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. 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...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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).
... works beautifully…in
Paris. And in Manhattan. 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. 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.
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/