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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... i

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?

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?