is mostly 5-6 story buildings. Within two blocks there were numerous stores and about 8 restaurants and a few bars. I also lived in an older suburb of mostly single family houses, but the lots weren't that big, and every house was two stories.
The key to walkability is that you need density. For a business to get much foot traffic, you need a good population in the walkable catchment area, and for that you need density. To get density, you need to build up. Unfortunately, building up is more expensive. Another thing that's helpful is alleys. If you put the garage behind the house, you don't need as much frontage width for driveways and garage doors.
[+] [-] amatecha|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwerty456127|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neutronicus|5 years ago|reply
But now that the governor says to go once a week she makes the trip out to the big, nice grocery store and we get better food for less money.
[+] [-] jhatemyjob|5 years ago|reply
Sometimes it feels like the people on this site have only lived in SFBA/LA/NYC and nowhere else in the United States. Cars/suburbia work pretty well in most places
[+] [-] all_blue_chucks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bfieidhbrjr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gcc_programmer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rorykoehler|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bezmenov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rland|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkhdigital|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oftenwrong|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|5 years ago|reply
If I got up at a decent hour, I would hear the plink plink of chisel on stone, and then the sound of the propane torch browning the tofu as I walked by.
[+] [-] monkeypizza|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tayo42|5 years ago|reply
I'm actually really surprised you're saying this. Maybe your Asian? There were a few izakaya I wandered into and got welcomed with a harsh no gaijin. I loved most of my trip to Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka) but that was jarring and off putting.
[+] [-] SECProto|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xCMP|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bezmenov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheAdamist|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davesque|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
I mean Japanese can keep to themselves too
But the point is that the intimidate, accessible nature has other redeeming qualities
[+] [-] gyc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toastal|5 years ago|reply
You can contrast this to Laos where the LPDR has focused on zoning on new development. One example was ປາກເຊ, Pakse, where multilane roads were built whigh probably not be fully utilized for another 50 years. When you go to a residential area, there's much less businesses. From what I gathered, the government there was looking across the Mekong at it's developing sister country and is trying to 'correct' her mistakes when trying to emulate growth. However, there's much more beauty in allowing the natural chaos.
[+] [-] aahhahahaaa|5 years ago|reply
Maybe the industrial revolution made cities too unpleasant? Were we too spoiled by the automobile industry and government roads? White flight from cities into the suburbs?
[+] [-] rgacote|5 years ago|reply
Another improvement is that people who both live and work in the community have time for more community engagement, but it their children's schools, local government, or local volunteer efforts.
Local businesses improve the community.
[+] [-] jamestimmins|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oftenwrong|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oftenwrong|5 years ago|reply
If you visit the outskirts of the city, there is a large difference. The parking lot is like an ocean. After all, every customer must arrive by car. You need a massive tract of land to have a successful business in such an environment.
Next time you visit a business, pop open your maps app on your phone and look at the satellite view. Note the size of the building in relation to its parking lot. It is not unusual for the parking lot to occupy more land than the actual store, even in urban areas.
[+] [-] egypturnash|5 years ago|reply
Leave the actual city and it starts turning into suburbs, where every distance is designed for a car and all business is concentrated on one big road that's got giant parking lots and big boxy buildings all along it. I go out there when I absolutely must. There really aren't many reasons to do that.
1: sadly the city's schools have gone to hell in many ways since I was a kid, but hey, I ain't got kids so I only get to worry about that in the abstract...
[+] [-] webninja|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juniper_strong|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moltar|5 years ago|reply
I love Europe and Southeast Asia so much for this very reason. You step out of your house and everything is nearby.
I’m sure there are parts of both Europe and SEA that have the same problems, but majority is mixed zoning.
[+] [-] throw737|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digitalsushi|5 years ago|reply
I can't tell you any of my neighbor's names. I've been here ten years.
But if I could walk for 6 minutes and get a beer, we'd all know each other's names. We'd all have babysitter coverage, neighborhood watch, a reason to keep the car in the garage, and slightly bigger bellies, overnight.
[+] [-] dhosek|5 years ago|reply
Here's one surviving neighborhood grocery in Berwyn, IL:
https://goo.gl/maps/NCd45ghd6ajfPvLB6
Unfortunately, I'm drawing a blank on the locations of some of the surviving retail-to-residential conversions that I've spotted.
These are all largely a relic of an era in which housewives often didn't drive, or if they did, didn't have access to a car while their husband was at work so grocery shopping needed to be within easy walking distance of home. Many of the minor commercial streets in the inner ring suburbs have vanished as well, their customers having been consumed by larger supermarkets. It's somewhat miraculous, really, that there are still a handful of these neighborhood markets still in business.
[+] [-] habosa|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cletus|5 years ago|reply
In Perth, Western Australia, there are pockets of this but the extraordinarily high cost of real estate (true across all of Australia since the early 2000s), which existing property owners are keen to protect, slowly kills local businesses. Particularly in popular cafe strips where all the businesses that made the area popular get priced out and commercial property owners would rather sit on empty property for years than notionally devalue that property by taking less rent.
Anecdotally I've heard all the WFH with Covid-19 has been a boon to local businesses.
London as a general rule was (it's been 10+ years since I've lived in London at this point) good for this. It never seemed like no matter where I was (within Zones 1-5 anyway), I was ever that far away from a Tesco and a high street.
NYC is of course excellent for this, at least the more central areas. The more outlying areas tend to resemble more typical Northeast suburbia with 2 car households and the like.
Northeast commuter towns tends to be good for this around the actual train stations although some stations weirdly have nothing around them at all (eg Manhasset).
Most US cities tend to be terrible for this to the point of not even having sidewalks and you might be 10 miles from the nearest shop, even in a large city (eg Las Vegas seems to be like this).
It does seem like public transportation really helps here because it seems like the northern suburbs of Dallas, for example (at least those on DART), have recognizable downtowns such that they more closely resemble tri-state commuter towns.
Large lots really seem to kill any of this. Like there are parts of the Greater Atlanta area where a "normal" lot is 1 or even 2 acres. This is an amount of space that is simply incomprehensible to any European. Even an Australian.
And of course the US has Walmart, which has been a pretty effective way of killing all the small businesses in local neighbourhoods.
[+] [-] tinyhouse|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acd|5 years ago|reply
With a good local community one does not need to use a car very often. There is also spontaneous social interactions with locals, this is something we do not get when buying online. We may also build repair centre for our things. This would be like a bike shop but for devices.
[+] [-] jungletime|5 years ago|reply
Outdoor malls seem to be the closet thing to that. And are pretty great spaces to be in. Maybe will be more prevalent because of covid now. But they even work in cold places, there is one in Michigan that I know off.
I used to live across from a 3 story apartment building, maybe 20 apartments. Pretty run down place, with drug dealers, and just low income people.
Then the apartment building owner decided to do some landscaping. Planted a few trees, and put out some adirondack chairs on the front lawn. Which attracted a guy wanting to play his guitar outside. Which then attracted an audience. Which then turned into a nightly gathering of people on the front lawn playing music from the apartment building. People with drug and alcohol abuse problems still live in that building. But now that place has real sense of community. And actual happy moments are shared outside nightly. Where as before everyone would rush through the front door to their apartment, now they stop and say hi to each other.
[+] [-] cwkoss|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwhitman|5 years ago|reply
New Urbanism made progress creating denser planning in the last 30 years, but focused too much on high density mixed use. Adding small shops to residential streets is definitely the one area that they've really failed on in my opinion. It's the reason older towns and cities still trounce the 'burbs on walkability and will for a long time.
But while we're at it we should also think about other human-scale improvements, like narrow streets. Worth a read for anyone interested in retrofitting the suburbs: https://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20130131.php#.Xxptm...
[+] [-] frequentnapper|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lykahb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toofy|5 years ago|reply
I haven’t bothered yet to run the numbers, but I would expect if the association was large enough it wouldn’t add much cost.
Residents could get a substantial discount while non-residents could pay normal prices. Residents could put in subscription style orders for things they would always regularly need. It would make it easier to order specialty things that normal groceries stores wouldn’t carry, etc...
[+] [-] bri3d|5 years ago|reply
The problem here is that eventually rent-seeking becomes appealing, someone realizes there's skim/margin/"arbitrage" to be made, and so the capitalism progresses.