> No more permits for sidewalk tables and chairs—putting $2,500 back in the pockets of small businesses and saving them valuable time…No more permits and fees to put your business name in your store window or paint it on your storefront…No more trips to the Permit Center to have candles on your restaurant’s table…No more rigid rules about what your security gate must look like so businesses have more options to secure their storefronts…No more long waits or costly reviews for straightforward improvements to your home, like replacing a back deck
Jesus Christ! How did these busybodies who thought any of this was a good idea in the first place get put in charge of anything? I don't think anything is really going to change without a wholesale change in leadership. The type of person who comes up with this stuff will just come up with new rules to replace the old. Maybe DOGE is right. Just fire them all and ask questions later.
It's a method to allow further influence of specialized groups. The more input is required on a process the more they can iterate on it. Special interests rule the day in SF, oft guised as 'giving a voice'.
That certainly plays a part in a lot of regulation, but I think the stuff listed is too petty for any influential group to put real effort into enacting. I think this is more of a homeowners association problem. The type of people who get involved in this type of local politics are just mainly unpleasant busybodies. This is one of the main problems I see with the "abundance agenda" that Noah talks about. They assume that our current state is the result of an intentional philosophical choice by leaders, and that they can be convinced to change it if they are persuaded that it is ineffective. But I am convinced that it's actually a fundamental personality issue and it's simply the wrong class of people in leadership positions.
I just paid nearly $5,000 for a fish habitat review for a walkway across the front of my dry boathouse door that is 24 feet back from the water. I'm building this little deck to prevent someone from falling backwards out the front door when working and dashing their heads on bedrock.
That was just one requirement of getting a permit. One.
The 5 grand pays for a pair of underachieving 4th year undergrad scientists to get a 2 hour water taxi ride out to our property to ask us if we see fish in the water nearby. Yes of course - in the fish habitat created when we built our docks before they required permits.
=> "Paris’ Haussmann apartments are usually either very close to shops, or built right above them:"
Just a small Parisian note: this charming street isn’t actually Haussmannian 🙂 The buildings here are older—likely late 18th to early 19th century—so they predate Haussmann’s redesign of Paris. Fewer floors, simpler façades, and irregular alignments give it away. Still very classic Paris, just a different era!
That said, you're absolutely right that Haussmannian buildings were designed to include ground-floor shops—they played a key role in activating the street and supporting urban life!
“Small businesses are not economically efficient, but they create some positive externalities for cities.”
Noah, what do you think of doing a whole post on positive externalities? I find it easy to understand negative externalities and how theoretically they can be addressed by pricing them in either explicitly or implicitly but it would be edifying to learn more about positive externalities — which are the most important ones and how can they best be addressed.
It might be more interesting to examine the comment regarding economic efficiency. The huge number of shops in Tokyo suggests that, if this is less efficient, there must be countervailing considerations. In the US, if someone has a successful shop, the expectation is that the owner should open another shop, then another, etc. until the economic Peter Principle takes bite and the business either fails or is bought out or online shopping puts it out of business.
Over the last 150 years or so, small shops faced competition first from department stores, then mail order operations, then shopping malls, then big box stores, and, today, online stores, such as Amazon. Each of these latter forms of competition were more economically efficient than individual shops. Yet each has, in turn, become outmoded by evermore efficient retail outlets.
There are, of course, critical cultural differences between the US and Japan. The US is far more materialistic while the Japanese minimalist approach values quality over quantity. In addition, like other Asian countries, the work ethic of Japanese people makes retail operations more economically viable while, at the same time, prevents them from having the sort of leisure time and activities that Americans deem to be the fruit of their laborers. If you look at many recent Asian immigrants to the United States, many have opened small retail businesses, such as fruit and vegetable stands, bodegas, dry cleaners, restaurants, motels, laundromats, and nail salons.
Very few Americans open or operate such businesses today because of the enormous amount of work required and the challenge of finding employees who can efficiently do the work that family members typically do in Asian – operated businesses. Here, the shrinking and dispersed nature of modern American families discourages long-term family ownership of small businesses. In many cases, US small businesses depend on the cheap labor of immigrants, which is likely to be far more difficult to secure and expensive in the future.
As a Brooklyn resident, I am thankful for the large number of small shops and restaurants that are within easy walking distance and make for a far more convenient and interesting community than places where you are required to drive for everything from school to shopping to work. I don’t know whether these businesses are economically efficient, but, as you note, they have a significantly positive effect on the quality of life in neighborhoods.
Sometimes efficiency is not efficient. A big box at the edge of town may be very profitable and move a lot of merchandise while adding almost no value, and in fact costing the city and public money and destroying the inherent value of that place.
"'Shops. The missing piece in our urbanist discussion."
I am not entirely sure who you talk to in your urbanist discussions, but around here shops are a major part of urbanist discussions, as well as local politics where shopkeepers often have significant standing through some local interest group. And it's totally interlinked with the parking and access debates, mixed use, everything.
Many agree that shops are nice, small shops included, or maybe especially those. Yet what they have also discovered in this 30-40k inhabitant city near Brussels is that keeping big chain stores and city redevelopment out of the city center can also be problematic, as big chains do draw a crowd. And now all these cute little buildings are sitting empty because small shops don't weather through economic downturns as well, and can't compete with the internet or are too small to give sufficient income to shopkeepers (and, unsurprisingly, local landlords have underinvested in maintenance & renovations for years while cashing in huge rents).
A recent discussion was about whether or not to extend a park onto what is now a parking lot, and the main argument against was 'shopkeepers and market vendors wouldn't survive if there is even less free parking than is now the case'.
Just had this same discussion in our small semi-rural town in Northern California. Took a major street in the downtown and converted it fully to walking (an outgrowth of the outdoor dining during the pandemic). The problem is that the city didn't really get its act together on improving the nearby parking, so it made it harder for a lot of our elderly population to get to the shops (and we have an older population than most).
And our public transport is poor at best. So, what is basically a good idea and very walkable few blocks doesn't work as well as it should because the city didn't do the rest of their homework. (leaving aside that they needed to learn from European cities to have proper shade/trees in the walking area as it gets too hot frequently).
I’ve lived in two cities who have done this and in both cases it hurt local businesses (with the local chamber lobbying to eliminate it). Basically they trade the customers that want to specifically go to that business to park in front and then buy something or eat something immediately for customers who are tourists ambling around window shopping. The funny bit is that the tourists were always walking there anyway (as these places are tourist towns) and what they lost was local custom who didn’t want to have to park far away and walk. They were interested in buying quickly and conveniently rather than admiring the pedestrians ambling around. They already know what downtown looks like.
On the other hand, as a visitor these areas are quite fun and do improve the atmosphere. Just does not improve sales at local businesses.
Nature is beautiful. I don’t find shops any more beautiful than large stores. They are alright but it’s not like I’m going out of my way to spend time there unless I need to.
If you can’t see the difference between a charming street scattered with small shops, cafes, pubs, foot and cycle traffic - and a plaza crowded with cars playing generic crapola music built out of the cheapest most uniform materials possible, paying crap wages and enforcing uniformity and zero sense of “place” by yourself,, I can’t make you see that difference.
There’s no accounting for taste. But I believe you’re in the minority, and the evidence is simply that nobody ever goes to visit one of the plazas and raves about it; conversely, the most visited and sought-after cities and neighbourhoods in the world all have the characteristics I’ve outlined.
For many of us, this is a distinction without a meaningful difference, because neither are attractive.
From this point of view, there is no 'charming street scattered with shops', or 'efficient big-box retail', just locales where humanity overwhelms and abnegates the natural environment. Neither have a sense of place, they are just superficial substitutes for places.
Of course they are more popular among a population that has little other experience, and who prefer the easier life with every convenience of a modern city. Cities are economically efficient, both requiring and acquiring scale, but they are not preferable to a significant minority of humanity.
Then why comment your urban planning preferences at all if you live in the woods like a hermit?
Purely for efficiency-based reasons you should prefer the urban design that allows for greater density and human-level activities, even if you wouldn’t go to these places yourself.
The comment provides an outside POV, a perspective with a larger context.
BTW, almost nobody lives in the woods like a hermit. Until this century, the majority of humans have lived in smaller settlements than cities, as well as rural and remote areas.
Efficiency reasons are moot from this perspective, and greater density is actually not a goal, but a symptom of a larger problem.
It seems like the "government" already has put their thumb on the scale... to the benefit of large and chain stores.
When difficult regulations make it so only large and chain stores have the resources to deal with them, or create an environments where only they can thrive, that is a grossly unbalanced situation.
When it comes to leveling the playing field that is one possible solution not “the” solution. It's a libertarian dream. The problem with that dream and why it has never come close to coming true is that libertarians have a fundamental misunderstanding about human nature. As people accumulate wealth (The winners) they accumulate power and they will use that power to rig the game.
The super wealthy and powerful don’t give a fuck about the invisible hand. The give the invisible hand the finger and break it’s knuckles. So it always has been and so it always will be.
Sadly, I have come to see America through the lens of a different movie. W.A.L.L.E., the dystopian remnants of a failed world, specifically. The floating chairs that the survivors use have grown too far. By far, the scene that made me giggle the most was the spaceship carrying Eva, wth WALLE hanging on for dear life, leaving Earth and running into near space filled with broken satellites. Prescient, considering space junk is becoming a real problem.
The latest insult to America’s can-do past is the problems with air traffic control. What it is emblematic of is something known as deferred maintenance. It happens in cities, states, school boards. America is one big beautiful trash bag of deferred maintenance.
Flint didn’t have the money to repair their water pipes. Bridge maintenance gets deferred. Our politicians are afraid to ask for tax increases so this is what you get. Nothing is done until a crisis arises, which usually means that whatever is broken will cost double what it should.
Let me give you an example: the gas tax. It has never been increased. Americans don’t like high gas prices. It just so happens, however, that the gas tax was the reason our interstates would be repaired or extended. It was how bridges got rebuilt or renewed.
Now I can tell you the problem. Over the years, government regulations on gas mileage standards have been continually raised. This meant less gas tax collected. EVs don’t pay a gas tax. This is why such a tremendous amount of money was needed for infrastructure spending.
So, what we got was deferred maintenance until it failed. The same thing is happening with our debt and deficit. Our politicians fully understand that deficits at $2 trillion and the cost of servicing our debt is unsustainable. Since populists want to do popular things, raising taxes is not something politicians do. Our debt is under deferred maintenance, or what is known as sticking one's head into the sand and hoping the bad things will go away.
Yes, shops make cities nice to walk around, but not if human waste is on the street, or needles and drug paraphernalia. If hookers and drug dealers have the run of the streets. If police are afraid to do their jobs, lest they be criminally charged. Cities end up ghost towns as some politicians give in to the laissez-faire attitude that everybody gets to do their own thing.
umm, we could increase the tax on alcohol. Consumption is expected to increase over the next 3.5 years. hell, we might pay of the debt if this loon continues on his path
I live in Tremont, a small neighborhood on the west side of Cleveland, and we have a (in my view) Brooklyn-esque atmosphere. We're not NYC, nobody thinks that, but the area is quite walkable with lots of restaurants and small shops nearby. Shops struggle a but, but it's pretty quaint and different for Ohio. It's all about the building types and the zoning.
> And five floors of apartments don’t house enough people to support a whole floor of retail: a two-person household living in a 600-square foot apartment only creates demand for ten square feet of urban retail.
The housing density and ratio of housing to retail for a 5-over-1 looks about the same as the pictured Haussmann apartments or Brooklyn neighborhood - i.e., three to five floors of residential over one floor of retail. I know this wasn't the only factor mentioned in the quote from Alfred Twu (the other factors being location within the city and shape/layout of the retail space), but I would think it's the most important - if the residents drive retail demand, that would win out over time even in a formerly industrial area, and retailers will figure out how to use the oddly shaped spaces. So is it just a matter of time before 5-over-1s become more like the Haussmann/Brooklyn examples? Or are the habits of residents to commute for their shopping keeping the situation stuck in some sort of metastable position with insufficient retail locally?
Having just returned from a trip to Japan, I could not agree more with the topic of this post. Shopping is among the many joys one finds in visiting Japan (and Paris is the same)!
One of the things I think your analysis should add in diagnosing the plight of the US retail environment, though, is the cultural affinity that Americans have toward low costs. One can argue who is responsible for the obsession with rock-bottom prices which have allowed big chains to squeeze out small businesses, but it is a fact that definitely plays a role, exacerbated now by free shipping for shopping online. Without a change to this mindset, I fear that the lovely shopping experience of the past is not likely to return, even without the needed reforms you highlight.
Q: "The missing piece in our urbanist discussion"?
A: Any piece of urbanist propaganda that DOESN'T include the (seemingly mandatory) word "vibrant"!
Personally, I'd just as soon skip the poodle-walk to the corner store, and drive to Berkeley Bowl -- or to the diverse array of mom-and-pop eateries in those reviled strip malls. And (heresy of heresies!) I'd gladly trade the congestion of The Bronx to live a short drive from Jones Beach.
It's "sprawl" only when you're looking down on it. Don't believe the hype!
You are lucky - most malls that I have been around don't have "mom-and-pop eateries" or a Berkeley Bowl anywhere nearby. I might have had the same viewpoint until I spent significant time in Tokyo - the variety of shops in walking distance is impressive - and the neighborhoods are completely walkable (or bike - lots of people of all ages on very simple "beater" bikes to go to the store, etc).
"Most malls that [you] have been around don't have mom-and-pop eateries"? You're invoking an obsolete stereotype -- a deceptive caricature -- to "prove" an unrelated (and equally deceptive) point.
The places I'm talking about are the norm these days -- and you're willfully ignoring their existence!
My comment specifically referenced "those reviled strip malls." Try looking around Milpitas or El Cerrito or Dublin (CA) -- or Buford Highway in Atlanta, or Houston's (suburban) Chinatown. Then zoom out to incorporate every metro (and plenty of exurbs) across the US. You can start in San Jose or the San Gabriel Valley, or for that matter, in much of Queens.
While you're at it, check out the produce at Berkeley Bowl, or the live seafood at H-Mart or 99 Ranch -- and compare the selection (and quality) to that corner store.
No poodle-walk there for you? That's your fetish -- and your loss.
Isn’t this a chicken and egg situation where you need density to make these small, inefficient shops effective?
You’d expect New York to do better here, but it isn’t actually doing well on this front anyway with many storefront vacancies. And even before that the complaints were that banks and drug store chains were most of the retail in many areas. Hardly the stuff of indie shop dreams.
Perhaps Japanese city dwellers don’t engage in e-commerce at anything like the same scale as Americans?
Density definitely helps, but lowering the revenue threshold - either thru licensing or less regulations- could also be effective. Basically, making it cheaper and easier to open up shop means less density can support your business. I think if food trucks as an example of this - no to low rent, less permits required, and much less revenue needed to support their business model.
Density definitely helps, but lowering the revenue threshold - either thru licensing or less regulations- could also be effective. Basically, making it cheaper and easier to open up shop means less density can support your business. I think if food trucks as an example of this - no to low rent, less permits required, and much less revenue needed to support their business model.
Great stuff! Many of us urbanists are talking about how to create more vibrant, more walkable neighborhoods—and in Austin we're trying to do something about it. At the Zoning Commission last year, we introduced a recommendation to allow small-scale neighborhood shops "by right" in all residential zones. That effort is still very much work-in-progress, but I wrote about it here:
My weird urbanism take is that urbanism is better for families. Yes shops, but also parks playgrounds batting cages dance schools swimming pools and stupid like malt shops where kids can waste time and money and parents can feel like they are learning things.
Basically the mall but a short walk from your neighborhood and main streety. My inspiration is that while I loved living in Tokyo in my 20s, my goal before I had kids was to spend my free time in the middle of nowhere, and if I spent free time in the city it was to meet people (yes girls but also friends). But I wanted a car to go off. Now I have kids and have no free time and walking my kids to the pool is more fun than driving them to the little gym
Plus One to what Noah offers us in this post. Three years ago we moved about 1.5 miles into a downtown Bethesda moderate rise condo. We now have shops, restaurants, and stores within walking distance as well as a DC Metro stop. The whole area has undergone a dramatic change since I move here in 1978. Getting freed from having to drive is wonderful!!!👍
Spare a thought for small chain stores. There is a French retail company called Carrefour with a large and not particularly successful hypermarket business, in out.of.town malls. It has a much more interesting and successful operation of small city-centre supermarkets called Carrefour Express. You can find these all over the place in France and Spain, and clearly fill a need. They usually keep quite long hours. i don't know what the ownership model is, but the company clearly provides efficient logistics for fresh foods - including in tricky pedestrian zones -, a reliable range of own brands as well as market leaders, and skills in fitting in to existing small sites.
> No more permits for sidewalk tables and chairs—putting $2,500 back in the pockets of small businesses and saving them valuable time…No more permits and fees to put your business name in your store window or paint it on your storefront…No more trips to the Permit Center to have candles on your restaurant’s table…No more rigid rules about what your security gate must look like so businesses have more options to secure their storefronts…No more long waits or costly reviews for straightforward improvements to your home, like replacing a back deck
Jesus Christ! How did these busybodies who thought any of this was a good idea in the first place get put in charge of anything? I don't think anything is really going to change without a wholesale change in leadership. The type of person who comes up with this stuff will just come up with new rules to replace the old. Maybe DOGE is right. Just fire them all and ask questions later.
It's a method to allow further influence of specialized groups. The more input is required on a process the more they can iterate on it. Special interests rule the day in SF, oft guised as 'giving a voice'.
That certainly plays a part in a lot of regulation, but I think the stuff listed is too petty for any influential group to put real effort into enacting. I think this is more of a homeowners association problem. The type of people who get involved in this type of local politics are just mainly unpleasant busybodies. This is one of the main problems I see with the "abundance agenda" that Noah talks about. They assume that our current state is the result of an intentional philosophical choice by leaders, and that they can be convinced to change it if they are persuaded that it is ineffective. But I am convinced that it's actually a fundamental personality issue and it's simply the wrong class of people in leadership positions.
The “giving voice” cripple Biden administration attempts to build electric car chargers.
That's nothing.
I just paid nearly $5,000 for a fish habitat review for a walkway across the front of my dry boathouse door that is 24 feet back from the water. I'm building this little deck to prevent someone from falling backwards out the front door when working and dashing their heads on bedrock.
That was just one requirement of getting a permit. One.
The 5 grand pays for a pair of underachieving 4th year undergrad scientists to get a 2 hour water taxi ride out to our property to ask us if we see fish in the water nearby. Yes of course - in the fish habitat created when we built our docks before they required permits.
This is the solution to any problem. Get rid of the bad people and the problem will be solved.
Great article, thanks !
=> "Paris’ Haussmann apartments are usually either very close to shops, or built right above them:"
Just a small Parisian note: this charming street isn’t actually Haussmannian 🙂 The buildings here are older—likely late 18th to early 19th century—so they predate Haussmann’s redesign of Paris. Fewer floors, simpler façades, and irregular alignments give it away. Still very classic Paris, just a different era!
That said, you're absolutely right that Haussmannian buildings were designed to include ground-floor shops—they played a key role in activating the street and supporting urban life!
Ahhh gotcha! Thanks!!!!!
Came here for this!
“Small businesses are not economically efficient, but they create some positive externalities for cities.”
Noah, what do you think of doing a whole post on positive externalities? I find it easy to understand negative externalities and how theoretically they can be addressed by pricing them in either explicitly or implicitly but it would be edifying to learn more about positive externalities — which are the most important ones and how can they best be addressed.
Will do 🫡
Hey, what about VAT?
It might be more interesting to examine the comment regarding economic efficiency. The huge number of shops in Tokyo suggests that, if this is less efficient, there must be countervailing considerations. In the US, if someone has a successful shop, the expectation is that the owner should open another shop, then another, etc. until the economic Peter Principle takes bite and the business either fails or is bought out or online shopping puts it out of business.
Over the last 150 years or so, small shops faced competition first from department stores, then mail order operations, then shopping malls, then big box stores, and, today, online stores, such as Amazon. Each of these latter forms of competition were more economically efficient than individual shops. Yet each has, in turn, become outmoded by evermore efficient retail outlets.
There are, of course, critical cultural differences between the US and Japan. The US is far more materialistic while the Japanese minimalist approach values quality over quantity. In addition, like other Asian countries, the work ethic of Japanese people makes retail operations more economically viable while, at the same time, prevents them from having the sort of leisure time and activities that Americans deem to be the fruit of their laborers. If you look at many recent Asian immigrants to the United States, many have opened small retail businesses, such as fruit and vegetable stands, bodegas, dry cleaners, restaurants, motels, laundromats, and nail salons.
Very few Americans open or operate such businesses today because of the enormous amount of work required and the challenge of finding employees who can efficiently do the work that family members typically do in Asian – operated businesses. Here, the shrinking and dispersed nature of modern American families discourages long-term family ownership of small businesses. In many cases, US small businesses depend on the cheap labor of immigrants, which is likely to be far more difficult to secure and expensive in the future.
As a Brooklyn resident, I am thankful for the large number of small shops and restaurants that are within easy walking distance and make for a far more convenient and interesting community than places where you are required to drive for everything from school to shopping to work. I don’t know whether these businesses are economically efficient, but, as you note, they have a significantly positive effect on the quality of life in neighborhoods.
Sometimes efficiency is not efficient. A big box at the edge of town may be very profitable and move a lot of merchandise while adding almost no value, and in fact costing the city and public money and destroying the inherent value of that place.
I love these kind of posts, especially the low level, specific policy discussions.
"'Shops. The missing piece in our urbanist discussion."
I am not entirely sure who you talk to in your urbanist discussions, but around here shops are a major part of urbanist discussions, as well as local politics where shopkeepers often have significant standing through some local interest group. And it's totally interlinked with the parking and access debates, mixed use, everything.
Many agree that shops are nice, small shops included, or maybe especially those. Yet what they have also discovered in this 30-40k inhabitant city near Brussels is that keeping big chain stores and city redevelopment out of the city center can also be problematic, as big chains do draw a crowd. And now all these cute little buildings are sitting empty because small shops don't weather through economic downturns as well, and can't compete with the internet or are too small to give sufficient income to shopkeepers (and, unsurprisingly, local landlords have underinvested in maintenance & renovations for years while cashing in huge rents).
A recent discussion was about whether or not to extend a park onto what is now a parking lot, and the main argument against was 'shopkeepers and market vendors wouldn't survive if there is even less free parking than is now the case'.
Just had this same discussion in our small semi-rural town in Northern California. Took a major street in the downtown and converted it fully to walking (an outgrowth of the outdoor dining during the pandemic). The problem is that the city didn't really get its act together on improving the nearby parking, so it made it harder for a lot of our elderly population to get to the shops (and we have an older population than most).
And our public transport is poor at best. So, what is basically a good idea and very walkable few blocks doesn't work as well as it should because the city didn't do the rest of their homework. (leaving aside that they needed to learn from European cities to have proper shade/trees in the walking area as it gets too hot frequently).
I’ve lived in two cities who have done this and in both cases it hurt local businesses (with the local chamber lobbying to eliminate it). Basically they trade the customers that want to specifically go to that business to park in front and then buy something or eat something immediately for customers who are tourists ambling around window shopping. The funny bit is that the tourists were always walking there anyway (as these places are tourist towns) and what they lost was local custom who didn’t want to have to park far away and walk. They were interested in buying quickly and conveniently rather than admiring the pedestrians ambling around. They already know what downtown looks like.
On the other hand, as a visitor these areas are quite fun and do improve the atmosphere. Just does not improve sales at local businesses.
Overall agreed, but I'm not against either chain stores or larger stores.
And I'm not convinced government should put their thumb on the scale
They are hideous and hideous in the exact same way everywhere they are. Their largeness in particular creates a specific negative externality.
As a society we should absolutely put our thumb on the scale to encourage more diversity in the feel, look, taste, and sound of our lived environment.
Hard disagree.I like going to a change store where I know exactly what i'm gonna get
And I like going to a large store where I can get a really good deal
I would my traffic go to one costco than twenty little small stores
Don’t drive, ya silly billy
Nature is beautiful. I don’t find shops any more beautiful than large stores. They are alright but it’s not like I’m going out of my way to spend time there unless I need to.
If you can’t see the difference between a charming street scattered with small shops, cafes, pubs, foot and cycle traffic - and a plaza crowded with cars playing generic crapola music built out of the cheapest most uniform materials possible, paying crap wages and enforcing uniformity and zero sense of “place” by yourself,, I can’t make you see that difference.
There’s no accounting for taste. But I believe you’re in the minority, and the evidence is simply that nobody ever goes to visit one of the plazas and raves about it; conversely, the most visited and sought-after cities and neighbourhoods in the world all have the characteristics I’ve outlined.
For many of us, this is a distinction without a meaningful difference, because neither are attractive.
From this point of view, there is no 'charming street scattered with shops', or 'efficient big-box retail', just locales where humanity overwhelms and abnegates the natural environment. Neither have a sense of place, they are just superficial substitutes for places.
Of course they are more popular among a population that has little other experience, and who prefer the easier life with every convenience of a modern city. Cities are economically efficient, both requiring and acquiring scale, but they are not preferable to a significant minority of humanity.
Then why comment your urban planning preferences at all if you live in the woods like a hermit?
Purely for efficiency-based reasons you should prefer the urban design that allows for greater density and human-level activities, even if you wouldn’t go to these places yourself.
The comment provides an outside POV, a perspective with a larger context.
BTW, almost nobody lives in the woods like a hermit. Until this century, the majority of humans have lived in smaller settlements than cities, as well as rural and remote areas.
Efficiency reasons are moot from this perspective, and greater density is actually not a goal, but a symptom of a larger problem.
It seems like the "government" already has put their thumb on the scale... to the benefit of large and chain stores.
When difficult regulations make it so only large and chain stores have the resources to deal with them, or create an environments where only they can thrive, that is a grossly unbalanced situation.
The solution to that is to get rid of those burdensome regulations NOT put in new regulations favoring small businesses
When it comes to leveling the playing field that is one possible solution not “the” solution. It's a libertarian dream. The problem with that dream and why it has never come close to coming true is that libertarians have a fundamental misunderstanding about human nature. As people accumulate wealth (The winners) they accumulate power and they will use that power to rig the game.
The super wealthy and powerful don’t give a fuck about the invisible hand. The give the invisible hand the finger and break it’s knuckles. So it always has been and so it always will be.
We already have laws against actual anti competitive behavior, and it support those.
But usually what happens is collusion with the police power of the state.
That's wrong
Sadly, I have come to see America through the lens of a different movie. W.A.L.L.E., the dystopian remnants of a failed world, specifically. The floating chairs that the survivors use have grown too far. By far, the scene that made me giggle the most was the spaceship carrying Eva, wth WALLE hanging on for dear life, leaving Earth and running into near space filled with broken satellites. Prescient, considering space junk is becoming a real problem.
The latest insult to America’s can-do past is the problems with air traffic control. What it is emblematic of is something known as deferred maintenance. It happens in cities, states, school boards. America is one big beautiful trash bag of deferred maintenance.
Flint didn’t have the money to repair their water pipes. Bridge maintenance gets deferred. Our politicians are afraid to ask for tax increases so this is what you get. Nothing is done until a crisis arises, which usually means that whatever is broken will cost double what it should.
Let me give you an example: the gas tax. It has never been increased. Americans don’t like high gas prices. It just so happens, however, that the gas tax was the reason our interstates would be repaired or extended. It was how bridges got rebuilt or renewed.
Now I can tell you the problem. Over the years, government regulations on gas mileage standards have been continually raised. This meant less gas tax collected. EVs don’t pay a gas tax. This is why such a tremendous amount of money was needed for infrastructure spending.
So, what we got was deferred maintenance until it failed. The same thing is happening with our debt and deficit. Our politicians fully understand that deficits at $2 trillion and the cost of servicing our debt is unsustainable. Since populists want to do popular things, raising taxes is not something politicians do. Our debt is under deferred maintenance, or what is known as sticking one's head into the sand and hoping the bad things will go away.
Yes, shops make cities nice to walk around, but not if human waste is on the street, or needles and drug paraphernalia. If hookers and drug dealers have the run of the streets. If police are afraid to do their jobs, lest they be criminally charged. Cities end up ghost towns as some politicians give in to the laissez-faire attitude that everybody gets to do their own thing.
umm, we could increase the tax on alcohol. Consumption is expected to increase over the next 3.5 years. hell, we might pay of the debt if this loon continues on his path
I live in Tremont, a small neighborhood on the west side of Cleveland, and we have a (in my view) Brooklyn-esque atmosphere. We're not NYC, nobody thinks that, but the area is quite walkable with lots of restaurants and small shops nearby. Shops struggle a but, but it's pretty quaint and different for Ohio. It's all about the building types and the zoning.
Has to be one of the best neighborhood come up stories in the country (Hi from Ohio City)
> And five floors of apartments don’t house enough people to support a whole floor of retail: a two-person household living in a 600-square foot apartment only creates demand for ten square feet of urban retail.
The housing density and ratio of housing to retail for a 5-over-1 looks about the same as the pictured Haussmann apartments or Brooklyn neighborhood - i.e., three to five floors of residential over one floor of retail. I know this wasn't the only factor mentioned in the quote from Alfred Twu (the other factors being location within the city and shape/layout of the retail space), but I would think it's the most important - if the residents drive retail demand, that would win out over time even in a formerly industrial area, and retailers will figure out how to use the oddly shaped spaces. So is it just a matter of time before 5-over-1s become more like the Haussmann/Brooklyn examples? Or are the habits of residents to commute for their shopping keeping the situation stuck in some sort of metastable position with insufficient retail locally?
Having just returned from a trip to Japan, I could not agree more with the topic of this post. Shopping is among the many joys one finds in visiting Japan (and Paris is the same)!
One of the things I think your analysis should add in diagnosing the plight of the US retail environment, though, is the cultural affinity that Americans have toward low costs. One can argue who is responsible for the obsession with rock-bottom prices which have allowed big chains to squeeze out small businesses, but it is a fact that definitely plays a role, exacerbated now by free shipping for shopping online. Without a change to this mindset, I fear that the lovely shopping experience of the past is not likely to return, even without the needed reforms you highlight.
Q: "The missing piece in our urbanist discussion"?
A: Any piece of urbanist propaganda that DOESN'T include the (seemingly mandatory) word "vibrant"!
Personally, I'd just as soon skip the poodle-walk to the corner store, and drive to Berkeley Bowl -- or to the diverse array of mom-and-pop eateries in those reviled strip malls. And (heresy of heresies!) I'd gladly trade the congestion of The Bronx to live a short drive from Jones Beach.
It's "sprawl" only when you're looking down on it. Don't believe the hype!
You are lucky - most malls that I have been around don't have "mom-and-pop eateries" or a Berkeley Bowl anywhere nearby. I might have had the same viewpoint until I spent significant time in Tokyo - the variety of shops in walking distance is impressive - and the neighborhoods are completely walkable (or bike - lots of people of all ages on very simple "beater" bikes to go to the store, etc).
I call foul!
"Most malls that [you] have been around don't have mom-and-pop eateries"? You're invoking an obsolete stereotype -- a deceptive caricature -- to "prove" an unrelated (and equally deceptive) point.
The places I'm talking about are the norm these days -- and you're willfully ignoring their existence!
My comment specifically referenced "those reviled strip malls." Try looking around Milpitas or El Cerrito or Dublin (CA) -- or Buford Highway in Atlanta, or Houston's (suburban) Chinatown. Then zoom out to incorporate every metro (and plenty of exurbs) across the US. You can start in San Jose or the San Gabriel Valley, or for that matter, in much of Queens.
While you're at it, check out the produce at Berkeley Bowl, or the live seafood at H-Mart or 99 Ranch -- and compare the selection (and quality) to that corner store.
No poodle-walk there for you? That's your fetish -- and your loss.
A(n electric) car in every garage!
Isn’t this a chicken and egg situation where you need density to make these small, inefficient shops effective?
You’d expect New York to do better here, but it isn’t actually doing well on this front anyway with many storefront vacancies. And even before that the complaints were that banks and drug store chains were most of the retail in many areas. Hardly the stuff of indie shop dreams.
Perhaps Japanese city dwellers don’t engage in e-commerce at anything like the same scale as Americans?
Density definitely helps, but lowering the revenue threshold - either thru licensing or less regulations- could also be effective. Basically, making it cheaper and easier to open up shop means less density can support your business. I think if food trucks as an example of this - no to low rent, less permits required, and much less revenue needed to support their business model.
Density definitely helps, but lowering the revenue threshold - either thru licensing or less regulations- could also be effective. Basically, making it cheaper and easier to open up shop means less density can support your business. I think if food trucks as an example of this - no to low rent, less permits required, and much less revenue needed to support their business model.
Great stuff! Many of us urbanists are talking about how to create more vibrant, more walkable neighborhoods—and in Austin we're trying to do something about it. At the Zoning Commission last year, we introduced a recommendation to allow small-scale neighborhood shops "by right" in all residential zones. That effort is still very much work-in-progress, but I wrote about it here:
https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/the-next-step-toward-a-walkable-city
My weird urbanism take is that urbanism is better for families. Yes shops, but also parks playgrounds batting cages dance schools swimming pools and stupid like malt shops where kids can waste time and money and parents can feel like they are learning things.
Basically the mall but a short walk from your neighborhood and main streety. My inspiration is that while I loved living in Tokyo in my 20s, my goal before I had kids was to spend my free time in the middle of nowhere, and if I spent free time in the city it was to meet people (yes girls but also friends). But I wanted a car to go off. Now I have kids and have no free time and walking my kids to the pool is more fun than driving them to the little gym
+100
Plus One to what Noah offers us in this post. Three years ago we moved about 1.5 miles into a downtown Bethesda moderate rise condo. We now have shops, restaurants, and stores within walking distance as well as a DC Metro stop. The whole area has undergone a dramatic change since I move here in 1978. Getting freed from having to drive is wonderful!!!👍
Spare a thought for small chain stores. There is a French retail company called Carrefour with a large and not particularly successful hypermarket business, in out.of.town malls. It has a much more interesting and successful operation of small city-centre supermarkets called Carrefour Express. You can find these all over the place in France and Spain, and clearly fill a need. They usually keep quite long hours. i don't know what the ownership model is, but the company clearly provides efficient logistics for fresh foods - including in tricky pedestrian zones -, a reliable range of own brands as well as market leaders, and skills in fitting in to existing small sites.