30 ms·

Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

593 points by apsec112 6y ago

madamelic 6y ago
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.
- amatecha 6y ago
  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 :)
- bezmenov 6y ago
  The issue is that the residential density of suburbia (the vast majority of Australia, Canada, NZ and the US) precludes mixed use zoning.
  - RockIslandLine 6y ago
    Meh. There's plenty of density for "a strip mall every four blocks". And you can make that structure totally walkable instead of requiring cars. The important thing is not to jack the rent through the roof. Most suburbs don't, for no obvious reason. I did complain to the Mayor a few years ago that the grocery store four blocks from my house has only street access and no sidewalk access. I'm not at all sure why the author seems to think that converted garages are great business incubators. That's a terrible idea. It's what my uncle did for his cabinetry business, but that's largely solo. I can't imagine wanting significant business traffic on residential streets.
  - elgenie 6y ago
    If you mean zoning that requires first floor retail or whatever, sure. But mixed use zoning also means zoning that just doesn't ban small business, multi-family housing, and single-family housing coexisting on the same block. The causality in your statement is backwards, because the lack of the latter kind of zoning is exactly what prevents inner suburbs from densifying organically. The current zoning in most of (at least US) suburbia is what artificially caps density.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  In theory sure. 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.
  - nitwit005 6y ago
    Investors have proven willing to keep homes and apartments empty as well. The behavior seems bizarre to me, but it seems you have to set tax policies to discourage it.
    - claudeganon 6y ago
      Because the real estate is being used as a value store for people moving money from overseas, engaging in money laundering, or as a hedge against other bets. Once exchange value is given priority over use value in markets for things like housing, you run into all kinds of nonsensical arrangements and deleterious social consequences.
      - novok 6y ago
        And that is why you need tax penalties such as long term unoccupied property taxes and non-resident investor taxes to counter incentivize such behavior.
        claudeganon 6y ago
        I’m skeptical that taxes themselves can resolve the problem. The people who engage in these tactics are already quite good at gaming them. Housing would have to revert to circumstances like Japan, where homes are largely a depreciating asset.
        6y ago
- neutronicus 6y ago
  The corner store kinda sucks. We always used to go when I was commuting and my wife was pregnant because we were strapped for time. 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.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    Different strokes for different folks. The corner bodega in my old New York neighborhood was open late into the night and made a good bacon egg and cheese sandwich. The important thing is that we should not legislate these out of existence.
    - _delirium 6y ago
      I don't totally understand the economics of how those work in NYC. Just sheer density and throughput? Family-run shops staffed by extended family working unofficially (avoiding payroll tax, minimum wage, etc.)? Some mixture? In the "is DC a real city?" angst, people occasionally claim there aren't any such shops in DC. But there are, it's just that the sandwiches are priced at $10-14, so people don't think of them the same way. DC shopkeepers get defensive about it, and put together spreadsheets showing that with rent, labor, etc. you just can't break even selling $6-8 sandwiches in the DC market.
      - bobthepanda 6y ago
        1. High throughput 2. There is definitely some level of small-scale tax evasion/paying under the table in NYC. Grey market is a lot bigger, some places will not charge tax if you pay cash. 3. Small square footage. Most deli counter setups I've seen in New York, there's basically enough room for a person to swivel between a counter and a grill, and that's about it. Less square footage means less space to pay rent on. There's almost certainly no seating so you save even more. 4. Most places like this will probably make most of the margin on drinks and snacks that are also prominently displayed, most delis also sell lotto tickets, smokes, etc. I will say that I didn't have the healthiest snacking habits before moving out of New York. This is all anecdotal growing up in New York in the '00s. Things have certainly changed since then, in some neighborhoods the deli is an endangered species due to increasing rents. And they have never been everywhere; a deli could not afford the rent on 5th Av next to Bergdorf Goodman.
- bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
  Here's a crazy idea: no zoning. Let people decide what they want to do.
  - function_seven 6y ago
    That is crazy. I do not want a concrete plant to open next to my house. Or a Yoko Ono Scream Therapy franchise :) But yeah, the insane detail that many cities have in their zoning plans is stifling. The link[7] monkeypizza included elsewhere in this thread is what I'd like to see as the norm [7] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
    - fellowniusmonk 6y ago
      Eh, I hate the city myself but people love Houston. Seems like 0 zoning isn't really an appreciable problem.
  - baggy_trough 6y ago
    What I wanted to do was move to a place that had rules which would keep the neighborhood the way I like.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      If you're not paying neighbors to keep their land the way you like, why should you have any say in that?
      - bbarnett 6y ago
        Note that they have a say in what you do with your land, too. Is it OK for someone to buy the house next door, and build a cafe? What about a night club, which has loud music and closes at 4am? How about a rendering plant? Or installing a large propane storage facility? Is there nothing you'd consider unsafe, unwanted, beside the house you just paid $500k for? Which is now worth $200k, and makes it horrid to live there? These laws, like all laws, are necessary. Where the problem sits, is when they go too far, or not far enough. There is a sweet spot for everything!
- all_blue_chucks 6y ago
  Restaurants, accountants, lawyers, and such may do fine with mixed use zoning, but retail simply can't compete without economy of scale.
  - opportune 6y ago
    Mixed use zoning is good for specialty retail like niche/designer clothing. Also even for things like groceries people (like me) will be willing to pay a slight premium for being able to get those goods from a short walking distance.
    - analog31 6y ago
      Ah, but the more niche it is, the more likely they depend on car traffic to bring their customers in. I'm fortunate to live within walking distance of a supermarket. It's nice to get fresh produce and things that we run out of or need on a whim. A little Ace Hardware store serves in a similar way. It seems like the fairly sizable population of retirees in the nearby apartments provide these stores with a lot of business. I don't expect those stores to have everything, but they really reduce the number of car trips that I make.
- cameldrv 6y ago
  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.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    I’m not sure about your argument of “you have to build up”. Lot of places in Europe have strict limits regarding how high a building can be and they do have lot of small stores around, Berlin, that you mentioned, is very strict on this. A few examples: Hamburg residential areas seem to have ~4-5 floors max. Groningen has neighborhoods where apartment building are limited to only 2 floors (So just two apartments). They both have enough density to have small businesses around. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the US situation you’re comparing to, and people there just build flat, so even a few floors is already building up? That would be strange though...
    - bezmenov 6y ago
      ~5 floors is as high as you can go before needing an elevator.
      - cameldrv 6y ago
        You can do six, but the sunlight at the top really has to be great for it to be worth it...
      - 6y ago
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  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!
  - Matt3o12_ 6y ago
    > 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! Grocery stores (even small ones) can be very noisy, especially with extended business hours these days. I used to live In an apartment above a grocery story with a small parking lot for a long time. This was also in a mixed zone area (mostly residential, a few shops, barber, etc). At 6am, trucks start rolling up and delivering food (although they are only supposed to do that at 7am, on some days they’ll start at 6). That means very loud beeping from the trucks backing up and shouting to the grocery employees above engine noise. Throughout the day, there will be random noise (honking in the parking lot, people slamming their cart into the barrier, etc) and sometimes people get drunk in the parking lot and start shouting (usually until 11pm, the grocery store closed at 10). And once in a while, their security system went of and the police show up and make some noise at 4am. With an open window (which you had to have in the summer — air conditioning is an exception in the part of Europe where I lived) you can hear all that noise almost as if you are standing next to it. I never minded it too much since I’m a very heavy sleeper but I can definitely see that some people would get very poor quality sleep. And no landlord ever wants a store to be built above their apartments because it lowers the value dramatically due to the mentioned reasons.
    - modo_mario 6y ago
      Parking lot, employees, carts. Sounds like a small supermarket you're describing there My nearby grocery store closed recently. Same with the baker and another grocery store before it. It was small was tended to by the owner and his wife and had one parking spot that wasn't just the regular street ones.
- jhatemyjob 6y ago
  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
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    Suburbia straight doesn't work. Requiring a car for transit means kids have to continually be chauffeured by adults to anywhere meaningful. Lack of local business means there's limited economic potential for the city - it's all in one tax district and redistributed around. Sprawl increases the cost of providing services like fire and police. You're taking on some significant burdens in exchange for not having your neighbors walk past your house.
    - bbarnett 6y ago
      Canadian cities have suburbia, and public transit. Many have buses on main streets, which are typically a 2 or 3 block walk from side streets. Suburbia doesn't mean "have to have a car", it is just many like having cars. This sort of speaks to the prior poster, stating that many here are from big cities. Suburbia isn't low-density. It's only low-density compared to 'downtown'. Try living in actual, real rural areas. Where I live, houses are a mile apart! Yet bizarrely, we have fire stations, police, high speed gigabit internet, and more. And it isn't super expensive either.
      - freeone3000 6y ago
        I grew up in a Texas town of 100,000, and it didn't have a single bus route until I was 14. The closest shop was a small bakery six blocks away, which was a godsend since that was the only shop within five miles. When half the usable space is parking, it's low-density. When you have houses plopped in the middle of a hundred-foot-to-a-side rectangle, it's low-density. I acknowledge that it is, indeed, a gradient. But lots of points on that gradient are huge negatives to the people living there.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  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.
- gcc_programmer 6y ago
  Europe is as you described.
- barnabee 6y ago
  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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning#United_Kingdom
  - pjc50 6y ago
    > I don't know anyone in this country, urban or rural dwelling, who can't walk to a shop or a pub The average walking distance to a pub has gone up a lot in recent years due to closure, and walking on rural roads at night where there is no footpath is horrendously dangerous even if you carry lights. It's a nice idyll but it's no longer really true. What you say about Simcity is absolutely true though. It doesn't correspond to traditional UK or most European cities at all. Medieval mixed walkable core, maybe not driveable at all; industrialish area down by the wharves now repurposed as offices and residential; Simcity-ish bit on the outskirts where somebody decided to build a grand scheme, like La Défense. Zoning is starting to leak into urban planning a bit more, when huge housing estates are built with no shops, pubs, or facilities. As far as I can tell demand for housing outstrips everything else.
    - CraigJPerry 6y ago
      Is it true that walking on rural roads at night is horrendously dangerous? I was thinking less traffic means its probably safer than the collisions that happen when pedestrians step off the pavement in town. I found something that kind of supports this notion but isn’t really conclusive https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/448036/pedestrian-casualties-2013-data.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Wonder if you have a link to share?
rland 6y ago
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.
- 0xCMP 6y ago
  Japan is what made me realize how this is the answer. Zoning and making businesses possible inside neighborhoods makes areas much more walkable.
- davesque 6y ago
  Yes, this! This is one of the stupid-simple reasons I love traveling in Japan.
- jkhdigital 6y ago
  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.
  - ehnto 6y ago
    There is another quirk to Japan that seems to make this work so well, and that's how quiet it can be. I am sure there are exceptions, but for the most part even in packed areas with dozens of people walking the street, it is mostly quiet. I think low car density plays a pretty big role in lowering the the overall sound levels, but there must be more to it than that. It was surreal at times.
throw737 6y ago
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
- frank2 6y ago
  Is this in the US or some other country?
  - throw737 6y ago
    Hungary
  - alexashka 6y ago
    Alcoholics hanging around liquor stores is a universal.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
Animats 6y ago
It's like having a convenience store in the lobby of an apartment building. Seems like a great idea, but it takes a huge apartment building, or a city block of modest ones, to support a convenience store. Vending machines, maybe. We see this with all those "mixed use" buildings going up in Silicon Valley, with retail spaces on the ground floor. It's really hard to fill those retail spaces.
- zip1234 6y ago
  The problem is that all of those places are planned. I get major 'Soviet Central Planning' vibes from the USA when it comes to zoning and planning out cities. Of course the people making the decisions on planning have no idea what will work. They only know what will work in the most rudimentary, scaled up, sense. Small shops need to be allowed everywhere, rules about minimum parking, lot sizes, use, etc need to be relaxed to allow those things to even be possible.
  - madamelic 6y ago
    Suburbs are literally rooted in racism. That sounds hyperbolic, but the first suburb in post-war US was a planned whites-only community to escape the city. (Levittown) --- With that said, yes, the US purposefully planned blocks of cities to be dedicated to one purpose. This promotes car culture which, surprise surprise, car and oil companies were big into lobbying to shut down mixed use and public transit, and continue to be. Mixed use areas are typically either big cities, have pre-war origins where it has basically always been mixed use or typically both.
- aahhahahaaa 6y ago
  Well of course, who can afford the rent? It's not like a little four-employee computer repair shop can show up and fill the space.
  - jwkane 6y ago
    Even if the rent was subsidized or more likely rent-controlled -- you still have to pay those four employees enough to live in commute range. That forces the margins you have to charge for computer repairs to shot up to a level that would make the Geek Squad blush.
rgacote 6y ago
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. Local businesses improve the community.
- oftenwrong 6y ago
  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.
- jamestimmins 6y ago
  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.
aahhahahaaa 6y ago
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?
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  People wanted their children to be separate from people of other socioeconomic classes (and races), and the way to do that in the US is to move to a school district they others can’t afford.
  - chills 6y ago
    This has also been the case for hundreds of years though.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      They might not have had the means to do it though. Cheap fuel, cheap cars, 30 year fixed rate mortgages, widening income/wealth bands, etc.
    - mumblemumble 6y ago
      Not to the same extent. It wasn't until cars became a thing that it became practical for most rich people to live more than a (healthy) walking distance away from working class people. If they lived too far away, then you wouldn't be able to have them work for you.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    Not just afford - often time those suburbs specifically barred non-whites from owning property. Additionally red-lining and racist loan practices forced that wealth gap to grow. But I think that's separate from the car issue, mostly. Originally satellite communities had commercial services - local shops and the like. But those were phased out due to a lack of demand, I think due to societal shifts that were egged on by marketing "cool kids have cars" - and the like.
oftenwrong 6y ago
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.
toofy 6y ago
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...
- bri3d 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_cooperative ? 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.
  - toofy 6y ago
    Yeah, food coops but strictly limited to a residents of neighborhood would be close to what I had in mind. I wonder if you could put in the association bylaws that it must remain free of profits/margins/“arbitrage” to mitigate against something like this. I haven’t looked into it closely though since I ultimately have a strong distaste for home owners associations anyway.
kerkeslager 6y ago
A simple rule that I think would improve a lot of communities: any retail-zoned business (stores, restaurants, etc.) must be owned with a controlling interest by people with a residency within 10 miles. I don't really see much point focusing on the size of buildings. Fix the money and the other issues will follow. EDIT: If you think I'm wrong feel free to explain why.
lykahb 6y ago
Vibrant downtowns of many American cities were built before the zoning laws. Their desirability is the most obvious proof that mixed zoning has benefits.
jungletime 6y ago
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.
- cwkoss 6y ago
  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
toastal 6y ago
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.
- hnarn 6y ago
  > Most every building in towns is at least two stories with shops under the tenant's quarters. Compare this with modern (past five/ten years) architecture in Sweden: concrete, "modern" flats with zero expression that mostly are composed entirely of residential units. You might literally see a block of 8-10 buildings, maybe five stories high, that has one commercial unit at the very end of one of the buildings. It's ridiculous. This type of architecture is killing newly produced areas completely unnecessarily, and I suspect it's because the one time income of selling a flat is preferred over the monthly income of renting to a business.
- wastedhours 6y ago
  > This ends up being one of the biggest reasons I enjoy living in Thailand Only visited briefly, but was going to post that they seem to get it right in Thailand. Some of the best restaurants are on the porch of someone's house, there's usually some kind of corner shop below most large buildings, most places are walkable or have adapted some kind of small persona transport.
dhosek 6y ago
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: https://goo.gl/maps/NCd45ghd6ajfPvLB6 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.
- adamredwoods 6y ago
  Just a block away from a 7-11.
- vidanay 6y ago
  I've always liked the fact that nearly every major street in Chicago is lined with small businesses and the residential streets are no more than 4-5 blocks away from a major street.
- tropdrop 6y ago
  The housewives aspect of it is a strange thing to focus on - this is a relic of a time when most people did not drive, i.e. this style of living was natural to everyone, housewife or no, prior to Eisenhower-era financial incentives to build highways everywhere[1], and especially in areas of "urban blight," which, of course, were also usually the densest parts of neighborhoods/cities since the poor did not have cars. Some cities, e.g. New York, succeeded in preventing the demolishing of some of their most historic places in the name of "cleaning up." Most other places were not as successful, though many tried[2]. Chicago's aptly named Eisenhower Expressway is a great example of activist efforts often not being enough[3]. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs#Struggle_for_Greenwich_Village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs#Struggle_for_Green... 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Urban_Interstates_abandoned_because_of_local_opposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Urba... 3 - https://interactive.wbez.org/curiouscity/eisenhower/ https://interactive.wbez.org/curiouscity/eisenhower/
kbos87 6y ago
Better yet, outlaw a business like amazon and create an instant market for tens of thousands of small local businesses.
heidegger 6y ago
good idea but we can do ever better than that by build co-ops in residential neighborhoods what we need are goods and services where people are, but that doesn't necessarily mean provided by businesses when they could be provided to and by the people who are already there
itisit 6y ago
Seems like an invitation for loitering among other nuisances. A great idea for some places, but I feel there are many who prefer their neighborhoods truly remain residential.
frequentnapper 6y ago
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.
duxup 6y ago
I like this idea mostly, except maybe the restaurant with outdoor seating. Not sure I would want that to pop up next door / be loud late into the evening.... At least I wouldn't expect it to just pop up.
- Cogito 6y ago
  In my experience, the licensing laws typically deal with this. If a restaurant or bar, they can't serve alcohol or have live music after 9pm, or similar rules. Works pretty well, and I'd much rather have the small restaurant or bar next door than not!
holler 6y ago
In Seattle this is prevalent, part of the charm.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  Only in parts of it. There's a lot of the city that is just not suited to a walking lifestyle.
  - siosonel 6y ago
    My wife and I got electric bikes about 8 weeks ago and they have been great for running errands in lieu of single-occupancy car trips. We live near the Interurban Trail/Aurora and the e-bikes enable much easier access to a variety of stores, restaurants, and parks, which are not easily walkable. We now appreciate the nearby bike lanes and quiet streets for making longer trips to bigger parks or neighboring downtowns like Edmonds. We recently had wanted to return to Capitol Hill to enjoy a more walkable neighborhood, but so far bikeabilty has been an excellent substitute. Plus, in four years there will be a light rail station near us to offer yet another alternative to car trips. We feel lucky to have these options in our "suburban" location.
- y2bd 6y ago
  Fellow Seattlite here. Seeing folks in this thread talking about grocery stores being 40+ minute walks away from grocery stores is making me sweat. I like the idea of moving somewhere cheaper, but I refuse the idea of being forced to drive everywhere.
mberning 6y ago
I would love to own a true neighborhood pub. A literal “public house”. Nothing fancy but a nice watering hole for the locals.
tinyhouse 6y ago
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.
- murrayhenson 6y ago
  > Cambridge "Our fair city!" -Tom Magliozzi
digitalsushi 6y ago
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.
- ed312 6y ago
  Having lived in a dense suburb outside of Providence RI with a local pub just one large parking lot away, I can tell you: it sucks. Noise at all hours, drunks everywhere, broken glass, constant smell of cigarette smoke. Replace pub with "well maintained park with children's play area" and you might be on to something.
  - jamil7 6y ago
    It might be a cultural thing but my home country Australia and the in the UK the local pub in smaller towns is often a much more family oriented place. Often there is outdoor seating and families go for dinner together, often there is live local music. People also go just to drink but it’s all mixed together, of course this varies depending on what part of a town or city you’re in, some are more family oriented than others. I think that kind of pub would fit well with OP’s description more than yours.
- asveikau 6y ago
  You might not have as big a belly if you need to walk a few minutes to get the beer and go home.
j45 6y ago
This would be great to see, even if they were pop up spaces that could cycle through providing what a neighbourhood might need at any given time.
cletus 6y ago
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.
spicyramen 6y ago
Coming from Latin America,this was the best way for someone to get their business started and get some extra cash. From selling candies, to food and groceries. All that came to an end when Walmart and other chain companies such as 711 or Oxxo appeared..
seiferteric 6y ago
Yes! When I lived in an old house in the outskirts of Chico, there was a random little coffee shop right down the street. Seemed totally out of place but I loved it. I would really like small cafes and shops inside the Suberbs!
basicplus2 6y ago
Yeh! Bring back freecorns!
Causality1 6y ago
I suppose this would work very well for people with a particular outlook. I'm not one of them. My neighborhood is a refuge from commerce; I don't want stores within earshot of my front door. I don't want people I don't know walking past my yard at night.
scarface74 6y ago
Not totally on topic... I have to admit the one thing I miss about moving out to the burbs from the relatively upscale apartments we lived in for awhile was that we had restaurant and major grocery stores within walking distance
moltar 6y ago
I hate North America’s zoning laws with a passion. They just create dead zones and forces everyone to travel distances. 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.
jojobas 6y ago
Downtowns may be abandoned, but the shopping malls aren't (where I live). Local businesses still can't compete with big box stores.
egypturnash 6y ago
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...
- juniper_strong 6y ago
  If you bike everywhere why are you going to the auto shop?
  - cawlin 6y ago
    I'd guess for auto supplies. You can bike "everywhere" and still own a vehicle for visiting places outside a city proper.
  - egypturnash 6y ago
    I don’t, it’s just one of the many businesses lurking in my neighborhood. I pass it regularly on my way elsewhere.
- webninja 6y ago
  Yeah the state government is too poor and devoid of tax dollars, so they can’t do anything about that unfortunately.
Jugurtha 6y ago
I live in the suburbs. In a radius of 200m from where I live, 2 minutes on foot, here are some of the businesses there are: - Car accessory workshop for aftermarket accessories - Car mechanic - Car tire shop (they check, patch, and change your tires) - Bycicle and bike repair shop - Car electricians (3) - Car wash (3) - Carpenter - House appliance shop - Travel agencies - Accountant - RV home maker - Shop to print motifs on shirts/clothes - Opticians - Sauna (3) one with a gym, a swimming pool, etc. - Showers - Bathroom - Kitchenware shop - Barbers (2) - Bakeries (4) - Pharmacists (2) - Dentist (2) - Pediatrician - Generalist MD - Gynaecologist - Endocrinologist - Medical analyses lab - Insurance company - Printing shop - Children's clothes shops - Adults' clothes shops - Internet café - Coffee shops - Grocery shops - Tailor - Pastery shop - Kiosques - Jeweler - Electronics shop - A blacksmith - A small theme park for kids - Food joints (pizzerias, burgers, grills, others) - Protective equipment shop - Office supplies/Stationery/Chairs/Tables, etc. - Electric motors repair shop - Minimarkets (3) - Gyms Others: - Primary school - Middle school - Police station - A football stadium converted to a gymnasium Bigger: - Cheese factory - Yogurt factory - Other industrial stuff - Car dealerships Farther (300m): fresh produce market, pharmacy, and a bunch of other shops. Farther (10 minutes): - A green space of about 350 acres The catch: a lot of them live there. By there I mean they own the house. The shops are on the street level, and they live in the upper levels. Some others live nearby, as in are either the owner's neighbor from a few houses away or 5 minutes down the road. But you can pretty much do a lot without moving.
- laxk 6y ago
  Where do you live?
  - Jugurtha 6y ago
    In Algiers, Algeria.
ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
I live somewhere that has tiny businesses like this. I still end up driving to my local discount grocery store because, despite having a very well paying for the area, I just can't bring myself to spend anywhere form 30% more to even double for 'the good stuff' when I can get generics for so much less. So sorry, guess I'm part of the problem, but I'd rather spend money on stuff I actually want.
ilaksh 6y ago
http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage/ http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage/
rwhitman 6y ago
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. 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#.XxptmPipGL4 https://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20130131.php#.Xxptm...
goda90 6y ago
When I lived in Chile, I really enjoyed the little tiendas everywhere, particularly the ones that were bakeries. I have a hard time imagining how well something similar would work in my suburban neighborhood where everyone has cars. Maybe a destination like a cafe, but it just makes more sense for people around here to get a bunch of shopping done at the grocery store 5 minutes away in their car.
senojretep356 6y ago
Good idea, I like mixed zoning and supporting small local businesses rather than behemoths like Walmart.
HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
The USA is the only place I know that doesn't have businesses in residential neighborhoods. I really don't understand why it is that way. We have mini-markets with a small stock of most commonly bought items, fridges with water iced tea etc, cigarettes newspapers on almost every corner. And it doesn't need to stop there. Why not laundry shops? Small cafes, etc. 99.99% of any potential issues can be taken care of with simple laws such as noise limits etc.
pmlnr 6y ago
:: insert ancient aliens meme with 'americans' overlay ::
acd 6y ago
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.
- hnarn 6y ago
  I'm Swedish and while I'd love to take credit for this type of structure, surely this is much older and more widespread? If you travel to France you notice immediately that there's a bakery, a butcher etc. in every town, so some part of it is down to culture and political decisions (like Sweden in the 50's), but if we move back in time this was the absolute default for a very simple reason: any other setup than the "close community shops" was untenable until the introduction of the automobile. So this model that we now consider exotic has actually been the standard for 99% of human history, but since the early 1900s we have been caught in a feedback loop of increased mobility -> lower real estate prices outside of the city -> cheaper goods which to this day is killing city centers commercially all across Sweden. I absolutely welcome this change, but I think it's important to point out that the reason it now seems so attractive is because this mobility that fueled the entire change has now essentially disappeared. I can only hope that with increased environmental consciousness, it becomes even more outdated, because I really dislike it. Here's to hoping we get a future composed of small local stores, and "big-box" corporations with excellent shipping options instead of expecting you to come to them. It can't happen soon enough.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
It's not viable unless they get an x amount of foot traffic, which is why these shops tend to be in city / commercial centers instead. That said, back in my hometown we used to have multiple businesses on wheels visiting once a week; ice cream truck, fish, a grocery shop, a mail-order frozen-products guy, etc. I've seen the same happen in a commercial district, mostly big office buildings with underground parking, but there was an ice cream and a coffee trike doing the rounds. The coffee one would set up shop at the local train station in the morning, then move to an urban park thing later in the day. The ice cream truck would move around, stand in front of the building and ring the bell.
_0o6v 6y ago
This sounds great in a utopia where everybody is quiet and considerate, delivery drivers don't throw boxes and crates around, people don't get drunk and smash bottles in the street or have arguments. Having lived next to and above commercial properties I can say it doesn't improve quality of life, it drastically impacts mental health, stress, and sleep. There's a reason that we have commercial districts and residential districts.
habosa 6y ago
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.
dutch3000 6y ago
love it. economic localization.
louwrentius 6y ago
For whoever cares about this topic: Strong Towns may be of interest. They address this topic, and put everything in a bigger picture. https://www.strongtowns.org https://www.strongtowns.org
ourmandave 6y ago
My parents ran a small business out of their home and the UPS truck came by for pick-ups every day. They had a yes/no sign in the window to signal if he had to stop or not. This was before the internet and easy scheduling.
bigbizisverywyz 6y ago
Here in Zurich this is really well done - I just wished we did it more back home in the UK too. Small businesses, e.g. coffee shops, hairdressers and florists occupy the bottom floors, and accountants and dentists the upper floors. It keeps a nice mix of building use and means some services are nicely scattered throughout the city.
blue52 6y ago
This would be an amazing solution to implement and would benefit so many who were hurt during this over reach over government into business and private lives.
lazyjones 6y ago
Tiny businesses aren't disappearing because of zoning, it's the economy of scale and heavy taxation/regulation that made them (or the lower-margin ones) unviable in places where they used to be common (like big European cities). One of the more memorable stories about a tiny waxing studio giving up here in Vienna was them being required to have employees working in rooms with windows only and the only big enough window was the storefront one.
naveen99 6y ago
Isn’t work from home basically putting business back into neighborhoods?
mdavis6890 6y ago
The fundamental problem is that we (in the US) live in a permission-based system, not a freedom-based one. In this example, you have to ask for permissions related to running a business and using land. The system that you have to ask permission from has a particular vision about how things ought to be done, and does not handle change or non-conformity well - even seeing them as a threat. One hallmark for identifying such a system is that when there is not a law about something, it is referred to in terms like "legal grey area" or "outside the law." We need to change the system to allow for freedom and individual decision making, without asking permission from the system. Freedom is what is left outside the boundaries of the law.
cpfohl 6y ago
I spent about 6 years in Poland when I was a kid. They had little kiosks (15'x15' ish?) all over, it's where you bought your daily stuff you didn't want to buy in bulk: bus tickets, gum, newspapers, bread, vegetables. This feels like a no brainer to me.

593 points by apsec112 6y ago

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.

amatecha 6y ago
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 :)
bezmenov 6y ago
The issue is that the residential density of suburbia (the vast majority of Australia, Canada, NZ and the US) precludes mixed use zoning.
- RockIslandLine 6y ago
  Meh. There's plenty of density for "a strip mall every four blocks". And you can make that structure totally walkable instead of requiring cars. The important thing is not to jack the rent through the roof. Most suburbs don't, for no obvious reason. I did complain to the Mayor a few years ago that the grocery store four blocks from my house has only street access and no sidewalk access. I'm not at all sure why the author seems to think that converted garages are great business incubators. That's a terrible idea. It's what my uncle did for his cabinetry business, but that's largely solo. I can't imagine wanting significant business traffic on residential streets.
- elgenie 6y ago
  If you mean zoning that requires first floor retail or whatever, sure. But mixed use zoning also means zoning that just doesn't ban small business, multi-family housing, and single-family housing coexisting on the same block. The causality in your statement is backwards, because the lack of the latter kind of zoning is exactly what prevents inner suburbs from densifying organically. The current zoning in most of (at least US) suburbia is what artificially caps density.
Spooky23 6y ago
In theory sure. 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.
- nitwit005 6y ago
  Investors have proven willing to keep homes and apartments empty as well. The behavior seems bizarre to me, but it seems you have to set tax policies to discourage it.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    Because the real estate is being used as a value store for people moving money from overseas, engaging in money laundering, or as a hedge against other bets. Once exchange value is given priority over use value in markets for things like housing, you run into all kinds of nonsensical arrangements and deleterious social consequences.
    - novok 6y ago
      And that is why you need tax penalties such as long term unoccupied property taxes and non-resident investor taxes to counter incentivize such behavior.
      - claudeganon 6y ago
        I’m skeptical that taxes themselves can resolve the problem. The people who engage in these tactics are already quite good at gaming them. Housing would have to revert to circumstances like Japan, where homes are largely a depreciating asset.
        6y ago
neutronicus 6y ago
The corner store kinda sucks. We always used to go when I was commuting and my wife was pregnant because we were strapped for time. 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.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Different strokes for different folks. The corner bodega in my old New York neighborhood was open late into the night and made a good bacon egg and cheese sandwich. The important thing is that we should not legislate these out of existence.
  - _delirium 6y ago
    I don't totally understand the economics of how those work in NYC. Just sheer density and throughput? Family-run shops staffed by extended family working unofficially (avoiding payroll tax, minimum wage, etc.)? Some mixture? In the "is DC a real city?" angst, people occasionally claim there aren't any such shops in DC. But there are, it's just that the sandwiches are priced at $10-14, so people don't think of them the same way. DC shopkeepers get defensive about it, and put together spreadsheets showing that with rent, labor, etc. you just can't break even selling $6-8 sandwiches in the DC market.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      1. High throughput 2. There is definitely some level of small-scale tax evasion/paying under the table in NYC. Grey market is a lot bigger, some places will not charge tax if you pay cash. 3. Small square footage. Most deli counter setups I've seen in New York, there's basically enough room for a person to swivel between a counter and a grill, and that's about it. Less square footage means less space to pay rent on. There's almost certainly no seating so you save even more. 4. Most places like this will probably make most of the margin on drinks and snacks that are also prominently displayed, most delis also sell lotto tickets, smokes, etc. I will say that I didn't have the healthiest snacking habits before moving out of New York. This is all anecdotal growing up in New York in the '00s. Things have certainly changed since then, in some neighborhoods the deli is an endangered species due to increasing rents. And they have never been everywhere; a deli could not afford the rent on 5th Av next to Bergdorf Goodman.
bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
Here's a crazy idea: no zoning. Let people decide what they want to do.
- function_seven 6y ago
  That is crazy. I do not want a concrete plant to open next to my house. Or a Yoko Ono Scream Therapy franchise :) But yeah, the insane detail that many cities have in their zoning plans is stifling. The link[7] monkeypizza included elsewhere in this thread is what I'd like to see as the norm [7] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
  - fellowniusmonk 6y ago
    Eh, I hate the city myself but people love Houston. Seems like 0 zoning isn't really an appreciable problem.
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  What I wanted to do was move to a place that had rules which would keep the neighborhood the way I like.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    If you're not paying neighbors to keep their land the way you like, why should you have any say in that?
    - bbarnett 6y ago
      Note that they have a say in what you do with your land, too. Is it OK for someone to buy the house next door, and build a cafe? What about a night club, which has loud music and closes at 4am? How about a rendering plant? Or installing a large propane storage facility? Is there nothing you'd consider unsafe, unwanted, beside the house you just paid $500k for? Which is now worth $200k, and makes it horrid to live there? These laws, like all laws, are necessary. Where the problem sits, is when they go too far, or not far enough. There is a sweet spot for everything!
all_blue_chucks 6y ago
Restaurants, accountants, lawyers, and such may do fine with mixed use zoning, but retail simply can't compete without economy of scale.
- opportune 6y ago
  Mixed use zoning is good for specialty retail like niche/designer clothing. Also even for things like groceries people (like me) will be willing to pay a slight premium for being able to get those goods from a short walking distance.
  - analog31 6y ago
    Ah, but the more niche it is, the more likely they depend on car traffic to bring their customers in. I'm fortunate to live within walking distance of a supermarket. It's nice to get fresh produce and things that we run out of or need on a whim. A little Ace Hardware store serves in a similar way. It seems like the fairly sizable population of retirees in the nearby apartments provide these stores with a lot of business. I don't expect those stores to have everything, but they really reduce the number of car trips that I make.
cameldrv 6y ago
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.
- dgellow 6y ago
  I’m not sure about your argument of “you have to build up”. Lot of places in Europe have strict limits regarding how high a building can be and they do have lot of small stores around, Berlin, that you mentioned, is very strict on this. A few examples: Hamburg residential areas seem to have ~4-5 floors max. Groningen has neighborhoods where apartment building are limited to only 2 floors (So just two apartments). They both have enough density to have small businesses around. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the US situation you’re comparing to, and people there just build flat, so even a few floors is already building up? That would be strange though...
  - bezmenov 6y ago
    ~5 floors is as high as you can go before needing an elevator.
    - cameldrv 6y ago
      You can do six, but the sunlight at the top really has to be great for it to be worth it...
    - 6y ago
qwerty456127 6y ago
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!
- Matt3o12_ 6y ago
  > 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! Grocery stores (even small ones) can be very noisy, especially with extended business hours these days. I used to live In an apartment above a grocery story with a small parking lot for a long time. This was also in a mixed zone area (mostly residential, a few shops, barber, etc). At 6am, trucks start rolling up and delivering food (although they are only supposed to do that at 7am, on some days they’ll start at 6). That means very loud beeping from the trucks backing up and shouting to the grocery employees above engine noise. Throughout the day, there will be random noise (honking in the parking lot, people slamming their cart into the barrier, etc) and sometimes people get drunk in the parking lot and start shouting (usually until 11pm, the grocery store closed at 10). And once in a while, their security system went of and the police show up and make some noise at 4am. With an open window (which you had to have in the summer — air conditioning is an exception in the part of Europe where I lived) you can hear all that noise almost as if you are standing next to it. I never minded it too much since I’m a very heavy sleeper but I can definitely see that some people would get very poor quality sleep. And no landlord ever wants a store to be built above their apartments because it lowers the value dramatically due to the mentioned reasons.
  - modo_mario 6y ago
    Parking lot, employees, carts. Sounds like a small supermarket you're describing there My nearby grocery store closed recently. Same with the baker and another grocery store before it. It was small was tended to by the owner and his wife and had one parking spot that wasn't just the regular street ones.
jhatemyjob 6y ago
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
- freeone3000 6y ago
  Suburbia straight doesn't work. Requiring a car for transit means kids have to continually be chauffeured by adults to anywhere meaningful. Lack of local business means there's limited economic potential for the city - it's all in one tax district and redistributed around. Sprawl increases the cost of providing services like fire and police. You're taking on some significant burdens in exchange for not having your neighbors walk past your house.
  - bbarnett 6y ago
    Canadian cities have suburbia, and public transit. Many have buses on main streets, which are typically a 2 or 3 block walk from side streets. Suburbia doesn't mean "have to have a car", it is just many like having cars. This sort of speaks to the prior poster, stating that many here are from big cities. Suburbia isn't low-density. It's only low-density compared to 'downtown'. Try living in actual, real rural areas. Where I live, houses are a mile apart! Yet bizarrely, we have fire stations, police, high speed gigabit internet, and more. And it isn't super expensive either.
    - freeone3000 6y ago
      I grew up in a Texas town of 100,000, and it didn't have a single bus route until I was 14. The closest shop was a small bakery six blocks away, which was a godsend since that was the only shop within five miles. When half the usable space is parking, it's low-density. When you have houses plopped in the middle of a hundred-foot-to-a-side rectangle, it's low-density. I acknowledge that it is, indeed, a gradient. But lots of points on that gradient are huge negatives to the people living there.
rorykoehler 6y ago
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.
gcc_programmer 6y ago
Europe is as you described.
barnabee 6y ago
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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning#United_Kingdom
- pjc50 6y ago
  > I don't know anyone in this country, urban or rural dwelling, who can't walk to a shop or a pub The average walking distance to a pub has gone up a lot in recent years due to closure, and walking on rural roads at night where there is no footpath is horrendously dangerous even if you carry lights. It's a nice idyll but it's no longer really true. What you say about Simcity is absolutely true though. It doesn't correspond to traditional UK or most European cities at all. Medieval mixed walkable core, maybe not driveable at all; industrialish area down by the wharves now repurposed as offices and residential; Simcity-ish bit on the outskirts where somebody decided to build a grand scheme, like La Défense. Zoning is starting to leak into urban planning a bit more, when huge housing estates are built with no shops, pubs, or facilities. As far as I can tell demand for housing outstrips everything else.
  - CraigJPerry 6y ago
    Is it true that walking on rural roads at night is horrendously dangerous? I was thinking less traffic means its probably safer than the collisions that happen when pedestrians step off the pavement in town. I found something that kind of supports this notion but isn’t really conclusive https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/448036/pedestrian-casualties-2013-data.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Wonder if you have a link to share?

rland 6y ago

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.

0xCMP 6y ago
Japan is what made me realize how this is the answer. Zoning and making businesses possible inside neighborhoods makes areas much more walkable.
davesque 6y ago
Yes, this! This is one of the stupid-simple reasons I love traveling in Japan.
jkhdigital 6y ago
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.
- ehnto 6y ago
  There is another quirk to Japan that seems to make this work so well, and that's how quiet it can be. I am sure there are exceptions, but for the most part even in packed areas with dozens of people walking the street, it is mostly quiet. I think low car density plays a pretty big role in lowering the the overall sound levels, but there must be more to it than that. It was surreal at times.

throw737 6y ago

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

frank2 6y ago
Is this in the US or some other country?
- throw737 6y ago
  Hungary
- alexashka 6y ago
  Alcoholics hanging around liquor stores is a universal.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

Animats 6y ago

It's like having a convenience store in the lobby of an apartment building. Seems like a great idea, but it takes a huge apartment building, or a city block of modest ones, to support a convenience store. Vending machines, maybe. We see this with all those "mixed use" buildings going up in Silicon Valley, with retail spaces on the ground floor. It's really hard to fill those retail spaces.

zip1234 6y ago
The problem is that all of those places are planned. I get major 'Soviet Central Planning' vibes from the USA when it comes to zoning and planning out cities. Of course the people making the decisions on planning have no idea what will work. They only know what will work in the most rudimentary, scaled up, sense. Small shops need to be allowed everywhere, rules about minimum parking, lot sizes, use, etc need to be relaxed to allow those things to even be possible.
- madamelic 6y ago
  Suburbs are literally rooted in racism. That sounds hyperbolic, but the first suburb in post-war US was a planned whites-only community to escape the city. (Levittown) --- With that said, yes, the US purposefully planned blocks of cities to be dedicated to one purpose. This promotes car culture which, surprise surprise, car and oil companies were big into lobbying to shut down mixed use and public transit, and continue to be. Mixed use areas are typically either big cities, have pre-war origins where it has basically always been mixed use or typically both.
aahhahahaaa 6y ago
Well of course, who can afford the rent? It's not like a little four-employee computer repair shop can show up and fill the space.
- jwkane 6y ago
  Even if the rent was subsidized or more likely rent-controlled -- you still have to pay those four employees enough to live in commute range. That forces the margins you have to charge for computer repairs to shot up to a level that would make the Geek Squad blush.

rgacote 6y ago

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. Local businesses improve the community.

oftenwrong 6y ago
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.
jamestimmins 6y ago
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.

aahhahahaaa 6y ago

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?

lotsofpulp 6y ago
People wanted their children to be separate from people of other socioeconomic classes (and races), and the way to do that in the US is to move to a school district they others can’t afford.
- chills 6y ago
  This has also been the case for hundreds of years though.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    They might not have had the means to do it though. Cheap fuel, cheap cars, 30 year fixed rate mortgages, widening income/wealth bands, etc.
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    Not to the same extent. It wasn't until cars became a thing that it became practical for most rich people to live more than a (healthy) walking distance away from working class people. If they lived too far away, then you wouldn't be able to have them work for you.
- munk-a 6y ago
  Not just afford - often time those suburbs specifically barred non-whites from owning property. Additionally red-lining and racist loan practices forced that wealth gap to grow. But I think that's separate from the car issue, mostly. Originally satellite communities had commercial services - local shops and the like. But those were phased out due to a lack of demand, I think due to societal shifts that were egged on by marketing "cool kids have cars" - and the like.

oftenwrong 6y ago

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.

toofy 6y ago

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...

bri3d 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_cooperative ? 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.
- toofy 6y ago
  Yeah, food coops but strictly limited to a residents of neighborhood would be close to what I had in mind. I wonder if you could put in the association bylaws that it must remain free of profits/margins/“arbitrage” to mitigate against something like this. I haven’t looked into it closely though since I ultimately have a strong distaste for home owners associations anyway.

kerkeslager 6y ago

A simple rule that I think would improve a lot of communities: any retail-zoned business (stores, restaurants, etc.) must be owned with a controlling interest by people with a residency within 10 miles. I don't really see much point focusing on the size of buildings. Fix the money and the other issues will follow. EDIT: If you think I'm wrong feel free to explain why.

lykahb 6y ago

Vibrant downtowns of many American cities were built before the zoning laws. Their desirability is the most obvious proof that mixed zoning has benefits.

jungletime 6y ago

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.

cwkoss 6y ago
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

toastal 6y ago

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.

hnarn 6y ago
> Most every building in towns is at least two stories with shops under the tenant's quarters. Compare this with modern (past five/ten years) architecture in Sweden: concrete, "modern" flats with zero expression that mostly are composed entirely of residential units. You might literally see a block of 8-10 buildings, maybe five stories high, that has one commercial unit at the very end of one of the buildings. It's ridiculous. This type of architecture is killing newly produced areas completely unnecessarily, and I suspect it's because the one time income of selling a flat is preferred over the monthly income of renting to a business.
wastedhours 6y ago
> This ends up being one of the biggest reasons I enjoy living in Thailand Only visited briefly, but was going to post that they seem to get it right in Thailand. Some of the best restaurants are on the porch of someone's house, there's usually some kind of corner shop below most large buildings, most places are walkable or have adapted some kind of small persona transport.

dhosek 6y ago

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: https://goo.gl/maps/NCd45ghd6ajfPvLB6 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.

adamredwoods 6y ago
Just a block away from a 7-11.
vidanay 6y ago
I've always liked the fact that nearly every major street in Chicago is lined with small businesses and the residential streets are no more than 4-5 blocks away from a major street.
tropdrop 6y ago
The housewives aspect of it is a strange thing to focus on - this is a relic of a time when most people did not drive, i.e. this style of living was natural to everyone, housewife or no, prior to Eisenhower-era financial incentives to build highways everywhere[1], and especially in areas of "urban blight," which, of course, were also usually the densest parts of neighborhoods/cities since the poor did not have cars. Some cities, e.g. New York, succeeded in preventing the demolishing of some of their most historic places in the name of "cleaning up." Most other places were not as successful, though many tried[2]. Chicago's aptly named Eisenhower Expressway is a great example of activist efforts often not being enough[3]. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs#Struggle_for_Greenwich_Village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs#Struggle_for_Green... 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Urban_Interstates_abandoned_because_of_local_opposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Urba... 3 - https://interactive.wbez.org/curiouscity/eisenhower/ https://interactive.wbez.org/curiouscity/eisenhower/

kbos87 6y ago

Better yet, outlaw a business like amazon and create an instant market for tens of thousands of small local businesses.

heidegger 6y ago

good idea but we can do ever better than that by build co-ops in residential neighborhoods what we need are goods and services where people are, but that doesn't necessarily mean provided by businesses when they could be provided to and by the people who are already there

itisit 6y ago

Seems like an invitation for loitering among other nuisances. A great idea for some places, but I feel there are many who prefer their neighborhoods truly remain residential.

frequentnapper 6y ago

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.

duxup 6y ago

I like this idea mostly, except maybe the restaurant with outdoor seating. Not sure I would want that to pop up next door / be loud late into the evening.... At least I wouldn't expect it to just pop up.

Cogito 6y ago
In my experience, the licensing laws typically deal with this. If a restaurant or bar, they can't serve alcohol or have live music after 9pm, or similar rules. Works pretty well, and I'd much rather have the small restaurant or bar next door than not!

holler 6y ago

In Seattle this is prevalent, part of the charm.

lazyasciiart 6y ago
Only in parts of it. There's a lot of the city that is just not suited to a walking lifestyle.
- siosonel 6y ago
  My wife and I got electric bikes about 8 weeks ago and they have been great for running errands in lieu of single-occupancy car trips. We live near the Interurban Trail/Aurora and the e-bikes enable much easier access to a variety of stores, restaurants, and parks, which are not easily walkable. We now appreciate the nearby bike lanes and quiet streets for making longer trips to bigger parks or neighboring downtowns like Edmonds. We recently had wanted to return to Capitol Hill to enjoy a more walkable neighborhood, but so far bikeabilty has been an excellent substitute. Plus, in four years there will be a light rail station near us to offer yet another alternative to car trips. We feel lucky to have these options in our "suburban" location.
y2bd 6y ago
Fellow Seattlite here. Seeing folks in this thread talking about grocery stores being 40+ minute walks away from grocery stores is making me sweat. I like the idea of moving somewhere cheaper, but I refuse the idea of being forced to drive everywhere.

mberning 6y ago

I would love to own a true neighborhood pub. A literal “public house”. Nothing fancy but a nice watering hole for the locals.

tinyhouse 6y ago

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.

murrayhenson 6y ago
> Cambridge "Our fair city!" -Tom Magliozzi

digitalsushi 6y ago

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.

ed312 6y ago
Having lived in a dense suburb outside of Providence RI with a local pub just one large parking lot away, I can tell you: it sucks. Noise at all hours, drunks everywhere, broken glass, constant smell of cigarette smoke. Replace pub with "well maintained park with children's play area" and you might be on to something.
- jamil7 6y ago
  It might be a cultural thing but my home country Australia and the in the UK the local pub in smaller towns is often a much more family oriented place. Often there is outdoor seating and families go for dinner together, often there is live local music. People also go just to drink but it’s all mixed together, of course this varies depending on what part of a town or city you’re in, some are more family oriented than others. I think that kind of pub would fit well with OP’s description more than yours.
asveikau 6y ago
You might not have as big a belly if you need to walk a few minutes to get the beer and go home.

j45 6y ago

This would be great to see, even if they were pop up spaces that could cycle through providing what a neighbourhood might need at any given time.

cletus 6y ago

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.

spicyramen 6y ago

Coming from Latin America,this was the best way for someone to get their business started and get some extra cash. From selling candies, to food and groceries. All that came to an end when Walmart and other chain companies such as 711 or Oxxo appeared..

seiferteric 6y ago

Yes! When I lived in an old house in the outskirts of Chico, there was a random little coffee shop right down the street. Seemed totally out of place but I loved it. I would really like small cafes and shops inside the Suberbs!

basicplus2 6y ago

Yeh! Bring back freecorns!

Causality1 6y ago

I suppose this would work very well for people with a particular outlook. I'm not one of them. My neighborhood is a refuge from commerce; I don't want stores within earshot of my front door. I don't want people I don't know walking past my yard at night.

scarface74 6y ago

Not totally on topic... I have to admit the one thing I miss about moving out to the burbs from the relatively upscale apartments we lived in for awhile was that we had restaurant and major grocery stores within walking distance

moltar 6y ago

I hate North America’s zoning laws with a passion. They just create dead zones and forces everyone to travel distances. 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.

jojobas 6y ago

Downtowns may be abandoned, but the shopping malls aren't (where I live). Local businesses still can't compete with big box stores.

egypturnash 6y ago

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...

juniper_strong 6y ago
If you bike everywhere why are you going to the auto shop?
- cawlin 6y ago
  I'd guess for auto supplies. You can bike "everywhere" and still own a vehicle for visiting places outside a city proper.
- egypturnash 6y ago
  I don’t, it’s just one of the many businesses lurking in my neighborhood. I pass it regularly on my way elsewhere.
webninja 6y ago
Yeah the state government is too poor and devoid of tax dollars, so they can’t do anything about that unfortunately.

Jugurtha 6y ago

I live in the suburbs. In a radius of 200m from where I live, 2 minutes on foot, here are some of the businesses there are: - Car accessory workshop for aftermarket accessories - Car mechanic - Car tire shop (they check, patch, and change your tires) - Bycicle and bike repair shop - Car electricians (3) - Car wash (3) - Carpenter - House appliance shop - Travel agencies - Accountant - RV home maker - Shop to print motifs on shirts/clothes - Opticians - Sauna (3) one with a gym, a swimming pool, etc. - Showers - Bathroom - Kitchenware shop - Barbers (2) - Bakeries (4) - Pharmacists (2) - Dentist (2) - Pediatrician - Generalist MD - Gynaecologist - Endocrinologist - Medical analyses lab - Insurance company - Printing shop - Children's clothes shops - Adults' clothes shops - Internet café - Coffee shops - Grocery shops - Tailor - Pastery shop - Kiosques - Jeweler - Electronics shop - A blacksmith - A small theme park for kids - Food joints (pizzerias, burgers, grills, others) - Protective equipment shop - Office supplies/Stationery/Chairs/Tables, etc. - Electric motors repair shop - Minimarkets (3) - Gyms Others: - Primary school - Middle school - Police station - A football stadium converted to a gymnasium Bigger: - Cheese factory - Yogurt factory - Other industrial stuff - Car dealerships Farther (300m): fresh produce market, pharmacy, and a bunch of other shops. Farther (10 minutes): - A green space of about 350 acres The catch: a lot of them live there. By there I mean they own the house. The shops are on the street level, and they live in the upper levels. Some others live nearby, as in are either the owner's neighbor from a few houses away or 5 minutes down the road. But you can pretty much do a lot without moving.

laxk 6y ago
Where do you live?
- Jugurtha 6y ago
  In Algiers, Algeria.

ApolloFortyNine 6y ago

I live somewhere that has tiny businesses like this. I still end up driving to my local discount grocery store because, despite having a very well paying for the area, I just can't bring myself to spend anywhere form 30% more to even double for 'the good stuff' when I can get generics for so much less. So sorry, guess I'm part of the problem, but I'd rather spend money on stuff I actually want.

ilaksh 6y ago

http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage/ http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage/

rwhitman 6y ago

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. 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#.XxptmPipGL4 https://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20130131.php#.Xxptm...

goda90 6y ago

When I lived in Chile, I really enjoyed the little tiendas everywhere, particularly the ones that were bakeries. I have a hard time imagining how well something similar would work in my suburban neighborhood where everyone has cars. Maybe a destination like a cafe, but it just makes more sense for people around here to get a bunch of shopping done at the grocery store 5 minutes away in their car.

senojretep356 6y ago

Good idea, I like mixed zoning and supporting small local businesses rather than behemoths like Walmart.

HeadsUpHigh 6y ago

The USA is the only place I know that doesn't have businesses in residential neighborhoods. I really don't understand why it is that way. We have mini-markets with a small stock of most commonly bought items, fridges with water iced tea etc, cigarettes newspapers on almost every corner. And it doesn't need to stop there. Why not laundry shops? Small cafes, etc. 99.99% of any potential issues can be taken care of with simple laws such as noise limits etc.

pmlnr 6y ago

:: insert ancient aliens meme with 'americans' overlay ::

acd 6y ago

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.

hnarn 6y ago
I'm Swedish and while I'd love to take credit for this type of structure, surely this is much older and more widespread? If you travel to France you notice immediately that there's a bakery, a butcher etc. in every town, so some part of it is down to culture and political decisions (like Sweden in the 50's), but if we move back in time this was the absolute default for a very simple reason: any other setup than the "close community shops" was untenable until the introduction of the automobile. So this model that we now consider exotic has actually been the standard for 99% of human history, but since the early 1900s we have been caught in a feedback loop of increased mobility -> lower real estate prices outside of the city -> cheaper goods which to this day is killing city centers commercially all across Sweden. I absolutely welcome this change, but I think it's important to point out that the reason it now seems so attractive is because this mobility that fueled the entire change has now essentially disappeared. I can only hope that with increased environmental consciousness, it becomes even more outdated, because I really dislike it. Here's to hoping we get a future composed of small local stores, and "big-box" corporations with excellent shipping options instead of expecting you to come to them. It can't happen soon enough.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

It's not viable unless they get an x amount of foot traffic, which is why these shops tend to be in city / commercial centers instead. That said, back in my hometown we used to have multiple businesses on wheels visiting once a week; ice cream truck, fish, a grocery shop, a mail-order frozen-products guy, etc. I've seen the same happen in a commercial district, mostly big office buildings with underground parking, but there was an ice cream and a coffee trike doing the rounds. The coffee one would set up shop at the local train station in the morning, then move to an urban park thing later in the day. The ice cream truck would move around, stand in front of the building and ring the bell.

_0o6v 6y ago

This sounds great in a utopia where everybody is quiet and considerate, delivery drivers don't throw boxes and crates around, people don't get drunk and smash bottles in the street or have arguments. Having lived next to and above commercial properties I can say it doesn't improve quality of life, it drastically impacts mental health, stress, and sleep. There's a reason that we have commercial districts and residential districts.

habosa 6y ago

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.

dutch3000 6y ago

love it. economic localization.

louwrentius 6y ago

For whoever cares about this topic: Strong Towns may be of interest. They address this topic, and put everything in a bigger picture. https://www.strongtowns.org https://www.strongtowns.org

ourmandave 6y ago

My parents ran a small business out of their home and the UPS truck came by for pick-ups every day. They had a yes/no sign in the window to signal if he had to stop or not. This was before the internet and easy scheduling.

bigbizisverywyz 6y ago

Here in Zurich this is really well done - I just wished we did it more back home in the UK too. Small businesses, e.g. coffee shops, hairdressers and florists occupy the bottom floors, and accountants and dentists the upper floors. It keeps a nice mix of building use and means some services are nicely scattered throughout the city.

blue52 6y ago

This would be an amazing solution to implement and would benefit so many who were hurt during this over reach over government into business and private lives.

lazyjones 6y ago

Tiny businesses aren't disappearing because of zoning, it's the economy of scale and heavy taxation/regulation that made them (or the lower-margin ones) unviable in places where they used to be common (like big European cities). One of the more memorable stories about a tiny waxing studio giving up here in Vienna was them being required to have employees working in rooms with windows only and the only big enough window was the storefront one.

naveen99 6y ago

Isn’t work from home basically putting business back into neighborhoods?

mdavis6890 6y ago

The fundamental problem is that we (in the US) live in a permission-based system, not a freedom-based one. In this example, you have to ask for permissions related to running a business and using land. The system that you have to ask permission from has a particular vision about how things ought to be done, and does not handle change or non-conformity well - even seeing them as a threat. One hallmark for identifying such a system is that when there is not a law about something, it is referred to in terms like "legal grey area" or "outside the law." We need to change the system to allow for freedom and individual decision making, without asking permission from the system. Freedom is what is left outside the boundaries of the law.

cpfohl 6y ago

I spent about 6 years in Poland when I was a kid. They had little kiosks (15'x15' ish?) all over, it's where you bought your daily stuff you didn't want to buy in bulk: bus tickets, gum, newspapers, bread, vegetables. This feels like a no brainer to me.