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Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

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Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#151

Post by ehnto »

jkhdigital wrote: post #10
rland wrote: 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…

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…

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.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#153

Post by moltar »

kilroy_jones wrote: post #63
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…

Assuming you're in America, most areas are not dense enough to accommodate mixed use zoning unless they start building up. The other half is getting priced out like your grandma.

Density is a function of zoning laws. They should just fix the zoning and make sure it has adequate density to support business.

I think citizens can vote with their dollar where they want to live. I hate suburbia, but I’m also not into super central downtown living. I want something in between. I’m ok with a townhouse and no backyard, as long as there’s a park nearby. I’m up for living with neighbours in a dense area, but only if I can get something for it, like shared neighbourhood amenities and small businesses in walking distance.

Montreal is a good example for North America. Not all of it is perfect, but a lot of it is mixed zoning.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#154

Post by PakG1 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #146
gotoeleven wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It truly is the golden era of officious busybodies.

Tangentially related, but a colleague just got their replacement of kitchen cabinets shut down by the local government for not having a permit. It’s baffling to me that the government requires that you get permission to do significant modification to the inside of your own home, especially for non structural work.

What the heck? How would they even know? Neighbours reported seeing them carrying new cabinets in? The store reported it to the government? That's just weird.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#155

Post by RockIslandLine »

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.

You get all kinds, possibly depending on when the town was established. For many of the Chicago suburbs, there is a defined "business district" where most of the restaurants, bars, barbershops, etc are. This may very well be a couple of streets that run all the way across town. Frequently, every 4th or 8th street is "arterial", and the bulk of the businesses will be on those streets. So you have a few to several blocks of "internal" streets where there is indeed only residential housing.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#156

Post by cameldrv »

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…

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.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#157

Post by bobthepanda »

Cogito wrote: post #69
epistasis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, basically it comes down to racism and classism, and a bit of the fight against communism. There used to be racial covenants that ensures racial segregation. As soon as those were rendered illegal, people started zoning for "public safety" and such. The original decision (Euclid?) that rendered zoning legal explicitly states concerns about lower income people degrading neighborhoods if multi-family residences are…

> The rise of the automobile and destruction of commuter rail lead to a ton of land accessible to people who worked in cities. And in conjunction with the exclusionary zoning that was used to protect the capitalistic gains of property values, the idea of mixed-use zoning became antiquated and counter productive to financial and social interests. This is a solid argument, but I don't see the link between this and raci…

One missing link is that most highways in the US were plowed through "low value" land areas, usually either industrial areas or minority areas of any wealth bracket.

If racism and classism didn't exist, we probably would've built less highways because building them through any residential areas would've been politically impossible (indeed, the first successful freeway revolts were centered around rich, white areas.) Given that it would basically be impossible to draw a straight line through an urban area without hitting a residential area, it would've made highway travel for commuting much less feasible, making it much harder for suburbanization to spread widely due to longer road travel times.

As a comparison, Frankfurt in western Germany has a population of 5.8M and land area of 5,700 sq mi. Atlanta has a metro population of 6M and land area of 10,494 sq mi.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#158

Post by antonvs »

gotoeleven wrote: post #142
pj_mukh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Karen’s on the central planning committee” cries in San Francisco So apt.

It truly is the golden era of officious busybodies.

And misogyny apparently.

Let's not pretend that all people like that are women.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#159

Post by AmericanChopper »

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…

> Like other similar stores, her rent went up 5x and she shuttered.

Want to know the best way to protect against exceedingly high prices? Increase supply. If the market had enough supply to meet its own demand, then that situation wouldn’t be possible. The number one thing that holds back the supply of real estate is insane zoning and planning regulation.

The idea that permanently preserving nonsense like the “character” of neighbourhood, at the cost of affordable housing and business rent has to be one of the most anti-social mobility, anti-equality, openly classist ideas we have in our society. “But what if somebody builds an apartment tower next to my expensive Victorian house?”, good! Maybe there’ll be less people sleeping on the streets and in their cars because of it.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#160

Post by antonvs »

jrd259 wrote: post #116
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…

It's not obvious why you have to call out the nationality of the investor.

There's some relevance in that investors like that are likely to have no ties to the community and no interest in anything other than profit. Of course many local investors are the same way.
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