On 6/27/2018 10:24 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-06-26 17:50, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/26/2018 6:40 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-06-26 13:34, sms wrote:
On 6/26/2018 11:25 AM, Joerg wrote:
No, that comes from not having the stupid zoning laws we have. If I
needed groceries or nearly anything else I could walk. As in "just
across the street" which is, for example, where the grocery store was.
The bank was immediately next door, literally. The post office was
diagonally across the street. The next church was less than 500ft
away. And so on.
This feeds on itself.
We have approved numerous "Mixed-Use" developments. The businesses
struggle and don't last long. The amount of housing isn't enough to
support the businesses and the people that don't live there expect
plentiful parking to be easily available, and close, which it isn't. I
talked to a commercial real estate broker about this.
They need to go to Europe and learn. Why has none of the mixed use I
was exposed to over there for decades failed?
The only businesses that went bust were factories but that had nothing
to do with mixed use. Those went because Eastern Europe and Asia had
much cheaper labor and no unions.
See
http://cumbelich.com/blog/the-inconvenient-truth-about-mixed-use.
"As far as trends in retail real estate development go, none during my
30-years in the industry has been more counter-productive or
government-driven than residential over retail mixed-use development
(RRMU).
Pick just about any Bay Area city and you will easily identify any
number of RRMU projects that have been proposed, entitled and/or
developed over the past ten years.Â* And with rare exception, these
projects suffer the same ills…relatively high vacancy rates,
substantially below market rents, poor credit tenancies and a high
turnover rate of the brokerage firms that try, with little success, to
lease what is un-leasable.
Don’t get me wrong – as a design concept RRMU...
Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* Â*Â* ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Therein lies the mistake. Stop master-planning everything, get
government out of that process and let the free market take care of
it. That is how it was in all towns I lived while in Europe. A
neighborhood pub would only open if there was enough potential. Same
for dentists, grocers and so on.
An example: There was a residential neighborhood 5mins walking from me
in the Netherlands. Single family homes, like in America. One guy
decided to open a french fries and sausage kitchen in his garage.
Actually in part of the living room backing up to the garage and the
garage became the "waiting room" with chairs and all. So he and his
family could play games, watch TV, someone would come in, order
something, he cooked it and took the cash. You could eat it right
there or take it home which most customers did. Hardly anyone came by
car and he served a small community. This provided a nice supplemental
income for the guy in the evenings and a source for quick food for the
locals (his fries were really good).
Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* ... works beautifully…in
Paris.Â* And in Manhattan.Â*Â* And therein lies a big part of the problem.
City planners and city councils across Northern California have
revealed
an inferiority complex to major urban markets around the world and
tried
to force feed this utterly urban product type into sprawling suburbs
from Concord to Novato to San Jose.Â* Only guess what, the most
important
ingredient is missing – concentrated, massive, pedestrian populations."
So why did we have that in Vaals, Netherlands, pop 5000? I've seen in
in much smaller villages during recent Germany trips. Pop 1000 and
less, everybody knows everybody else.
One new development decided not to leave space for parking along the
road, building all the way out to the street, then asked the city to
put
in limited time street parking. We declined because of the cost of
enforcement.
You chose to live in an area where it's far to everything. From my
house, in 15 minutes I can walk to three grocery stores, two drug
stores, and about 30 restaurants. By bicycle it's less than five
minutes. A house close-in was much more expensive per square foot
than a
house in the distant suburbs of San Jose. We could have had a larger,
newer house for the same money. But it sure is nice to not have to
drive
everywhere.
I could walk to one supermarket in 20mins, another two in 30mins.
Problem: No sidewalks! It's tough enough to cycle on a partially
shoulderless 45mph road where people routinely do 55mph. Did that
yesterday evening but I am not going to walk on the fog line.
You also have the issue that, despite the astr-turf YIMBY groups, that
families with children generally want to live in single family homes.
So do we. We also did in Europe and could walk to the dance club, to
numerous pubs, grocery stores, railroad station, almost everywhere.
How old were those European towns? When were they founded?
Doesn't matter.
I think it does matter.
The example I brought above was a new part of town,
built around the 70's. 1970, that is. It works. This is the area,
residential right with industrial and there is also a large supermarket
right in this development where I shopped a lot:
https://goo.gl/maps/Urm6iarPi9B2
I think there are different cultural or social expectations in Europe,
most of which are influenced by history. Europe seems to generally have
much more restrictive land use policies, and those policies seem to
promote "infill" development.
Example: In Britain, in Austria, etc. when we bicycle toured, I was
struck by the practicality of city limits. There seemed to be a boundary
around most towns, with apartments, houses, shops etc. on one side and
little but fields and forests on the other side. We saw almost no rural
convenience stores or gas stations, for example. People have been living
close for hundreds of years, and they're used to such a system.
Here, we have a pioneer mentality. The reflex is to colonize new land,
to take possession of our own acreage, and to fight any attempt to limit
what we can do with it.
So if a realty company wants to build 30 houses, of _course_ they will
buy a corn field a few miles out of town along some farm road. The land
is cheaper out there, and there are fewer zoning rules. They'll put in
twisty residential streets with only one outlet onto that farm road.
They won't bother with sidewalks, because nobody will use them.
The residents will feel like pioneers, so proud of having a new,
all-white neighborhood out in "the country." But someone will eventually
say "Hey, I can put a gas station and convenience store at their corner
and make a killing." So the parking lot lights begin to wash away the
night sky, and the traffic increases.
Soon another realty company builds another mushroom development nearby,
which triggers a little shopping plaza, and on it goes. It all happens
at low density, because everyone wants an acre of lawn to mow.
Connectivity is actively discouraged, because residents don't want
strangers in their neighborhood at all. A motor vehicle - preferably an
SUV - is the only socially acceptable way to enter or leave the
neighborhood. And people wanting to escape from the traffic to and from
those developments soon buy into another development further yet from
town. The march continues. And if it's 30 miles to work or ten miles to
get most groceries, who cares?
We had friends from Dublin, Ireland stay with us some years ago. One of
their most-repeated comments was "You have so much _room_ in America!"
But they have a countryside free of endless strip malls.
--
- Frank Krygowski