Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 427 posts

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#231

Post by EE84M3i »

Kliment wrote: post #193
bananamerica wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is karate dojo death business? Do they kill a lot of people?

It's the kind of business that mops up empty commercial space, usually on a "until we find a better tenant" serial short-term rental agreement. See also kiosks, nail salons, vape shops, "outlets", pop-up shops etc.

Perhaps the work required to convert a vacancy into/out of a dojo or similar is relatively simple? Sure you might need to put in a pair of locker rooms and/or and perhaps an office, but it's mostly empty space. Would something like that generally even have showers/plumbing needs?

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#232

Post by hnarn »

acd wrote: post #227

This kind of city planning design was popular in Sweden in the 1950/60s with close community mini centras torg, happy that its re surging. There would usually for example be a grocery store, a hair dresser and a flower shop, usually also a local restaurant. With a good local community one does not need to use a car very often. There is also spontaneous social interactions with locals, this is something we do not get…

I'm Swedish and while I'd love to take credit for this type of structure, surely this is much older and more widespread? If you travel to France you notice immediately that there's a bakery, a butcher etc. in every town, so some part of it is down to culture and political decisions (like Sweden in the 50's), but if we move back in time this was the absolute default for a very simple reason: any other setup than the "close community shops" was untenable until the introduction of the automobile.

So this model that we now consider exotic has actually been the standard for 99% of human history, but since the early 1900s we have been caught in a feedback loop of increased mobility -> lower real estate prices outside of the city -> cheaper goods which to this day is killing city centers commercially all across Sweden.

I absolutely welcome this change, but I think it's important to point out that the reason it now seems so attractive is because this mobility that fueled the entire change has now essentially disappeared. I can only hope that with increased environmental consciousness, it becomes even more outdated, because I really dislike it.

Here's to hoping we get a future composed of small local stores, and "big-box" corporations with excellent shipping options instead of expecting you to come to them. It can't happen soon enough.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#233

Post by hnarn »

toastal wrote: post #31

This ends up being one of the biggest reasons I enjoy living in Thailand. The unplanned layouts of cities makes for a colorful and convenient experience everywhere you go. Most every building in towns is at least two stories with shops under the tenant's quarters. You also can't forget about the prevalence of street carts for food and other small things. It's usually worth exploring alleys as there will be some curio…

> Most every building in towns is at least two stories with shops under the tenant's quarters.

Compare this with modern (past five/ten years) architecture in Sweden: concrete, "modern" flats with zero expression that mostly are composed entirely of residential units. You might literally see a block of 8-10 buildings, maybe five stories high, that has one commercial unit at the very end of one of the buildings. It's ridiculous.

This type of architecture is killing newly produced areas completely unnecessarily, and I suspect it's because the one time income of selling a flat is preferred over the monthly income of renting to a business.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#234

Post by squidpie »

tkgally wrote: post #185
monkeypizza wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent blog about Japanese zoning: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

That's a good reference. In adding to zoning, there are other factors that contribute to the large number of viable tiny businesses here in Japan. One is that small shops aren't bound by as strict accessibility and fire regulations as in some other countries. A restaurant or bar, for example, that seats no more than a dozen customers and is staffed by just one or two people will often have a correspondingly tiny rest…

Obviously the specific implementation of accessibility within private home-front businesses is a complicated issue. However, I find your suggested solution of excluding disabled people from accessing small local shops rather asinine, especially considering how particularly beneficial such shops would be.

I am not here to debate or offer specific solutions, but I want to encourage able bodied folks to take the following axiom into account when discussing accessibility.

disregarding material constraints, disabled people should be able to access public spaces and attend public events.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#235

Post by cpursley »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #178
moltar wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly. That’s partly why I love living in Vietnam. The neighborhoods are so vibrant and full of life. Everyone is out on the stoop. Neighbors all know each other and buy from each other. Of course, from my apartment I hear karaoke late at night, roosters early in the morning, and construction, always construction. So there are drawbacks. It would be disruptive, especially in suburbia. But I would love some middle g…

https://missingmiddlehousing.com

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#236

Post by laxk »

Jugurtha wrote: post #132

I live in the suburbs. In a radius of 200m from where I live, 2 minutes on foot, here are some of the businesses there are: - Car accessory workshop for aftermarket accessories - Car mechanic - Car tire shop (they check, patch, and change your tires) - Bycicle and bike repair shop - Car electricians (3) - Car wash (3) - Carpenter - House appliance shop - Travel agencies - Accountant - RV home maker - Shop to print mo…

Where do you live?

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#237

Post by xvedejas »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #207
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can anyone explain how the term "Karen" isn't both racist and sexist at the same time? I hadn't heard of it until a few months ago, and now it seems everyone is using it to refer to a certain kind of "middle class white woman". A term like that to describe a certain kind of middle class asian or black man would be very offensive. Are the days where we try to exercise civility and empathy gone? It feels like society h…

I don't disagree that this hazard is real, but I also see the term used in non-racist, non-sexist ways too, sometimes with disclaimers that "obviously this isn't just white women and not all white women are like this". I realize I am likely in the minority thinking that context matters, but I want to provide my sincere stance that I think it's sometimes reasonable to call someone a Karen, assuming proper care is taken not to imply anything sexist or racist. I understand the term as meaning "busybody" more than anything else; in fact, you can use it to describe a person of any race or sex but you cannot use it for a non-busybody.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#238

Post by Cthulhu_ »

It's not viable unless they get an x amount of foot traffic, which is why these shops tend to be in city / commercial centers instead.

That said, back in my hometown we used to have multiple businesses on wheels visiting once a week; ice cream truck, fish, a grocery shop, a mail-order frozen-products guy, etc.

I've seen the same happen in a commercial district, mostly big office buildings with underground parking, but there was an ice cream and a coffee trike doing the rounds. The coffee one would set up shop at the local train station in the morning, then move to an urban park thing later in the day. The ice cream truck would move around, stand in front of the building and ring the bell.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#239

Post by dgellow »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #194
dgellow wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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). The…

~4-5 stories is totally sufficient to be "dense" compared to most of the US. Cities in the US sprawl absurdly flat. Consider that Paris is one of the densest cities in the world, and famously has almost no tall buildings.

By curiosity I checked some numbers to compare. Paris density is just crazy! When compared, Berlin (mentioned by cameldrv) really has a low density for the huge capital it is, at around ~3.9k persons/km². London seems to have around 5.5k, New York around 10.2k, while Paris is at a crazy 20.7k!

Numbers from https://versus.com/en/berlin-vs-london-vs-new-york-vs-paris/....

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#240

Post by cpursley »

osdiab wrote: post #57
smoe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I grew up in a wealthy American suburb, the nearest grocery store was a 40 minute walk from my home, and I would have looked like a madman for simply walking on any street in the entire city because literally only beggars don’t ride cars. I’m glad to be living in Tokyo now!

This. Occasionally whenever I would walk the mile to our nearest grocery store (at least there was a sidewalk) my neighbor would see my while he was driving and offer to give a ride. He was always totally perplexed why I was walking and ask if my car was broken. There's an attitude especially prevalent in the south (USA) that only poor people who can't afford a vehicle walk.

I'm glad to now live in a human-scale city in Eastern Europe. There are three "western style" grocery stores with a 5 min walk and (not including all the low-cost high-quality locally-grown fruit and vegetable kiosks). It's a bit difficult to convey how much better (or natural, rather) this way of living is to my suburb friends and family back home without experiencing it first hand.

Post reply on HN