I'm pretty sure that having no zoning regulations in addition to allowing business and residence in the same building would improve a lot. Who doesn't want to live above a grocery store?
I am fully in favor of mixed development and would love to live above a coffee shop, restaurant, bodega, retail store etc. I am not in favor of living next to a place where assembly or manufacturing is taking place (or any other industrial behavior). Either the type of business needs to be somewhat regulated or the hours in which commerce can occur need to be better regulated to encourage people to do things like replenishing inventory in the evening as opposed to early in the morning.
If by early you mean "slightly before the start of bushiness hours".
Nobody is waking up at 6am to turn wrenches at 7. Yeah, I guess if they start up at 7-8am that puts a damper on your ability to sleep in until 9 on weekdays but is that really something you find yourself wanting to do all that often? An automotive shop sounds a heck of a lot better than any establishment that is open late. I say this as someone who lives baseball throwing distance from a small business that maintains a fleet of excavators and trucks. If you live in a relatively developed area something is going to be making noise, garbage trucks, delivery trucks, nearby construction, etc.
At the time it suited me fine. It is clear to me though that we still need suburbs. For some at certain points in their life they need the quiet. We have too suburbs though. I think many folks could live in denser environs.
Its backwards that cities are more expensive than suburbs. Density should lower costs. High populations should lower costs. There should be both economies of scale and network effects. I think, to the writers point, we regulate the wrong things.
[1] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
Surely a better example would be a night club or a coal plant.
I've thought I should open a suburban bodega right in the neighborhood. But with lot sizes being fairly large and households being fairly small, i doubt I would get enough traffic since I couldn't compete with discount grocers and Walmart.
C'est la vie, I bought a muscly convertible to enjoy these interstitial commutes.
Years before I met her, my wife lived above a grocery store. She absolutely loved it: the entire store was effectively her fridge, and she didn’t need to get dressed for the outdoors to buy food. Listening to her talk about it, I really hope that we’re able to live above one together someday.
This feels to me like a lot of urbanist stories: it really is nice, once one has experienced it.
Sounds like a great reason to blacklist that developer for, say, 5 years.
It's also nice for people in the neighborhood when there's a coffee shop, grocery store, etc within like a 200m walk.
These were not supermarket-style shops. You would walk in and be served directly over the counter in most. It's a shame that this was all destroyed by big supermarkets and globalism, because the quality of the products and service was superb, and they all sold locally produced food and goods, supporting a lot of local economic activity rather than having massive supply chains to source everything from China. The staff weren't minimum wage and disinterested, they were experts in their fields who cared about their businesses and customers, and had pride in their jobs and skills. Their destruction is one of the reasons why so many of our towns are struggling.
Doing nothing but knocking down a wall and putting up a sign is a sure way to get shut down by the city, along with some likely hefty fines.
Edit: another barrier is building insurance; if a building is all residential, and someone wants to convert ground level space to commercial use, the insurance company has to re-assess the risk and premiums they charge due to the increase in people coming through, if nothing else.
Assuming this is sarcasm, you don't need to have no zoning regulations. Existing zoning types like "residential mixed-use", which usually have restrictions on the type of businesses that can be operated within them, could be expanded. If the area is sparse enough, mixed-use could just be a business district you could walk to, not necessarily one right underneath you.
> Who doesn't want to live above a grocery store?
Again, assuming this is sarcasm. In many places, if the grocery store is clean and has things that the residents above actually want, a lot of people would like living above it - so much so that today, it's considered a "feature" of premium real estate and apartments in big city high-rises.
Of course nobody wants to live above any poorly kept space. If a poorly kept space were to appear below your home, you have the option of moving to a place that isn't like that.
(EDIT: I misread sarcasm in your comment. But my reply works the same either way :)
People who don't like pests. People who don't like truck deliveries early in the morning or late at night.
Grocery stores are a mild example and I get the point you're making, but there are downsides to living above one. I've met people who listed one of those reasons for not living above one when I lived in Brooklyn.
It's mostly the pests though. I know a couple of people who lived above restaurants and grocery stores who said never again because of the amount of roaches that get into their place.
Maybe there are building adaptations to reduce the problem, that stores in that area don't do?
This same principle doesn't seem to apply to people who buy cheap(er) houses near an existing airport, though...
The answer is that the apartment above the grocery store is an apartment for someone who would have lived in a place less desirable to them otherwise.
That said, having lived above a restaurant, I personally will never again live in a building shared with a food-related business. Even the cleanest tend to have a poor record controlling pests; and when they exterminate, all the critters will flee into your apartment.
A grocery store a couple doors down on the same block, though? Ideal. Pharmacy on the ground floor of my building? Absolutely. Shoe store? Jewelry store? Toy store? Hairdresser? Why the hell not?
Many of the most popular neighborhoods in New York are built out like this. The convenience is part of what makes them so popular.
The cockroaches are a downside, as are the bottle deposit machines running (and crunching glass) at all hours, but you're mostly right.
Anyway not sure most residents even know where there but we have tons of hazardous chemicals at the site including drums of JP8 (jet fuel) stored outside near the “common areas”, giant totes of cyclohexane in a shed on the parking lot. Inside we also have a polymer production line where one has to wear anti static shoes and all the equipment doors are blast rated because of the explosive hazards. We also have a ballistics range in the building shooting up to .50 cal armor piercing rounds.
We also have regular evac and containment drills in case something goes terribly wrong. This is all fine and good as I’m well aware of any risks working there but the residents a few walls removed might have a different opinion if they took a stroll through our facility.
Point being, sometimes a few zoning regs can be a good thing ;)
If anything, it was pretty easy to walk down an buy some daily food items.
Certainly it's not the greatest option if what you value most is total quiet. But with that, a residential-only street frequented by cars is a bigger nuisance than a corner shop with very low car traffic around it (all parking was ~300ft away).
Should there be an industrial kitchen in the grocery store, zoning and building codes are used to insure that should there be a fire, it won't impact those living above, even though it absolutely increases the cost of construction (and sets minimums on what the cost of housing is).