
The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism” - DoreenMichele
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/2/6/movie-set-urbanism
======
crazygringo
Correct it's no vibrant, bustling organic downtown.

But it's still a helluva lot better than nothing at all.

The suburbs I grew up in? There were a bunch of shitty strip malls, and a
single indoor mall with a single food court with zero natural lighting, taken
over by teenagers after school because it was literally the only place to
congregate besides the parking lot outside the supermarket.

There was no local "center" at all for community.

This kind of development would have been a _huge_ life upgrade. Yes it's still
built around parking -- but if life is already built around cars in suburbia,
there's literally no alternative. Without parking, nobody can _get_ there in
the first place.

This article seems to be dismissing the better because it only wants the
perfect.

Edit: to people replying this is still terrible or no better than a mall...
look at the photos. This has paths to stroll along, a waterfront, trees,
outdoor dining/cafes, building facades that aren't horrible to look at the way
painted flat concrete is. You can _hang out_ here and it _looks nice_. I think
some people here must just not be aware of how horrible and ugly strip malls
and 1970's-era indoor malls can be. This is objectively a gigantic upgrade for
some people.

~~~
dsr_
What is shown is not better than what you grew up in; it's the same. It's an
outdoor mall, pretending to be a downtown.

The only difference is that this mall doesn't have the food court and the
giant corridors; instead it's outside where the rain and bugs can get to you.

~~~
cortesoft
It is also near the water, which could be nice.

~~~
astrodust
Yeah, I'm sure that'll work out _just fine_ so long as the sea level never
rises. At least it's in Florida where there's never any serious storms.

------
kop316
I wish the author would hit the non-walkability a bit harder. To get from one
section to another, cross a street. To get from one side to another, you have
to cross several streets.

There is one area that did the same thing where I live (The Greene Town
Center). I cannot simply think of why I would want to live there, and I was
their target demographic! I really can't walk around inside of The Greene
without having to watch traffic (I am simply amazed at how recklessly folks
drive in there). If you look at both the Greene and that picture, the roads
are pervasive in there.

The suburban neighborhood I live in is actually more walkable! I can walk
through a park to get to the library, I have to cross a single one lane road
to get to a Kroger, and I can walk within the neighborhood on the street with
almost no concern for traffic (heck, it has better sidewalks then the Greene!)

If you really want to attract people to live there, make the place actually an
area where you only need a car to drive to/from work (and try to bring jobs to
there!). Bring Grocery Stores, Schools, a community center, local restaurants
to the area. Have a park! Make it so I can walk/cycle to places surrounding
the area. Shove parking/cars out of the way.

Heck, even downtowns have the same issue. The downtown in Dayton only has
Second Street Market that could pass as a grocery store (don't get me wrong,
that place is awesome, but it's only open Fri-Sun). I thought about living
downtown, but once again, I have to drive to get anywhere anyways. I have no
incentive to live downtown.

~~~
leviathant
I first encountered this kind of shopping center in the suburbs of
Philadelphia. Main Street at Exton struck me as incredibly strange - it's a
strip mall dressed up to look like an urban downtown, right down to parallel
parking spots on the street. Once you do park, it is actually fairly walkable.

A couple of years later, after having moved to Philadelphia, there was
something I wanted to grab at a store in Main Street at Exton. There's a
regional rail station a half mile from the shopping center, so I hopped a
train. The absurd thing about this particular arrangement, which otherwise
sounds like a great way to connect nearby markets, is that there is no
sidewalk between the train station and the shopping center. The station sits
where a major local road meets a major highway, so one way or another, you're
crossing six lanes of traffic to get past the local road, and you have to
cross two major highway four-lane on/off ramps as you go under the highway
overpass, walking along a beaten grass path with only a curb between you and
the traffic.

Exton Mall's another mile up the road, and while there's sporadic sidewalks
between the two malls, I've never bothered with that walk.

Given the proximity of this shopping center to public transit, I don't think
it's a big leap to suggest that the decision to exclude sidewalks was at best
a classist choice, at worst a racist choice.

I live in a part of Philadelphia that's unusually pedestrian friendly, all
things considered. I can walk to pick up groceries (except I get those
delivered), the hardware store, coffee shops, restaurants, galleries, all
manner of everyday things that, when I lived in the exurbs, I had to hop in
the car and drive anywhere from 5-30 minutes to get to, and it's fantastic.
We've also got more methods of public transit than almost anywhere in the
world (not saying the coverage is great, mind you), and I've been here long
enough that despite all the challenges that come with living in an old urban
center, I hope I never have to go back to a suburban lifestyle.

It was clear from the moment I pulled up to "Main Street" that these psuedo-
downtowns miss the point.

~~~
clairity
i'd read somewhere that these kinds of developments became popular with
developers (over indoor malls) because of their success in southern california
in the past couple decades: the revitalization of third street promenade in
santa monica and the success of the grove in LA (as well as irvine company
developments in orange county).

to be honest, the grove always gives me the fakeness willies, like it's all
facade and no substance (broken only when i walk into a store and it becomes
real somehow).

~~~
kop316
I've been to both of those places. The huge difference between them, the
example I give, and the one from the website once you park and get to the
grove, there's no car traffic in it!

The third street promenade likewise had entire blocks closed to traffic.
Crossings where also very generous to the pedestrians, so you rarely had to
wait to cross the street and knew that you wouldn't get hit. It was also very
easy to walk to the Santa Monica beach.

Both examples were built for pedestrians.

~~~
clairity
yes, i was commenting more on the impetus for the rise of insular, faux
"microcommunities" in general than on the walkability therein, which, as you
point out, is better at 3rd street & the grove.

~~~
kop316
That's fair. I didn't mean to suggest you were incorrect, my point is I think
folks are trying to replicate it without understanding why it works.

------
Steltek
I think he's barking up the wrong tree. The problem isn't "movie set
urbanism", it's just boring, old "too much parking". Too much parking creates
sparseness which reduces walkability. But putting parking behind stores
("movie sets") creates a human scale street space.

While organic urban growth should be cherished, there are extreme cases, like
most American towns and cities, where urbanism needs to be forcefully
bootstrapped. In this case, we're artificially accelerating the evolution of a
neighborhood and skipping over the early rural and suburban forms, going
straight to a small urban core. I can see the long term hope of infilling
those parking lots with more buildings as the town grows outwards.

~~~
C1sc0cat
If you don't have of street parking you get congestion as people park on
streets - that is the reason why planners mandate of street parking.

~~~
ch4s3
I my recommend “The High Cost of Free Parking” by Donald Shoup to get a sense
of what planners actually think about street parking.

~~~
vonmoltke
My home town in Florida, and the town I just moved out of in New Jersey, think
of street parking as a cash cow.

------
oftenwrong
Florida is almost entirely a place where you need a car to do anything. It is
so absurdly spread-out that even driving at high speed on their high speed
roads is a remarkably slow way to get anywhere. If people cannot park there,
they cannot get there. Even if you built a real urban walkable neighbourhood
with housing, stores, schools, offices, churches - a place where people could
truly walk to all of their daily needs - the people that lived there would
still need multiple cars per family in order to access the outside world. It
would be like living on an island. Attempting to leave on foot would be like
trying to swim across the ocean. If you don't die of dehydration or exhaustion
first, you will probably killed by a shark/car before you get anywhere.
Ironically, about 1 in 4 Florida drivers are uninsured. One fake town centre
is merely a tiny, amusing symptom of a giant chicken-and-egg problem.

~~~
bluGill
If it really was as a walkable neighborhood some people could get rid of the
car. There would still be a lot of cars but we would have the start of people
not having cars. Walkable means several possible jobs, a library, courthouse,
many retailers at several price points including discount retail where you buy
your daily groceries and clothing.

------
Bootwizard
I live in a place exactly like this in Florida called Baldwin Park. It's much
better designed and I love living here. The main difference is a few things
(and these really matter to me):

1\. All the parking is parallel parking along all the streets. This ensures
that the number of businesses don't need their own massive ugly parking lots

2\. There are actually apartments here above the businesses, so that it's
always active, the people that live here keep the businesses below in
business. We have everything from lawyers to gyms to dentists right below my
feet in a single square mile.

3\. This is actually a community. We have multiple community events and I can
just show up and be there. We have a big shopping day every first Friday of
the month where local merchants will set up tents and sell their stuff. They
also do some event for nearly every holiday.

4\. The entire town center is walkable. A square mile of walkable businesses,
a park, a pool, etc.

~~~
briefcomment
The same author wrote about this place three years ago.

He seems to like it.

[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/5/31/baldwin-
park-a...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/5/31/baldwin-park-a-test-
for-new-urbanism)

~~~
Bootwizard
Wow I actually didn't know all the history of this town, and I've lived here
for a few years.

Thanks for sharing this!

------
rayiner
> Until you deal with the parking problem—which is done by building truly
> mixed-use places where people can meet their daily needs without hopping in
> the car—you haven’t created true urbanism.

Daily needs means jobs for both you and your spouse, which won’t be in some
random subdivision in Florida. It means schools, which don’t appear to be
there either. It means the kids’ after school activities, again, missing from
this plan. And if you don’t have kids or a spouse, then you should just live
in the city anyway. This is an alternative to the sprawling suburban
subdivision, not a downtown block.

Developers create these “drive to urbanism” layouts (like Reston Town Center
in Northern Virginia) because thats what’s workable given the planning
constraints of the larger system. This happens in “real cities” too. When I
lived in a newly-redeveloped area of downtown DC, we still ended up driving a
lot. My work was on the other side of town. The grocery store across the
street was an awful, over priced Safeway. My daughter’s school was over in
Georgetown, a 30 minute drive away. Driving is unavoidable unless these
communities are highly self contained.

~~~
ses1984
>Driving is unavoidable

What about public transport?

~~~
Bootwizard
I live in one of the major metro areas of Florida, and even here public
transport is abysmal. We have a single train line that goes north south about
30-50 miles. And a few buses that basically ferry the homeless around all day
while they sleep on it.

That's it.

------
aga98mtl
While not perfect, this type of development is already a step-up above the
unwalkable so called "power center". They have great upgrade potential when
we'll figure out public transport. The parking lots closest to the walkable
public strip can be turned into mixed use buildings.

Solving infrastructure and public transit problems is not the job of real
estate developers. It is our job as a society. There has to be political
consensus on how we want our communities to be planned. The developer will
then do what they can with the rules we impose.

Unfortunately, the consensus is largely that we love cars. Maybe we should be
paying for influential people to spend a month without a car in a walkable
european city.

~~~
mattlondon
> Maybe we should be paying for influential people to spend a month without a
> car in a walkable european city.

It is not just being walkable in European cities - it is also a lot to do with
workable public transport.

Sure, I could walk the 2 miles from Point A to B, but in a
bus/tram/metro/train that will take 5 mins rather than 30 walking it.

Even then though it is often only workable right in the center of town where
there is a lot of good coverage. Most people will live further out where
affordability is more realistic. At least for me about "half-way" out from the
center of London, getting to my local grocery store is a 33 minute walk, 27
minute bus (assuming I did not have to wait at the stop at all first), or just
an 8 minute drive.

Note also that the bus would be a £3.40 return ticket, which is enough for
about 2.5-3 litres of petrol. A toyota prius that can do about 3.7l/100KM
means that for the price of a bus ticket you could cover about 68KM (~42
miles) or for a tesla 3 that gets 240Wh/mile charging @ £0.24/khw you'd get
about 95KM (~59 miles). For the case of this example where it is about a 5
mile round-trip, you'd be looking at 9 or 12 return trips to the grocery store
depending on if you took the prius or the tesla, for the cost of a single
round-trip on the bus.

It is doable without a car, but not easy. You get into a situation where you
are trading off trying to carry 20+KG of shopping back on the (crowded) buses
vs taking multiple separate trips a week (...and the £3.40 monetary cost +
minimum 54 minute travel time cost). And it might be raining (not easy to hold
an umbrella when you have 16 carrier bags you are trying to lug). With a car
you can easy haul back many 10s of KGs of shopping in one trip, while staying
dry, with just 16 minutes spent getting there and back ... and in a car you
are guaranteed a seat too :)

Personally I did the trade off and found that having a car for day-to-day life
is just so much easier (not just for shopping but for all sorts), but
obviously I'd never drive into the centre of London (if nothing else, there is
nowhere to park) and happily walk + get the tube when in the centre of town.
Driving to work just feels 100% alien here :)

------
beowulfey
Been seeing these kinds of developments pop up a lot lately. The research
triangle of NC is getting a lot of these with all their rapid development, and
I've seen them around where I live currently.

The problem is they are really nothing more than a bandaid. They don't solve
infrastructure problems, and they still encourage people to get into their
cars (creating traffic) and driving to some place else far from their homes.

My point is, I don't see the purpose. They look fake, they feel fake, and I
still have to drive there. It's not encouraging walking that much. It feels
like a theme park, but at least at Disneyland they still pull the parking way
outside the main park.

------
reggieband
One thing I dislike about this new trend is it supplants true community
spaces. There is a downtown in the suburb I live in now but it is a place no
one other than junkies and homeless go. A few business cling to life there but
I don't know how since there is no foot traffic.

Some development company created one of these outdoor malls about 10 minutes
outside of the downtown. It has a cinema, a few big box stores (including a
Walmart super-center). They even got it right with mostly underground parking
giving the outdoor mall a high-level of walkability between stores that have
fronts directly on the wide side walks. The security keeps all of the
undesirables away and there is a public playground for kids. It's like the
commercial equivalent of a gated community. I find it unsettling and I wish we
took public money to revitalize the downtown rather than creating these
segregated spaces.

------
jarjoura
I'm confused. Every suburban city in California has the "main downtown" area
facade with vast parking lots behind it. This design has been around for
almost a century and works in lower density areas.

Do we all want sophisticated public transit? Sure! However, let's be
realistic. Where would the public transit take you? How many residents would
you need to make it sustainable?

Another thing, does the OP want NYC/SF building density in Florida? You could
cram 10k people into a .5 mile area, sure. Then you would have HUGE under
developed areas all around and no where for 10k people to go explore. Then
there wouldn't even need to be public transit.

------
mc32
I’m not sure this is totally a rip from Hollywood or a kind of modern Potemkin
city.

I see this in old districts too. Facade in the front parking in the back.
Strip malls are the inverse. With strip malls it looks ugly but you can tell
at a glance if there is parking. The older form you don’t know till you drive
around the back on a typically one-way street.

The modern take is like the Emeryville Bay Street shopping center or Santana
Row in SJ/Sta Clara. It’s obviously artificial but people like it. In addition
at least Santana Row integrates housing into the mix.

~~~
mattrp
I agree that Santana Row is particularly well done... but I think the author
is reminiscing for something more like downtown Palo Alto. What he misses is a
few things:

a) Palo Alto can hold onto its old town feel because it’s literally the
epicenter of Facebook, google, sand hill road and Stanford university. Some
random town in Florida isn’t going to have all that.

B) in places like Florida, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Houston, etc, it’s simply not
feasible to constrain parking when a good part of the year no one wants to
walk a half mile or more to get groceries.

There are other ways for places to be nice and not look like an early 1900s
town center... I’d submit Austin as an example: it’s totally car centered but
has lots of intriguing and distinct neighborhoods and plenty of variety while
also being quite suburban and housing quite a lot of strip mall retail.

The small downtown can also be very restrictive and expensive for lower income
families. For example, in New Jersey, and eastern PA there are quite a few
quaint little towns. Oh sure their town centers are full of small restaurants
and dog grooming, pharmacies and banks, but conspicuously absent are grocery
stores. I know of whole towns with 10-40k residents and not one grocery store.
It’s worse in places like Chicago where lack of access to quality fresh
produce has been linked to higher rates of crime.

These small towns create high rates of NIMBY-ism and while they do retain
their turn of the century charm, I would suggest that it’s just as Hollywood
as the new urbanism but in different ways.

I think we can all agree strip malls probably weren’t the best invention and
new urbanism isn’t perfect but at least developers are trying to do something
appealing rather than just put up another crappy building with nail salons and
vape shops.

~~~
pkroll
In Chicago, is the link between crime and lack of access to decent produce one
way, or the other? Nobody wants to put grocery stores (or most stores) in
high-crime areas.

~~~
mc32
I guess we might find out over the next few years.

The new DA in SF isn’t pursuing shrinkage/theft under $950 (due to Prop 47).
Of stores shutter due to losses at least we can say it contributes to the
desertification.

------
tapejek
Existing urbanism makes me stressed. Even a shopping mall visit can bring a
lot of negativity. A lot of people and noisy. On the contrary, I want peace,
comfort and calm. For me, saving is watching at home with my family a good
film about eternal values. I use
[https://pirateproxy.space/](https://pirateproxy.space/) to find interesting
films. It's so good when I can watch a movie in silence and family circle

------
Nasrudith
Reminds me of Facadism as part of the larger pattern of cargo culting trends
in development to try to gain the benefits of the "new way" without deeper
changes resulting in nothing really different.

On the parking issue and related housing shortages I wonder how viable an
attempted rail primary based housing development project to a major city would
be in the US for NIMBY dodging. Apparently that is fairly common in Japan
along with new rail line loops receiving housing developments and subway/train
station centered commercial districts. In theory existing neighborhoods would
scale up and add public transit as density rises but in practice they complain
like hell over any changes. Optimistically successful examples could give a
kick in the pants to NIMBYs as their property value drops anyway due to the
competition of a new area and they realize commutter trains aren't the devil
or a waste of money but reduce road traffic.

~~~
CalRobert
I think this is the idea behind culdesac (no private cars or parking in
development, on light rail, carshare at periphery) but we'll see how that pans
out.

~~~
msla
No private cars in the development? OK, that means the housebound can't live
there, because people like home health nurses can't be asked to drag equipment
and other supplies from the closest parking to wherever the person lives. With
many First-World countries looking at aging populations, this is going to
limit the appeal of such developments.

~~~
CalRobert
Aging populations are exactly a reason to move away from car dependence.
Instead they're trapped in suburban homes with no drivers' licence, often
alone.

~~~
msla
Old people should be in communities where driving is de-emphasized, I agree.
However, home health services promote independence, too, and they depend on
cars to practically transport meals, equipment, and people directly to the
door, in ways which would be vastly impractical if cars were outright banned.

------
crmrc114
Its almost as if we built a building... then put all the stores inside of it.
People could walk around without concern for the weather or cars. Hell we
could surround it with parking even!

-Pre-2000's Mall designers

Screw the building lets just cram the stores up close to each other in an
outdoor square with trees and surround it with, parking.

-Post 2010 Mall designers

------
petsormeat
The most surreal of these developments that I've visited is the Town Square of
Copperopolis, California.[1]

It's not visually unappealing, but is a rather odd addendum to a historic 19th
c. town which apparently won't suffice for tourists or affluent retirees (not
enough parking). It's just as managed and tidy as the developments discussed
here. Speakers on light poles blare top 40 hits from the 1950s, for some
reason.

[1] [https://www.gocalaveras.com/location/california/gold-
country...](https://www.gocalaveras.com/location/california/gold-
country/copperopolis-california/)

------
chasd00
these are popping up in the DFW suburbs where they can be built from scratch.
The standard setup is retail at street level with apartments on top and
parking underground or at least concentrated in one large garage. They're not
completely car free in the center of the development but it doesn't make sense
to drive on the interior, there's no point. I think the streets on the inside
are there mostly for fire/emergency access. It's ok I guess, the developments
are like walking around an amusement park but it's retail instead of games and
rides.

Another setup I see in the exurbs are planned communities. You basically take
everything a neighborhood needs and build a wall around it. My sister lives in
one on a lake, it's pretty neat, everyone drives golf-carts around instead of
cars which is funny/interesting. Also, they have their own holiday festivals
and events so the community is pretty close knit. My sister's kids know all
the other neighborhood kids and all the parents know each other. The parents
keep an eye out and so the kids are given a lot of freedom to roam and do kid
stuff they wouldn't normally be able to do in the standard suburban
neighborhood with heavy and fast traffic everywhere.

~~~
ghaff
You can have largely pedestrianized areas in the interior with these sorts of
things but, in general, you need to provide parking because a lot of people
are going to need/want to use a car to get to them even if they're on some
sort of transit route.

They also tend to work better in moderate climates. One example of something
along these lines in the Bay Area is Santana Row. Very clearly artificial but
still relatively pleasant.

------
logfromblammo
This sort of development is crying out for a big parking garage near the
highway, and an automated train to shuttle people between the parking
structure and the walkable/bicyclable city core.

That, along with commercial-under and residential-over vertical zoning, is the
bridge we need between traditional suburban sprawl and walkable cities. You
can't walk around if you can't get there, and you won't want to stay if you
can't leave.

------
Asooka
I wonder why we don't see more developments with underground parking. Imagine
a three-level underground parking space with a small public park on top.
Access would be gated to residents of the surrounding buildings. You should
still have some above-ground parking for deliveries, friends visiting, etc.
but you can have the majority of parking underground.

~~~
jnwatson
Underground parking being expensive is the main reason.

Still, it is pretty common here in Northern Virginia.

------
hirundo
When manually driven cars become a rare exception expect these layouts to
change again. Instead of vast parking lots somewhat integrated with the
destination, cars in surplus to immediate requirements drive themselves to
"inconvenient" staging lots or back to their corporate homes. Developments
become more dense again.

~~~
Swenrekcah
That's probably true, but in the intervening 75 years, cities would do well to
build up their public transport.

~~~
lotsofpulp
The only thing that will cause cities to build up public transport is if
people start living in more dense quarters. And the only thing that will make
people start living in more dense quarters is if the cost of moving people and
all the mass associated with their lives increases drastically. Therefore, the
only solution is to cause the price of fuel to rise dramatically, or wait for
the consequences of fuel use to raise the cost for us.

And then once people are living in smaller homes in higher density
environments, a city government will be able to propose public transportation
that is actually feasible.

~~~
Swenrekcah
I agree. Also cities and municipalities should charge for road usage.

------
lucraft
The second example just seems to be a shopping mall without a roof.

------
lnanek2
He complains it is all parking, but there's solutions to that. Here in Santa
Monica there's a whole row of public parking buildings a few blocks from all
the popular downtown areas (beach, pier, 3rd street promenade, mall, etc.). So
if you shell out the money, you can compress the parking into one block along
the otherwise active walkable downtown area. In this case the developer must
have just calculated it's cheaper to have parking lots.

As someone who grew up in Manhattan, though, I do kind of laugh that he
considers that development plan non-walkable. I was always happy to walk
across the island east/west and only took subways north/south, so his
impossible to walk to shopping center part of the development looks trivially
walkable to my Manhattan self...

~~~
atombender
"Walkable" doesn't mean you _can 't_ walk (although it sometimes means that,
too, of course).

By most measurements, walkability refers to a pedestrian's ability to reach
amenities such as grocery stores within a short time (e.g. 5 minutes). By that
metric, almost all of Manhattan is _extremely_ walkable.

Manhattan does have many isolated "deserts" where you can find yourself
surrounded by just residential buildings (parts of UWS and UES, for example),
or a heavy concentration of businesses, parking, industry (e.g. 11th-12th Ave
around Hudson Yards, for example). Until a decade ago or so, the Finance
District used to be pretty dead at night. And so on.

There's fairly low "pain threshold" in the US before people discard walking as
an alternative and just go in their car. We all know the satiric image of the
American who jumps in their car to go one block; in my experience (as a
European living in the US), there's a certain amount of cultural
indoctrination that has persuaded Americans that transportation by car is
absolutely necessary.

~~~
bluGill
If 99% of your trips cannot be reasonably made by walking you don't think to
walk for that last 1% either

------
werber
This makes me think of a lot of development projects in Detroit. They are
promised to be these new urban multipurpose spaces and we don't even end up
with the facade. Just tons of parking lots where there were supposed to be
life.

------
Balanceinfinity
The origin of the mixed use movement (and the rebirth of cities) is The Death
and Life of Great American Cities
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities)).
The upshot is that mixed use is the holy grail. Here, I can't tell is
residential mixed in with commercial - that's how you get people out of cars.

It says mixed use - does that means there's commercial and residential in the
same space? In my mind that's what makes for a city.

------
olah_1
I love StrongTowns. They do a great service in bringing many different
political dispositions together for common, practical goals of simply better
living.

Often times, what they advocate for can be championed by Distributists,
Libertarians, and Socialists alike. Because usually what divides these camps
is mostly questions of scale and not the actual end goals.

~~~
francisofascii
Probably the best fit are geolibertarians.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism)

------
jnwatson
This style is not new. The earliest planned community in Reston VA built 50
years ago [1] uses this approach, except the housing is more integrated.

Housing above the shops and immediately adjacent produces the ambiance of a
walkable community around a lake.

Still, it has to be surrounded by parking lots. There’s just no way around it
unless you move all the work and the schools there too.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Anne](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Anne)

~~~
ses1984
Or have like... A bus stop.

------
claudeganon
If you want to see real, “movie-set urbanism” go check out some of the newly
gentrified neighborhoods in LA, like Highland Park. It looks like a set
designer did a week’s research in Brooklyn and came back with some kind of
illness that causes people to open terrible restaurants.

By contrast, long standing neighborhoods like the fashion district in downtown
LA, Lincoln Heights, Monterey Park, are so vibrant with amazing businesses and
food that serve their local communities. It’s night and day.

------
seltzered_
Drew Austin (aka kneeling bus) talks about a similar perspective in “The city
as weakly-escaped reality (revisiting the holey plane):
[https://youtu.be/9HL2bh_EMyk](https://youtu.be/9HL2bh_EMyk)

I don’t think the principle of hiding parking is necessarily bad though.
Cohousing designs for this way to facilitate more interaction with neighbors.
It’s just one aspect though among others (consensus management, etc.)

------
at-fates-hands
This has been going on a for a long time now. I remember working as an
installer for a high end AV company in the early 2000's. We installed pricey
home theaters and distributed audio for the rich suburban folks.

I remember several "planned communities" where they had small strip malls on
the outside of the community, and then it was all high end craftsman and cape
cod style houses on the interior. They had removed as many streets into the
main center of the community as possible. In order to get to two of the houses
we were working on, we had to park several hundred yards away and walk in to
the houses.

Sure, it was awesome for the kids as they could go about their business
without fear of high speed traffic, but it was a royal pain to heft in all the
wiring boxes, tools and other stuff we needed to do our job. I also noticed,
all the houses were reduced to two car garages. When I started talking to one
of the owners, he gave me a litany of things they had to agree to before being
able to build their homes. The strict building codes forbid three level
houses, more than a two car garage, and each lot had to leave a strict
percentage of "green" space - aka grass on each lot, and you were required to
have a porch (you know, to encourage "community" and bonding with your
neighbors) which also had a bunch of requirements you had to meet. There were
other ones, but those were the ones which always stood out to me.

In short, they were trying to create some kind of a movie like community in
every sense.

------
geebee
Sounds like we may be experiencing the revival of the folly:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly)

I suppose extreme income inequality, along with deteriorating urban conditions
that plague public spaces, could actually push society toward a folly based,
key-card access future.

------
sandoooo
Why is there no multilevel parking? All that space can't be cheap. Is there
zoning laws against it?

~~~
rtkwe
I've often wondered that, why parking structures aren't considered more as a
medium term solution to increasing density while not having to revolutionize
public transit. Probably a combination of the cost to build and resistance to
having one next to buildings because they're usually pretty ugly if I had to
guess.

~~~
bluGill
Because roads for all those cars take space as well. In a low density city it
isn't a big deal (other than the expense of building all the roads), but as
you move up the density levels your roads start to get full. Parking
structures are common, and a useful part even the densest cities. They don't
solve all the problems though and so are not a solution or even a mitigation.

------
Animats
The trouble with "mixed-use development" is that an apartment building does
not generate enough business for its ground floor shops. Which is why many of
them are vacant. Or turned into low-value places like nail salons.

~~~
bluGill
Very true. I estimate you need 15-20 floors above ground floor shopping to
fill all the spaces. This based on observations that in Paris (4-5 stories)
there is a block of ground floor shopping and then 3-5 without. Since I'm not
an expert on Paris (never been there only seen picture and read reports) take
that with some salt...

Also most apartment developers don't know how to rent commercial spaces. So
some ground floor spaces are vacant because it was only put in to allow the
apartments above and so it isn't actually possible to get a commercial lease.
(commercial leases allow a lot of remodeling and have other terms different
from the standard residential lease, so anyone looking that a commercial lease
will refuse the space)

~~~
Animats
It's definitely a problem with the "mixed use" buildings going up on the SF
peninsula. The ground floor stores are marginal, vacant, or used as office
space. A 5-story building can't support a convenience store by itself.

There have been startups which tried convenience stores that were giant
vending machines, but that hasn't been successful. Amazon Go didn't really
work out; there are a few stores, but no major deployment. There's a startup
in China which puts automated stores in a shipping container sized box, but
that hasn't been successful in the US.

------
buckminster
> these places tend not to hold their value over time, and to feel very dated
> after a couple decades.

Is anybody building property near the coast of Florida hoping for more than a
couple of decades of value? Sea levels are rising.

------
achenatx
We have a couple of developments in austin the "domain" which is an outdoor
mall integrated with tons of apartments and a ton of actual jobs. The
entertainment district serves those who live there, but is probably good
enough to attract people from north austin who dont want to go downtown. It is
disappointing to see classic strip malls continuing to be built in the suburbs
with massive parking lots, when this dense form of living works so well.
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Domain/@30.4006016,-97...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Domain/@30.4006016,-97.7273151,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x8644cc71ec3d3b05:0x77c4a76c643f0420!8m2!3d30.4006016!4d-97.7251211)

There is another development "mueller" which took the old airport and turned
it into a neighborhood. It is much less commercial but the parks make it
amazing. There are a ton of amenities, but the amenities are car centric.
There are some jobs, but not quite enough. As a kid with a bike though there
are multiple pools, movie theater, ice cream shop, pizza within biking
distance. The small backyards means that everyone gathers at the park to play.
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mueller,+Austin,+TX/@30.29...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mueller,+Austin,+TX/@30.2984571,-97.7095403,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x8644b5fe5b3bfc47:0x78dc0a5de60a06d6!8m2!3d30.2986834!4d-97.700371)

Both of the developments are heavily influencing the areas around them

Austin is trying to fix old neighborhoods with an updated land development
code. The NIMBYS are out in force - they absolutely love the neighborhood
character of their car dependent semi suburbs.

I live in "northwest hills" which was developed in the 60s-80s. The developer
didnt do a bad job (lots of multi family, missing middle, and SFH), but all
the commercial is heavily on one side down a steep hill, which means most of
the SFH people are physically separated from the multifamily/commercial area.
That means huge parking lots and everyone driving. The commercial should have
been pushed more into the SFH area. The city is trying to increase density via
zoning and the neighborhood is going crazy. There should be commercial along
mesa between far west and spicewood springs rd. The city is upzoning it to 4
plexes which is a step in the right direction.

[https://www.google.com/maps/@30.3499372,-97.7681162,15z](https://www.google.com/maps/@30.3499372,-97.7681162,15z)

------
turc1656
The main issue he cites seem to be parking taking up so much space. Wouldn't a
parking deck solve this? Build a 6 story garage and the 18% goes to 3%.

~~~
rjkennedy98
Parking garages are enormously expensive. They can cost up to 50k per space.
For instance the parking garage at the Chinese theater cost as much as the
theater itself

~~~
turc1656
Wow, really? Did not know or expect that. Not intuitive that they should be
that expensive. In my mind they are just giant blocks of shaped concrete and
should be extraordinarily simple to put together compared to something like a
mall.

What makes them so expensive?

~~~
lotsofpulp
[https://watrydesign.com/insights/top-10-issues-affecting-
cos...](https://watrydesign.com/insights/top-10-issues-affecting-cost-of-
building-a-parking-space)

------
ropiwqefjnpoa
So his issue is people needing someplace to park their cars?

They arranged the buildings in an aesthetically pleasing way to disguise all
the parking, I say bravo.

~~~
lotsofpulp
The very existence of personal transportation in the form of current size
vehicles works against "walkability". It is clear one cannot have both.

------
saikit
American Village in Okinawa is exactly like this. Outside of Naha, getting
around Okinawa strangely feels like an American suburb.

~~~
CapricornNoble
I blame Okinawa's abysmal public transit situation on:

1\. The US administering the island until 1972, while Japan itself was
undergoing very effective reconstruction and public works projects post-war.

2\. The mainland Japanese government treating the Okinawans almost like
unwanted red-headed step-children.

And yes, the southern third of the island has the building and traffic density
of an urban area with the inconvenience of American suburbs. Almost the entire
population has at least a kei car, unless you work in a snack bar/kabakura
(where transportation is often provided, and your job involves getting shit-
faced drunk every night so you can't drive home anyway).

American Village is also my least-favorite place to go on the island: the
traffic to get into that area is abysmal, especially after 4pm, and during the
summer the brutal heat, sunlight, and humidity makes walking around between
the buildings unappealing. Ashibina Outlet Mall is similar, but at least has
slightly better overhead cover to protect from the sun.

~~~
saikit
I guess they resolved the heating issue with an even more American
institution. Stepping into Aeon Mall Rycom is a like a localized version of my
youth in New Jersey.

------
rospaya
I thought that it was a ripoff of the town from the Truman Show.

------
gowld
People with jobs and families like these neighborhoods because they provide a
walkable downtown main street with access to jobs. Strongtowns is becoming
Jacobin like in its militancy against compromises that serve real people in
the real world.

------
djmobley
I’m bullish on autonomous electric vehicles making these kind of neighborhoods
perfectly sustainable and, for many people, preferable to higher density
walkable neighborhoods.

------
narrator
The structure of America being car dependent is that the "youths" who mayor
Bloomberg recently commented commit 95% of murders don't have cars or gas
money to get there. The car dependent lifestyle is to create areas where
undesirable elements are excluded.

In many areas "youths" gather in shopping malls and so forth and generate a
lot of petty crime, vandalism, shoplifting, playing loud music and generally
making everyone uncomfortable. Dead malls and downtowns have declined because
of excessive presence of "youths". For example, Halloween in San Francisco's
Castro got cancelled permanently because "youths" showed up and started
shooting at each other. If you make it hard to get places, these "youths" tend
to not show up and keep everything nice, peaceful and upscale.

Without the "youths" problem, America would have a far lower homicide rate and
public transit, bikes, walkable neighborhoods, free public festivals and all
that stuff would be far more popular.

~~~
superduperuser
Woah

