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Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

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Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#91
post #3

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 o…

Some that size in japan have earned 3 Michelin stars, as jiro dreams of sushi famously did, before the stars were withdrawn due to lack of public access.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#92
post #60

How did we slip away so far from this being fairly obvious? Cities have worked well this way for hundreds of years. Maybe the industrial revolution made cities too unpleasant? Were we too spoiled by the automobile industry and government roads? White flight from cities into the suburbs?

I have no idea if this has always been the case, but people seem to look at their house as a bank account. They defend it and try and raise prices by blocking new development, keeping residents deemed undesirable out, and enforcing a consistent cookie cutter look with trimmed lawns and just the right number of cars in the driveway. With that mindset a business could bring in outsiders and be bad for their property va…

With aggressive reverse mortgage programs, many people use their house as a retirement account. A house is generally the most expensive thing the average person purchases, and is the most obvious source to convert into an income. With a finite amount of land, and lots of increasingly desperate retirees with excellent positions to relax a claim for some temporary relief, someone is always ready to point out their house is their paycheck.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#94
post #3

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 o…

Your description reminds me a lot of the restaurant in Midnight Diner.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#95

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?

The suburbs grew because of some legitimate reasons. In the mid-20th century cities were very crowded. It's one thing to live alone in a 1000 sq ft condo in a city now. 70 years ago that equivalent space was housing a family of five. More space for less money was enabled by automobiles, and it was a great improvement for many. That said many suburbs botched their expansions with tract housing and poor urban design, b…

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Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#96
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.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 storefro…

The only way this story makes sense to me is if some other business took over the coffee shop space and paid the 5x rent.

It's also possible the new landlords internally drove out the tenant to not have to deal with the hassle of having a tenant. This could make sense if they wanted the building as a store of value and didn't care about the rental income. If nobody is there nobody will accidentally start a fire while cooking.

It would probably make sense for the city/whatever to incentivise against that.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#98
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Heck yes I want to move away from socioeconomic classes that could potentially put my daughter in harms way. We lived in a lower class neighborhood and while my two year old daughter was playing with a shovel in the front yard a drug deal went bad at the house across from us and the kid (he was maybe 16) started shooting his gun into the air. I’d stopped his mom from strangling him two years before that. Before that,…

There are other options to stark neighborhood socioeconomic divisions. Imagine if everything was averaged out a bit more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-15/the-desig...

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 storefro…

Pretty much. Modern mixed-use developments are basically born again shopping malls. We don't have the density for "real" mixed use, so it's just a development project like any other; I'm sure there are real, integrated, mixed-use projects, but the ones I see in small urban/suburban areas are detached from the surrounding area and often detached from public transport, basically to sell overpriced apartments to lifesty…

Is that really a problem though? I'm imagining a mixed-use development surrounded by many blocks of single family homes and a large parking garage nearby, like a mall, that makes it easy for homeowners to access the development. (I think this is what you mean by born again shopping mall)

I live nearby one such development, and it's awesome (when there isn't a pandemic). There's a great variety of retail because they can rely on both local residents and homeowners who drive in, and it's thriving (when there isn't a pandemic).

More apartments have been built up around the development as it's grown, and while it's very detached from the urban center there is a bus route that connects it and the other apartments throughout the suburb to the light rail system.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#100
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racism. The roots of zoning are indelibly intertwined with reinforcing white supremacy.

Even with no zoning laws quite a few areas in the US would be like this. Companies have built giant housing developments with no shops.

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