"Integrate a variety of land uses on single-family streets."
I think this would be the best, simplest, low cost way of making places better. It fixes so many issues of suburbia - long commute times, loss of a 3rd place, not knowing neighbors.. it would also begin to incentive more sustainable commuting because why drive to somewhere that's less than a mile away, but jee wouldn't a bike make that commute better and easier to put some groceries on.
The only difficulty to my mind is in what to allow, and how many to allow per neighborhood. An easy problem to solve IMO compared to physical infrastructure plans.
So true. There’s a sort of engrained fear that by relaxing zoning restrictions they’ll all of the sudden be the only single family house in a neighborhood of skyscrapers like in the movie Up lol.
What I learned from my time in community development is that people want the amenities of a dense urban city but often refuse to accept anything but single family zoning. Most of these amenities only reach economic viability at higher density levels, so you cant have both.
We have a few examples of a little neighborhood store here. One is called Dilly Dally, its in the middle of a residential neighborhood and also is near a greenway and creek.
I don't know the hoops they had to jump through to allow it, or if maybe it had been a commercial building for decades already...
It seems like an easy solution to me would be to allow one commercial building per some amount of square milage within residential areas. Heck, we have two HUGE churches right in the middle of my neighborhood. But of course those aren't just places you can just pop in and hang out.
Allow for a small amount of small, locally owned commercial space, and ancillary structures to be used as rentals. That's all!
And it all starts with *legalizing* a mix of property uses. One of the ways planners could lean into their strengths is figuring out how to modify codes & policies.
"Integrate a variety of land uses on single-family streets."
I think this would be the best, simplest, low cost way of making places better. It fixes so many issues of suburbia - long commute times, loss of a 3rd place, not knowing neighbors.. it would also begin to incentive more sustainable commuting because why drive to somewhere that's less than a mile away, but jee wouldn't a bike make that commute better and easier to put some groceries on.
The only difficulty to my mind is in what to allow, and how many to allow per neighborhood. An easy problem to solve IMO compared to physical infrastructure plans.
So true. There’s a sort of engrained fear that by relaxing zoning restrictions they’ll all of the sudden be the only single family house in a neighborhood of skyscrapers like in the movie Up lol.
What I learned from my time in community development is that people want the amenities of a dense urban city but often refuse to accept anything but single family zoning. Most of these amenities only reach economic viability at higher density levels, so you cant have both.
We have a few examples of a little neighborhood store here. One is called Dilly Dally, its in the middle of a residential neighborhood and also is near a greenway and creek.
I don't know the hoops they had to jump through to allow it, or if maybe it had been a commercial building for decades already...
It seems like an easy solution to me would be to allow one commercial building per some amount of square milage within residential areas. Heck, we have two HUGE churches right in the middle of my neighborhood. But of course those aren't just places you can just pop in and hang out.
Allow for a small amount of small, locally owned commercial space, and ancillary structures to be used as rentals. That's all!
And it all starts with *legalizing* a mix of property uses. One of the ways planners could lean into their strengths is figuring out how to modify codes & policies.