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Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

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Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#371

Post by macNchz »

viraptor wrote: post #336
jessaustin wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...walking on rural roads at night where there is no footpath is horrendously dangerous... Do you have to walk on the road? One might have expected that in rural areas one could walk through fields and forests.

The context here is UK rural areas which are not quite like other places. Imagine a road that can fit 1 car, with wider places every few hundred metres and 2m+ hedges on both sides, immediately next to the road. Apart from specific paths you can't really go into a field. Random example https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/narrow-road-high-hedge-18153... Not all counties will look like that, but quite a lot of them to. Ima…

I found myself walking on one of these roads as the sun began to set last summer and it was actually quite terrifying.

We’d made a long loop walking through the hills in the Cotswolds, and the guidebook would have had us crossing a large pasture to get back to the start. At the gate we were confronted by a couple of rowdy young bulls who seemed to have little interest in letting us cross their field, so we took the road instead. Thankfully we could hear cars coming from far away and could position ourselves for maximum visibility in the curves, but it certainly felt like one of the more dangerous miles I’ve ever walked.

On the main topic of this thread, one thing I did note during our two weeks of touring the British countryside was that the network of walking paths and tiny villages made even rural places much more walkable than in the US. One fairly isolated farm we stayed at had a hand drawn guide to getting to multiple nearby-ish pubs via footpaths through the fields. A comparable place in the US would have been 100% car dependent.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#372

Post by epistasis »

baldeagle wrote: post #87
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…

I think that people underestimate the generational effects of the FHA loans being locked to suburbanized white neighborhoods. The rise of the automobile combined with the post-war FHA loan restrictions allowed one group of people to 'invest' in their homes and land, while excluding (mostly) another group. Check out https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history... for an overview of 'The Color of Law' m…

Thanks for linking this summary! This is by far the most controversial comment I've ever made here, it keeps on fluctuating in score. I hope it prompts some people to examine the history, but unfortunately I did not provide any scholarship to back up my views, which are heterodox in the general population but I think commonly held by those who investigate the boring subject of zoning.

Some other sources of how systemic racism in government has been used to further single-use suburban planning:

Segregation by Design by Jessica Trounstine https://urbanaffairsreview.com/2019/06/24/segregation-by-des...

Neighborhood Defenders by Einstein, Glick, and Palmer https://www.politicsofhousing.com/neighborhood_defenders/

A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow in South Florida by NDB Connolly https://history.jhu.edu/2014/02/19/a-world-more-concrete-rea...

Every talk I've seen by NBD Connolly is outstanding but this is the first I saw and the one that really motivated me to find more sources on this topic: https://youtu.be/DjmUWfMEhfE

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#373

Post by pedantsamaritan »

madamelic wrote: post #354
_delirium wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

>I don't totally understand the economics of how those work in NYC. Just sheer density and throughput? People like bodegas, they are everywhere and like someone else said: tax evasion. Bodegas love cash, and you learn to carry it otherwise you are going to have to meet a $5 - $10 min (which they aren't supposed to be doing, but do)

> which they aren't supposed to be doing

What is restricting them now? I knew it used to be part of the merchant-network agreement, and based on my quick searching that was due to US federal law. Then Dodd-Frank changed it to allow minimums up to $10 [0][1][2]

[0]: https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/merchant-minimu...

[1]: https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/merchants-who-v...

[2]: https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/minimum-tra...

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#374

Post by murrayhenson »

tinyhouse wrote: post #76

In the Boston area many of the nearby towns are what I call "urban suburbs". Very family friendly, many single- or two-family homes, but also very walkable and many shops throughout the town. I'm talking about towns such as Brookline, Cambridge and Arlington. They are really nice towns to live in and in very high demand.

> Cambridge

"Our fair city!" -Tom Magliozzi

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#375

Post by epistasis »

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…

I think you are definitely right that classism could also produce the same effects! However, in the US most of our classism is motivated from racism, I think. Or perhaps, if we didn't have the racism, we'd still find reason to be classist. Here is the current US president being explicit about what is usually the quiet part of the Southern strategy:

> The Suburban Housewives of America must read this article. Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. I will preserve it, and make it even better!

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/12863721751177912...

Fear-momgering about blacks being able to move into your neighborhood, like what's happening in this Tweet, is what shaped the single-use suburban dream. Levittowns, the first cookie-cutter suburbs lacking any sort of small commercial businesses, were very explicitly segregationist.

It may be possible to disentangle the racism from the classism, but in the specific example from the US, they are so tight that I have a lot of difficulty being able to find any space between them.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#376

Post by bart_spoon »

rsynnott wrote: post #267
osdiab wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Do people not even walk for leisure/exercise? Just reading this makes me feel kind of claustrophobic.

Having lived in Japan, I get what you mean about the American suburbs sounding claustrophobic, but now that I live in a pretty typical, American suburban subdivision, ironically a lot of my neighbors would feel the same way about the idea of living in a dense city.

In terms of walking for leisure and exercise, some do, but not everyone. I see people walking/jogging/biking through the neighborhood throughout the day. But the rate at which people do is likely lower than those living in more urban areas. As mentioned by commenters above, just about the only reason to walk outside in the suburbs is leisure/exercise. The nearest non-residential area from me is about 1 mile away, and that's the city core, with some restaurants, dental offices, etc. The closest grocery is probably another half mile. And I'm far closer than most. I'd say the average distance to a non-residential area for most of the city's residents is closer to 2 miles, and the average distance to a grocery store is probably near 3.

But even strictly for leisure, there are likely fewer people walking here than other cities/countries. When I lived in Japan, I went walking because if you go outside, you are basically in the street. It incentivizes walking somewhere like a park, or a shop, or path, or somewhere interesting. In a neighborhood like mine, most people have large enough yards where they can easily relax there. You can throw a football or kick a soccer ball easily. Houses with kids will often have swing sets or trampolines in their backyards. I'm in Indiana, so I estimate no less than 40% of households have a basketball hoop in their driveway or on the street in front of their house. A lot of the things that drive you to walk places in denser cities simply don't exist. Walking outside becomes a decision to walk for the sake of walking, because most people already what they would be going to a park for at home (greenery, space, playground/sporting equipment, even pools are common), and you aren't going to be close enough to actually walk to many destinations.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#377

Post by baggy_trough »

bobthepanda wrote: post #226
baggy_trough wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I wanted to do was move to a place that had rules which would keep the neighborhood the way I like.

If you're not paying neighbors to keep their land the way you like, why should you have any say in that?

If I moved into a neighborhood that had rules that I liked, and now you want to replace it with a free-for-all, should you have to pay me?

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#378

Post by [deleted] »

hinkley wrote: post #38
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…

There was a stone carver, two tofu makers, a convenience store or two, a bath house with a tiny laundromat on the side (with HE units 20 years before we got them in the States), a pachinko parlor, and who knows how many other businesses my illiterate ass couldn't identify on, or just off, the route from the suburban Tokyo apartment I was a guest in and the train station. If I got up at a decent hour, I would hear the…

[deleted]

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#379

Post by pjc50 »

jessaustin wrote: post #337
viraptor wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context here is UK rural areas which are not quite like other places. Imagine a road that can fit 1 car, with wider places every few hundred metres and 2m+ hedges on both sides, immediately next to the road. Apart from specific paths you can't really go into a field. Random example https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/narrow-road-high-hedge-18153... Not all counties will look like that, but quite a lot of them to. Ima…

That is helpful context. Wow, they really don't want to see their neighbors. Safe roads require unobstructed sight lines.

There's usually nothing but fields or woodland behind the hedges. Have a poke about on google maps. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.0386913,-0.0888581,3a,90y,...

While I agree that they're bad for sightlines, they're also traditional and may be on private land, so getting rid of them from minor roads would be a hugely unpopular undertaking.

Re: Put tiny businesses back into residential neighborhoods

#380

Post by smoe »

maxsilver wrote: post #352
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.

No, as a US citizen, they are not anything like described above. An American suburb is, basically by definition, never more than 15 minutes drive from a grocery store, a doctors office, a dental office, some sort of clothing store, at least one bar, at least one restaurant (usually 2+), at least one hair dresser, etc. It will usually all be ugly (strip malls are common), but it will be affordable and economically sus…

15 minutes drive seems quite far away to get to anything. The residential area where I grew up in had all the basics within 10-15 minutes walk. From kindergarten age to finishing secondary school I could do almost everything on my own by walking or cycling there. I rarely had to have and adult driving me. Before turning 16 I was pretty much only ever in a car or public transport for weekend trips to the mountains or going to another city. While the car is certainly convenient, it takes someones time to drive it.
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