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Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

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Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#121

Post by refurb »

rodgerd wrote: post #79
aahhahahaaa wrote: post #13

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?

> How did we slip away so far from this being fairly obvious? Cities have worked well this way for hundreds of years. Capitalism. Economies of scale. Taxpayer subsidies for car infrastructure. Nowadays Amazon, Uber Eats, etc. Try actually running a local dairy or restaurant or electronics store and see how long it takes for you to be crushed out of existence by people driving to the supermarket 5 km away, or just ord…

Yup. Currently live in a walkable neighborhood and yeah, it’s awesome to walk 2 min to buy some milk or grab a bite to eat.

My weekly grocery run? Grab the car and go to Costco, otherwise my grocery budget would double.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#122

Post by throw737 »

claudeganon wrote: post #111
novok wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Replace portion of income tax with simple property tax. No complicated stuff like "unoccupied property taxes and non-resident investor taxes".

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#123

Post by ed312 »

digitalsushi wrote: post #77

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.

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.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#125

Post by moltar »

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.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#126

Post by aahhahahaaa »

smoe wrote: post #43
aahhahahaaa wrote: post #13

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?

Never been to an US residential area and only "know" them from tv shows. Are they really pretty much completely devoid of businesses as this article indicates? No grocery / mom and pop stores, bars, restaurants, hair dressers etc.? That sounds very inconvenient. I always assumed you'd get some basic commercial everywhere.

Yes. It's very normal to not have any business within a 30 minute walk (or more), and even if you did want to walk there... it's also normal for there to be kilometers of roads without sidewalks. They just don't bother.

Often the businesses get crammed together on some busy streets with fast-moving traffic, large parking lots, and few sidewalks.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#127

Post by moltar »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #101
Spooky23 wrote: post #30

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 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 servi…

Yup see “shop houses” [1] in Southeast Asia for how it should be done.

Shop house is a flexible creature. It can be a business, but is also easily converted into living quarters, if necessarily, or a parking garage, or whatever you want. It’s just a flexible, convertible space.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shophouse

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#129

Post by _delirium »

bobthepanda wrote: post #106
neutronicus wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#130

Post by egypturnash »

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...

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