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Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

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Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#101

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Spooky23 wrote: post #30
madamelic wrote: post #2

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 touri…

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 problem is people want to call it "mixed zoning" but still have Karens on the central planning committee making stupid rules, e.g. they'll have "businesses" next to "residences" but a given plot will be explicitly designated as one or the other.

What you really want is the small businesses which start off being operated out of the proprietor's residence. A hair salon in a converted living room, a restaurant serving food from the owner's home kitchen. Something that can start off as a side business yet can advertise without getting into legal trouble and grow into more if it's successful.

You get a few of those in an area and someone decides it's a good place to knock down a house and put up a five story building with condos on top and a coffee shop and a bakery on the ground floor.

You have to let it grow organically like that or you just end up with abandoned "commercial" buildings because businesses fear moving in when they know their success would lead to increased rents as a result of the limited amount of designated-commercial real estate in the area.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#103

Post by novok »

claudeganon wrote: post #80
nitwit005 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#105

Post by neutronicus »

madamelic wrote: post #2

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 touri…

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.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#106

Post by bobthepanda »

neutronicus wrote: post #105
madamelic wrote: post #2

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 touri…

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.

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.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#107

Post by toofy »

bri3d wrote: post #40
toofy wrote: post #17

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 r…

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.

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.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#108

Post by bobthepanda »

senkora wrote: post #99
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Mixed use neighborhoods of the past generally offer business diversity and lots of mom-and-pops.

A lot of the new mixed use developments where I live in Seattle are basically malls in how sterile and unvaried the commercial bits are. (New American upscale brunch restaurant? Check. Fad group fitness club? Check. Bank and starbucks? Check.)

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#109

Post by enchiridion »

TheAdamist wrote: post #82
nitwit005 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you are big enough theres some weird accounting incentive to keep it vacant. You can keep claiming it as an asset that brings in 10x dollars, even though your cash flow is 0x, so actually renting for 8x really hurts your asset value or some nonsense that im probably getting the details wrong about.

Right, which is why commercial lending is a farce in my opinion. It's more or less built on wishful thinking of future gains, leading to a lot of vacancy.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#110

Post by tropdrop »

dhosek wrote: post #36

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/NCd45gh…

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_Green... 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Urba...

3 - https://interactive.wbez.org/curiouscity/eisenhower/

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