I am a Mayor-elect for a small town (Mayor-Council form), and would love to bring these ideas to life. We have very little tax revenue, as businesses died out before I was born. Something like this could revitalize smaller rural towns that are nearby to larger areas. Any thoughts?
I think control freaks who see people as tax cattle are the ones that legislated these types of businesses out of existence in the first place. Can't solve a problem with the same type of thinking that got you into it.
Seattle local here, Yonder is back open. The community rallied and signed a petition for a exemption from the rule. If there is one thing to be learned in this instance if you building something that drives community in the end the community will have your back.
a karen or 2 shouldent be able to f over a busness or someones life. the person that kepped calling should be charged for wasting manicipal resources. this is also why redflag laws are bad, you cant infringe on some ones rights just cause u dont like them
Seattle is an exception. I used to complain about Seattle, then I moved near SF. I'll never complain about Seattle again. At least they try new things when shit goes bad, SF will have a problem and their solution is ALWAYS to elect the same type of people over and over and over and over and over and over.
Don't forget that these businesses were usually family-owned, generation-to-generation legacy shops. Putting shops owned by big corporations in the front yard may turn people off from allowing it, but if it was a mom-and-pop, they might be more open to it. Farming is a great idea. I think it would work wonderfully for busy people and older folks who have little time or ability but still enjoy seeing plants and foliage.
Yes, some country wide monopoly corporation controlling the front yard businesses of the country would be a disaster in every way... if the door was left open legally, it would happen, and very fast...
@@PRH123 I think the farming idea could also use some reworking because I can see it easily turning into a modern-day serfdom situation without the proper rules and regulations on the company side of things. Other than that I think it's a great idea to try and get people to contribute to their local food supply, it would lessen the need for imported produce which is generally a good thing for the environment.
@@peggedyourdad9560 yes, agree…. my grandmother & grandfather had a regular size backyard in the suburbs, where they grew various vegetables and berries, and they would tell me that they got literally more than half of what they ate from their own backyard garden…. which we knew as kids because we were eating the produce when we were there…. They had many hundreds of big glass mason jars stored in the basement with preserved vegetables and fruits for the winter time… And an additional plus of course, is the stuff you grow yourself is natural and clean and fresh, unlike what you may get from a market….
@@PRH123 My grandparents have a small garden where they also can the vegetables. After reading your comment, I also think having people grow a significant amount of their own produce could be beneficial for the general health of the populace since there would be less use of pesticides and preservatives (definitely fewer preservatives since the produce wouldn't need to travel). That being said, you should still make sure to thoroughly wash your home-grown produce as it can still be contaminated with various bacteria and parasites.
I don't understand why people would be against corporations being in on this. If they did then maybe they wouldn't lobby against it. Some private people own the restaurant they run even if it's from a chain restaurant.
The existing rules are what will kill America's adaption to the future. The car dependency of the 50's has left America with few choices for reinventing the neighborhood. I moved to Mexico 18 months ago. I have no car and walk everywhere, carry my groceries home in a backpack. The effect this has had on my health, weight and stamina are absolutely AMAZING. The past 18 months have probably added several years to my life. I feel like I'm 17 again...and I'm 70!!!
This is what people don't understand. I find it's better to get exercise each day through travel. People in my town talk about me like I'm crazy for riding a bike for 75-90% of my commuting. They don't understand how different it is to navigate their town when not in a climate controlled isolation chamber. And they have been trained to ignore or make excuses for all the downsides of owning a car too. The recurring payments, day to day upkeep, the liability, the worry, the oil, the maintenance, the insurance, the additional risk, the stress, the annoyance of having to drive in general, etc etc... of course there are upsides too but it's a tough set of scales. I had a 50 year old man ask me what I do about RAIN outside on my bike. Like.... I deal with it? I come prepared? idk.
America has a car dependency because not every state has a city like Chicago or New York where you can take some kind of public transportation or just walk/bike to get where you're going. Places Dothan AL even though it's a city, it's more of a large town. Outside of the historical mainstreet area where small/private business are on the sidewalk, you really need a car to get where you're going since the grocery stores, medical facilities and other things people will need on a daily basis are kinda spread out that walking means you'll be at Walmart in 30 minutes versus 5-6 minutes driving. Then there's rural areas that don't have that luxury plus families out there need their car for their work/businesses. You're speaking from a point of view that you're either on your own or only have 1 person living with you so your groceries are probably small (for only what you or you and your dependent need) and can afford to live in a smaller space area. Reinventing how American counties plan out their neighborhoods isn't as simple as following others examples since America kinda has a hodge podge of different populated areas where no one solution solves it.
@@Mdb8900 but what works for you doesn't work for everyone. You might be single and can do this kind of option since you don't have other passengers to get around town safely.
@@eightball6219 having a car is a great thing. it has some downsides but it also has a lot of upsides, and the biggest one is being able to haul a large amount of people comfortably wherever you want. people should be able to have a car if they want to. the problem with america's urban planning from the 1950s onward is it became EXTREMELY car-centric. as in, if you live in like 85% of america's areas, you will NEED a car to do the most basic things like groceries, healthcare, school and work, etc. there's no option for public transport in most places and even if you do have a car, it'll take you double the time it'll take in other developed countries. and even then, in a lot of developed or even underdeveloped countries, many public facilities are in walking distance like in the philippines for example, where provinces have small pools of rural communities where you can get everything you need. also, each country only has a few cities relative to rural areas and the countryside. and even then, most STILL have public transport options, although it is a given that they won't be as extensive or developed as that in large cities. small towns in japan have dedicated train stops, and here in the philippines they are interconnected by jeepneys (medium-sized open air buses). public transport CAN be available everywhere, but the US in the mid-to-late 20th century choked out any option for public transport due to shit urban planning and basically told all its citizens "hey. buy a car or die."
Lots of older New England neighborhoods got it right. Corners were often set aside for businesses. They frequently had deeper setbacks, yet their styles fit in with the surrounding buildings, pretty much. Cafes, flower shops, small groceries, etc. humanize an otherwise sterile landscape. Yes, community is strengthened with carefully planned mixed use...and must be brought back.
The Yonders situation makes me think that a small minority of, for lack of a better word, killjoys forced us all into the single family zoned suburban neighborhood. Thousands wanted a cider bar, while one did not. If the cider bar did not already exist, the one would still oppose it, but the thousands don't even know what they're missing out on. So we lower ourselves to the lowest common denominator to minimize complaints
I suspect that the era of fastest suburban expansion coincided with an era of unprecedented economic prosperity that had the unintended effect of baking-in some Regulations that are Pretty economically disadvantageous to the people living there - - they didn’t care, because money wasn’t tight. Now that it is, it makes less sense, but the old values persist for reasons no one remembers why
It's extremely common in Europe to have a business down stairs and live upstairs. Often it was a normal family home that's transformed into a business. Also sometimes they are turned back into homes. In the Netherlands its normal to be within 15 minutes walk or 5 minutes biking from a grocery store. They are built into every neighborhood.
It used to be a thing here in North America too, until the suburbanization and single family zoning. If you go to some older neighborhoods, you'll see housing be right on top of businesses. If they start talking of legalizing it again in Montreal (where I am), I'm immediately buying a house lol
My grandpa built a 3 storey building, in the 1950s in Spain, with 4 apartments (2 top floors) and 2 commercial spaces (ground floor). He passed away some years ago, but everything he left us is still in use today :D
They have housing on top of businesses everywhere in the US. Especially in Northern Cities like Chicago, Minneapolis and New York. But literally every city in America has these. It's extremely common. Don't spread misinformation.
@@nibirue no one says there's none. They just don't build it anymore, it's prohibited in most places. And it's extremely expensive to live in the remaining places like that since the supply is limited
Yeah we even have them in most new suburbs, usually just a small shop, business or restaurant. It makes it really easy if you want to get some groceries or get something to eat really quick without having to drive somewhere or use a delivery service. I currently live in a central neighborhood and since I work from home I use my car at most once a week since I can get everything I need within 10 minutes walking distance.
so glad this ended on an optimistic note because literally every video about urban planning that i watch seems to imply that everything’s doomed and there’s nothing we can do about it. got super depressing for a while until i watched this video, so thanks for that!
It's a really old fashioned, but somehow futuristic idea. I don't live in America, but this idea seems so interesting and promising. Not from a business standpoint, but for community. In a world that seems to be becoming more and more online dependent, this would bring back the feeling of living in a community again, back to the real world. I actually long for this vision of the world, where business and home are all interconnected and ran by regular people and not giant corporations. It's almost post apocalyptic without the horrors of such, back to basics, back to being human.
And in many games, people play as a character walking as they're doing their tasks. Not much driving. Many gamers like that so they can explore. Why can't we have that in real life? Why do we have to escape to games and the digital for it?
@@user-gu9yq5sj7c I like how you mentioned computer games. Growing up in the suburbs I played computer games where I walk around a medieval city and climb on roofs. Now that I came to Asia there's no need to escape reality into computer games because life is vibrant and fun. Except what China is doing in the 21st century, it's building car-centric suburbs with shopping malls, parking lots, highways, and now local kids are escaping life into computer games.
Why does the size or geographic location of the parasite seeking to subsist off your labor influence how you feel about its right to exist? Do you think Mom and Pop don't have the same end game as the multinational if they can only get the market share and the income to pull it off? Parasite is a parasite is a parasite.
My former girlfriend is Australian. I am Filipino and its common to have small businesses (convenience stores, car mechanics, restaurants) in your neighborhood. In Melbourne suburbs, if she has to go get something, you gotta drive to it, and its far from your home. She finds it convenient how in my country its easier to access your needs when needed and get to be close with the community too.
Frustratingly, Australia has many older suburbs where these stores in the between houses do exist. Mixed use is coming back in inner city suburbs of Melbourne & Sydney, but frustratingly newer developments in the ex-urbs all seem follow the American model and require driving everywhere.
Unfortunately, it is not the case in subdivisions (which are increasing) in the Philippines. There are also an increasing amount of road widening projects which makes streets less walkable.
Ahh, I miss living in Melbourne. The Vietmamese Banh Mi shops in most suburbs is an excellent example of multiculturalism and ingenuity. I live in Newcastle now - most suburbs are shop deserts. Leading to higher prices if you want to grab a quick lunch (mainly due to high rents / the price of property). We have the odd coffee shop here or there but for the most part it's all houses. I'm all for bringing this back. Adds so much value to a community.
When I was a child, I always wondered why there couldn’t be a restaurant or a store in my neighborhood. Why people didn’t have businesses in their own homes. Then, after living abroad, I discovered it’s just a zoning thing, which is super unfortunate.
Yea. In my city I can't run a business from my home. 1 mile away in yhe County I need a sign in the yard and a landline only. I was flipping cars but didn't want the dealer lot like the powers that be want. Assholes.
I wondered the same thing. I loved drawing up “blueprints” when I was a kid, making treehouses, spy headquarters, or mansions. A lot of those I look back on and realize how many elements of mixed-use spaces I incorporated.
@@ChickenMcFuggets I think it would depend. Is it the only thing next to me? I’d prefer to live with something on either side, and maybe even below me if I’m not on the first floor. I’d have no issue with the KFC though. I do love the smell of fried chicken!
It's a terrible idea. You'd have hundreds of people taking up all the residential parking in the middle of the day and causing standstill traffic. I'm for residential area shops but that plug and play scheme with that strip mall of stores in a neighborhood is whack
@@jovi9918 The whole idea behind these front yard shops is for people in the neighbourhood to be walking to them anyways. It's a way to make SFH neighbourhoods more walkable without changing its structure. People should really have no issue walking between 5-15 minutes to a nearby front yard shop. Some people from far may be driving in, but they should not be the main target.
I grew up in a small Midwestern town, a once-upon-a-time thriving "river town," on the banks of one of America's major rivers. This kind of "mixed use" concept was once quite prevalent there, and still is, to some degree. I remember, from our house, down one block was a (much better) Dairy Queen competitor; down another block from there was a great little market/deli/convenience store. Across the street, on the 1st floor of a 2-story "home," there used to be a pizza shop. And all these were integrated into, and surrounded by, organic residential neighborhoods! Now, I'm in the big city (30 years on), and I do miss that kind of thing!
I work as a planning and zoning consultant and work with many of these cases in the day to day. Home occupations are becoming more common and the definition is expanding. I’m a huge fan of mixed use and Placemaking and think these ideas are very cool and could definitely be incorporated into countless communities. The only issue I see is zoning is split predominant into two groups, those who would be in favor of this and those who would say that residential areas and commercial uses should be separate because their home is their “sanctuary” and that includes having their own space and a quiet, quaint view out their front door. I am seeing this response more and more, specifically in rural communities and the installation of solar infrastructure/any development at all. Maybe there could be districts where mixed use is allowed and districts where it’s not? Therefore, they can live within the means of their expectations for a residential area and others can live in a more mixed use neighborhood. This would also decrease the need for parking because if these spaces are all within walking distance of where someone lives that will actually use them, there’s a high chance they’ll just walk, ride a bike, etc.
German urban planning student here: That's pretty much the system we have in place. We have several types of residential areas, all of which permit business "that is of no disturbance". In the most exclusively residential category, there's an additional attachment "that serve the day to day needs of the residents". Maybe framing it like this would make people see that it's not some big development, but a more contained mix they'd directly profit from, while ensuring to them that their "peace" is not disturbed much? Also, they could be reminded that at this low of a density, there isn't gonna be hustle and bustle. We have denser suburbs, but still, opening businesses there is economically not viable I many cases. Not enough demand, or the demand is already saturated cause its been guzzled up by big chains with larger facilities.
i say leave the residential areas alone and focus on our horrible commercial corridors. redevelop strip malls and shopping centers into mixed-use, higher-density places, and well get the best of both worlds.
@@RyanThomas. The internet helped me to learn about and be open to many different views. It's harder for me to find or know about that in real life, and it has more social constructs.
@@detroitmetro101 You said a contradiction. You said "leave the residential areas alone" and "get the best of both worlds". The zoning laws are too strict and people need more freedom to have businesses part of their homes too. You can have that and suburbs. What does it hurt to give people more choice if they want it? And to help the poor in that way too. If something was so unwanted why make laws to ban it?
@@user-gu9yq5sj7c well, you can run a business out of your house now, it just depends on what kind of business. if you want to run a consultancy as a freelancer or otherwise remotely, you can do that now. if you are expanding and need to hire several employees, you might want to get a commercial space with more room. also, i think we all agree that one shouldn't be able to open a bar or a club in a residential area, among other kinds of similar businesses. that said, single-use commercial corridors, now occupied by strip malls and shitty and outdated commercial properties, should be redeveloped into mixed-use higher density, especially in cities that have been built out.
I’ve always lived 3 doors down from a little cafe. It used to be a butcher with a few other stores now converted to housing. This cafe is at least a kilometre from anything else. I think this cafe is why I’m partially so fascinated with mixed-use living
The US and Canada has created a real suburban hell scape , you were spot on when you said it creates more community when you mix the businesses with the residential and the more businesses we have in residential the less we have to drive a car to get to what we need , which also means less stress from road rage and more exercise for our obese population,
It might seem like a stretch but once you look into the negatives of life in North America, it is staggering at how many of those are directly or indirectly caused by car dependence and single family zoning
@@nicholasmichaluk unfortunately car dependency is by design, and no it's not conspiracy theory, in the 90s I watched an episode on the history channel about how Los Angeles in the beginning of the 1900s had a adequate rail system but GM the auto manufacturer and the tire companies lobbied the Los Angeles politicians to have the rails pulled out because they saw a giant prophet to be had by the growing cities population of course the people of Los Angeles paid for this decades later with horrible smog and the worst traffic congestion in the United States , in the early 90s they began trying to put a rail system in again (Metro) but it was much harder because the city had grown tremendously and it was hard to find a place to put the rail,
@@nicholasmichaluk yaah. A lot of those things are positives for a lot of people. There the beauty of America. You can move a couple hours away and be in a completely different environment.
There's a good many channels making videos in this exact same space, and I must say that of the lot yours consistently deliver the most interesting and inspiring messages, and probably lead the way in production quality too. Keep em coming!
@@raycrou8837 some good ones are City Beautiful, NotJustBikes, City Nerd, The Life Sized City, Oh the urbanity, and Alan Fisher. "Mike looks at the map" was a little series I used to enjoy too but I think he's inactive now.
@@raycrou8837 RM transit is also good if you like transit (go figure), but I'd second city nerd and Not Just Bikes. Strong towns doesn't make content in this format, but it has a range of 30 minute clips to 2 hour seminars that are very informative.
I agree with you on your points but would argue that it is a slight disservice to the other creators. They are targeting very different audiences, all the others go more into the nitty gritty of urban planning basically preaching to the choir. Rather than the general public aka trying to create converts like Lee here. Anyway I love them all and want both more content from them all and more NA cities to improve their non car infrastructure and draconian zoning laws.
I was a bit weirded out by this idea at first, coming from a place with no front yard businesses, but I really think this could be great idea. Over here we have shopping parades with houses or apartments above shops, and in a few places around here people managed to get planning permission to turn part of their house into a shop, the Handy Corner in Crawley is an example. I’d love to be able to walk down the local street and access shops and usable spaces, that example of the corner building with houses, offices, and a cafe + seating area looked amazing, it would really clash with the housing in my neighborhood but it’s such a cool idea, I’d love to be able to eat in a cafe and sit out in a little park surrounded by good urbanism. Japan does this kind of thing really well and I really hope my town can start to learn from that kind of neighborhood and encourage further mixing of uses in our neighbourhoods.
If you ever been to Vietnam … everyone’s home is also their own business - it’s great. In one row of homes you got food vendors, barbers, etc you don’t have to go far to get what you need…
Hey, I also like modern urban planning and prehistoric society, crazy. I wonder what the cross section of your subscribers is. Corner's first is definitely great, I think the other big thing would be to allow more spaces in our Green spaces to be rented out. In my experience Suburbia has a lot of parks with nothing in them. Opening up a few square meters to people selling services like Ice cream, food trucks, Hair cutters, etc could help demonstrate how harmless these things are while also encouraging only walk up business and no cars.
The biggest point for front yard businesses is that it connects people. You know the people who sell you things and in turn also buy things at your business. You see this in many Japanese shopping streets for example. Most restaurants get their stuff from the surrounding shops. They know each other and help each other out. Instead of 70% of businesses owned by big chains or franchises. They get most of their stuff from somewhere else sometimes even across half the country. I'm a tailor from Germany and opened a business in Japan a few years ago. And people there appreciate it when I can tell them where I get my fabrics from. I'm more likley to sell a suit if I can tell them that the fabric gets woven and colored by a family business somewhere in the neighborhood. One of my employees made kimonos before working for me and told me how really expensive kimonos are sometimes and painted by artist taking weeks. And I have reworked the whole process on creating suits spoke with many local craftsmen making connections. In the beginning I did that for my Japanese branch but I sold a few suits now with fabrics from these connections. And these craftsmen apriciate it that I take time to visit them at least once a year invite them and thank them for doing business with me.
Front yard businesses are such a great idea. I love the idea of running a business and not wasting time and money on the daily commute. It’s so much more efficient and easier on the environment.
My grandparents had a front shop you could access from the basement of the house. It ended up being next door. My great grandparents house was also attached to the store and house from the back. As a kid, we had the freedom to go to all 3. Always had people around. Loved it.
Aside from barbers, beauty salons, and bookkeepers, some of the invisible businesses going on in homes include tutoring and music teaching, web services, sale of plants, handmade goods and even food marketed through online classifieds. Not to mention the many content producers who film or work from home. I also once worked for a podiatrist who consulted with clients and made orthotics from his garage.
Man the things I’d do to run a furniture shop right below my apartment with a workshop in the basement. Make stuff from 10am-4pm and have the shopping area open 4-6pm or 4-7pm. What a fuckin goal.
I LOVE that Yonder Cider bar. I live in Portland, and there are many such detached garages in the old neighborhoods in the SE. I've always imagined how fun it would be to open a little coffee shop out of one. Also... 3:30 "Backdoor Plug & Play" COME ON 💀
There's a coffee shop in a neighborhood 25 min from me that fought tooth and nail to have the right to operate their business downstairs and have residential space for employees upstairs (they converted a large, old house). I hadn't put together just what makes this shop so special in my city until now - it's nestled right in the middle of a nice neighborhood and brings the whole community together. Speaking of George Coffee in Coppell, TX to anyone local enough to try it.
To put commercial units on the corners is exactly what came in my mind, before you said it in the video. There were a few new streets opened near my sister's former house, and on the corner, it was a daycare center. Around it, it wasn't full detached houses yet, but small condo buildings of 3 or 4 units, followed by semi-detached and then fully detached homes. If you are interested to see it, Québec city, at the corner of rue George-Muir and rue Elmina Anger. It's pretty much how it is done around here, it was the same in my 1990s neighborhood, they start with commercial buildings on the old road, then condos, then rowhouses and semi detached, then small single houses and finally big houses.
I live in Puerto Rico. Be careful what you wish for. There is a local man who set up a sandblasting company in his front yard. He now has a junkyard of old cars littering his property and the surrounding properties. And he can do so because he made it impossible to live next to him, so the properties are abandoned, and he also devalued those houses, so none of the houses can be sold. This is a normal occurrence here because there are few laws restricting people from making a business anywhere. Few rules on noise, virtually no zoning laws, no obligations to create adequate parking. And worse yet, the rules they have are rarely enforced. Of course there is a local economy but no real growth since there is literally no space for it and because the only value of the businesses is convenience no pressure for innovation. It's just people passing around the little capital that flows into the community. The roads are hazardous because people park in the street and even work on cars parked on the white lines with their legs hanging out into the road. And there is no means for reproach if a ridiculous business is constructed next door. Etc etc. So yeah be careful what you wish for.
That’s why it would/should be regulated businesses, including having noise ordinances. Clearly Puerto Rico allows all types of foolishness and barely have any rules/regulations.
@@DaytonaRoadster Low iq? Isnt it a US territory? Its funny when the bully thinks hes better simply because he is more violent. The master isn't better than the slave for using violence to subdue the slave. The violent master will ultimately destroy himself with such thinking. It is inevitable as history teaches us. While the slave , being patient and kind will adapt, learn and better himself. And one day the master will knock on the slaves door and say , my house is in ruins. My talents lost, can you spare your old master some bread as winter has come hard for me. And the slave will say , but sir you were never my master, you were my captor. Look at some old colonizers now, having grown dependent on their old colonies they failed to develop their economies . Now they their old colonies laugh at their faces. While they huddle in one room homes homes dreaming of warmth. The cycle is inevitable, master become slaves and slaves become masters. Only kindness can break the cycle. Peace.
Our neighbourhood has a front yard family business - McGill Grocery - that sells organic milk, stamps, hot coffee, local bakery items, freezies, you name it. The operators know the local kids by name and I cannot imagine our community without them. I wish this type of amenity could be available to everyone.
I really like the stores here in NZ with a family owned dairy (suprette/bodega), fruit or flower store, botique, seamtress, etc and a house attached to the back, or sometimes above. It helps stimumate small business and local economies, and creates a sense of community. Like, yeah, im going to go buy my goods from people I know live in similar socio-economic conditions or in the very least arent multi-millionaires, as opposed to going to a big supermarket, even if it costs a little more.
That big supermarket employees hundreds of local teenagers at their first job. Some of them will go on with the grocery company, get an education, climb the employment ladder. None of that will happen at the Bodega. I'm not sure why you think the employees at the supermarket are somehow "above" your socio-economic condition.
There are several older neighbourhoods in Denver, where I live, with businesses built in front of a single family house along a major street. The original houses date from the early 1900s, and the business frontage probably no later than the '50s. Many of these buildings are on streets that weren't initially planned to be arteries and we're developed as entirely residential. Then, over time, traffic and use patterns changed. Instead of ripping down every single family house, residential and commercial blended. Now, after nearly a century (oldest shop frontages are from the 20s), The old developments along Federal, 6th, Broadway, etc., have a variety of houses, shop fronted houses, apartments, traditional mixed use, new mixed use, etc. They're now vibrant neighbourhoods people want to live in. But the rigid street grid of old neighbourhoods in Denver and its suburbs is very different from the post 90s "dying worm" and cul-de-sac developments. It would be very difficult to redevelop that style of development.
Bingo!!.. many streets were developed as residential and are now commercial when traffic and population caught up.. however.. this is s “Trick” question… people moved to subdivisions to raise kids,caul de sacs and closed off subdivisions from threw traffic is why people bought their homes.. city living is fantastic and fun, if you don’t have kids.. or a dog that needs a backyard or you don’t have a bbq.. and imagine if a guy buys the house next door and opens up a auto mechanic’s shop? Or some other high traffic business at the end of your street??? With the internet, every street is Main Street on the web.. how about that mansion home on the cliff with killer views opens a wine bar next to your $10 Million Dollar House!!! 😂💋☠️💕😂😂💕.. Not In My Backyard!!!!
Just wanted to say I loved this video and I'm very happy to hear that the Yonders thing was resolved. It's amazing to me that a single NIMBY can wield such power to get a thriving business shut down just because it doesn't fit some odd ideal for the neighborhood. Perhaps if it was a literal drug house the person might have a point, but a cider bar is pretty tame. It really goes to show the importance of talking to your local officials; as the saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
You got an immediate subscriber. Wow. So crazy, I thought about this a few times and had no idea how crazy it was that this was banned. By making it illegal, it obviously made it easier for bigger businesses by reducing competition. We need to have this back!
The problem is that in concept this is an idea that stirs the creative juices of design and urban planning nerds leading to grand, beautiful concepts. Truly beautiful, as seen in the wonderful examples provided. But in practice you end up with real life examples more aligned to the images we see around the 7min mark: garish signage thrown over the garage doors of McMansions with no concern for community, design, flow or common courtesy. The follow-up segment on the Yonder bar presents a slanted, editorialized narrative that depicts a single bad neighbor ruining this for everyone. However there is no evidence to support the notion this was only a single complainer. But even if it was their concerns are valid: imposing on your neighbors semi-private spaces (sidewalks, street parking in front of their homes and garages, etc) and selling a (rightly or wrongly) morally divisive product like liquor is always going to divide opinion. It's one thing to move into a neighborhood where this already exists. You're opting in. But it's another matter to have your neighbors force their choices - and potential inconveniences - on you.
I wonder how this guy would feel about people opening gun stores, shooting ranges, chemical disposal businesses, car repair shops, and strip clubs in their front yard. Also local bars in residential areas bring crime to the area.
FANTASTIC!!! love the combo of dreamworld and realworld presented...thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and the results of the survey...fascinating ideas...thank you!!
Great video! I kept seeing a future in our cities in NA of exactly what you were talking about as you described it. Economics and changing needs will drive this.
This would bring more people out to walk their neighborhoods and it helps to bring neighbors together. We have these in Portugal and I love being able to support small business owners. They don't sell everything, but most things I buy which is good enough for me, considering that I'm buying local. Love the concept!
My grandpa had a barber shop in front of his house in Anaheim, CA in the 70s. My great aunt ran a bakery from her detached garage and it was so cool to see neighbors come over and shop around her bakery
i live in Anaheim. i don't think they are allowed to do this stuff anymore. correct me if im wrong. this is what California needs. its to over regulated you can't even do nothing here.
We need these so badly!!! It would bring fresh produce to so many more people!! Imagine if your neighborhood had a little produce market, or an authentic Vietnamese restaurant, or a little pool hall lol. I live out in the country but we have a lot of neighborhoods and houses just no commercial areas zoned to have things like stores.
Excellent ideas! Unfortunately most new developments are not meant to be walked. Even our neighborhood built in the '80s has sidewalks, however over the years they have been blocked by mailboxes and other impediments. People now walk in the streets. In addition, government has to figure out a way to regulate everything and make money from it. Large corporations fight to keep everything in "commercial zones" where the price of entry breaks most start ups.
You really think large businesses fight to pay HIGHER rent for their space? Darn those clever big businesses. Hiring and paying all those people, allowing lots of employees to have a job and income and iunsurance and support their families. Paying huge amounts of taxes, license and permit fees. Providing the products that you want/need. Darn them all to heck. Let's just eliminate all laws and taxes and let people do and take whatever they want. I want your car, your blender, and your table saw. Bring them all over by the end of the week. Next Thursday they're building a pig slaughtering plant, a halfway house for illegal aliens, and an outdoor heavy metal concert stage, in the front yard of the house next door.
@@DrLumpy yes large corporations regularly help enact laws and regulations to limit entry in to the sector by small business. These fees and zoning regulations keep the cost of doing business out of the range of regular people. I was forced to move my business from one county to another because of these stupid money grabbing schemes. Show up to take my stuff and you will end up in a closed pine box!
When you realize there’s enough land in the country for everybody to have 6-7 acres a piece, even 1-4 acres and donate 2-3 a piece to community needs like parks, store, and government, farms, etc. but no we choose to live on top of each other which in turns ruin each other. All because some dude in the 1400s said this 10k acres is mine. The land and its resources will be there if money and laws exist or not.
@@bruhbutwhytho America has 2.4 billion acres, and a population of 331 million. If you divide that it’s 7.25 acres per person. Donate 3 acres hell even 5 acres per person to infrastructure, farming, etc leaves you with about 2-4 acres a person. This would include land for newborns and the land of old people, and people that need assisted living. Basically as someone in your family passes away or moves into an assisted situation you get land. At the current math saying the majority of everyone is on somewhere between .25 acres - 1 acres lot (let’s say .5) that only accounts for 165.5 million acres out of 2.4 billion acres which means only 13% of all land in the US is populated. Even if industrial, farming, etc took up an additional 20%, who owns the remainder, most likely some big ass corporation, or an old dude that owns a 10th of Montana, or the state none of those are the right answer. Just saying we got to fix this place, and the more you think about something, the more greedy and stupid it sounds.
I love how you pointed out the current progress, but I was wondering, does any of this change depending on the street layout of a neighborhood? Grid layouts are efficient but is it the same for cul-de-sacs?
As a person who grew up on a cul-de-sac there's a lot of people who dislike them in the urbanist community but I actually think they're pretty cool. For kids they allow them to be great places to have a blank canvas and draw on them. Also really cool for bicycle tricks. And I see that they would be great spaces for like a dine out experience or an open marketplace area or we're just a green area if we weren't dependent on cars. As far as weather they could have businesses or not it really depends on how close the neighborhoods were together. And how close they were to the street the main Street or the main roads I should say like there are a lot of neighborhoods where their backyard backs into a regular road those houses would be perfect for business integration. Business accessory dwellings. Of course there are issues like HOAs. A lot of the neighborhoods he's showing are quite older built in the 60s or the 70s even though they were suburban it wasn't as popular to have HOAs and many of those types of suburban style single family homes were actually built on a road rather than connected to a subdivision.
"Instead of bean pods, you could have co-working pods *chuckles quietly to self over how good their own pun is*" - I love this video, and that moment was adorable. If I had a front yard I would absolutely have it used for a vegetable garden collective. That's just smart.
I'd much rather live 500+ feet away from people like this person especially if they ERP in asterisks, glad these won't come to fruition, sorry not sorry.
yeah who needs a garden, pave that shit with concrete so some yuppy co-working twats can come and yack all day long about nothing while drinking $9 coffee
The "Lots in Common" designs actually made me tear up a bit. This is the world I want to live in: where neighbors come together to share their spaces with each other, to create and maintain things we can all enjoy collectively. This vision is achievable. Bit by bit, it's happening even in open defiance of the law. We can build these places, we can fight against opposition, and if we are persistent enough we can even change the laws. We can rewrite our society, and we should, because there's a much more interesting story that is just waiting for us to tell it.
I live in a home in a city that used to have a little shop in the basement connected garage just like the example in the video. It was a penny shop and so a lot of kids in the 1950s/60s would come by. Older people in the neighborhood walking by will often stop to tell me about how they remember being a kid and buying candy from the shop that was in our garage. I think it’s a really heartwarming history of our house.
I think there is something to be said for both sides of this argument. I grew up in Brooklyn NY. There were single family neighborhoods and commercial areas just a short walking distance from each other (usually 2 to 4 blocks away). This set up offers the best of both worlds without anyone having to sacrifice their preferred way of life.
Yep I live in rural ohio. The small village by me is under 1000 people. Back in the day the village had literally everything you could imagine. Stores restaurants factory work mills lumber yard gas station school bank you name it. You could literally live your whole life in a 6 block radius. Now there’s a dollar general and the Walmart is half an hour away. Nearest big town is farther.
So much wasted economic growth here, the people reporting these joints are obviously people who work for the intl trade class, or dent karens. Its time we fired up the woodchipper.
My house (& all of my neighbors along the road) is zoned “Residential/Professional”, allowing a business that doesn’t get more than one or two customers at a time in my home. Because it’s an old home with separate rooms everywhere, it would be fairly easy to create a small storefront or studio in part of the home. I know one person who converted his detached garage into his small business, and in the downtown area a building was just finished with storefronts on the lower level and apartments above and behind it (like how the old fashioned downtowns were built, but this one looks modern). The problem areas are the sprawling edges… where the car-dependent businesses are built.
This video really showed how messed up the government has made our cities with their excessive and short sighted regulation, all of these building concepts are super cool! Thanks for making this video
This is only the tip of the iceberg. John Stossel has a lot of videos on similar situations, like this one ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-b9pgh5EO6lw.html&ab_channel=JohnStossel
In India, doctors literally have their homes above their own hospitals. One of my family members has his doctors office as a room in his house stocked with medical supplies. Its accessible from the outside and also inside his home. Its pretty sweet
used to be the standard for all doctors everywhere in the western world. There were Doctor's Offices in Doctor's homes, and there were hospitals, nothing else.
Do we just not care about regulation anymore? Seriously, you sound one step away from saying “and that’s why regulation is bad and hurts small businesses.”
that is tricky because having drugs in a home can lead to easy break ins. The other thing is that medical offices have X ray machines and the radiation etc from those machines can infiltrate the walls into the residential areas.
We should not be looking to India as a fine example of anything. 1.4 Billion people crammed onto 1.2 Million square miles. They're squashed together like canned sardines. I'm not surprised that their doctors work out of their houses. You can see videos here on RU-vid of street vendors crammed together right next to active train tracks barely avoiding collision by mere inches. It's ridiculous. No privacy. No personal space. How do they breathe like that? And they still have a caste system. 🙄 Edited to correct a typo.
Hey great video. As a civil engineer, and VP of development at my firm, I want to share my perspective; It's very easy to just blame the regulations and curse the bureaucratic red tape, but as someone who navigates through that on every project, I promise you, it's not the issue, as you mentioned. It's people. For our developments, often the biggest problems we face are from the public. They want to dictate the number of homes, their sizes, the amenities, landscaping, etc, and the old garb definitely doesn't want commercial activity near their homes. We're a very market-driven industry. My best example of that is a home builder will sell the same exact house in one market for $300k and sell it for $600k in another. On that same coin, if the public were to demand a property be restricted to mixed-use zoning, you're potentially limiting housing in a housing crisis. I personally think the best solution is exactly how you ended your video; starting with existing neighborhoods and allowing them mixed-use zoning in high traffic areas, like corners, etc. I also think new zoning approvals shouldn't restrict or particularly "encourage" mixed-use. I think all residential zoning should include mixed-use; As in, I don't think a community should force a property owner to leave commercial out-parcels that sit vacant, rather, allow homes and Lots in the neighborhood on main corridors to choose either/or. Note; I develop mainly single family detached, multifamily and commercial developments in Florida.
I think the bigger problem is profitability. Running a business is not easy. You need to deal with all the financial side - taxes, salaries, bookkeeping etc. If serving food - you need to comply with many regulations and standards. You also need to ensure your income exceeds expenses - including the time investment and added stress. A lot of people likely lack experience and expertise in this. So besides allowing, it needs a full support system built around it to make it possible.
I live in a traditionally black and Latino neighborhood in los Angeles and I see places popping up all the time. Usually food. Papusas are common and a BBQ place opened recently. They all have different and limited hours but when they're open, it's nice to have options within walking distance. I'd love to see more options.
I think there should be gradients of various types of neighborhood from one area to another, and then having pockets of just suburbia, pockets of mixed use, etc., to cater to a variety of people's wants. Mixed use areas, like in Japan, is nice but sometimes, people just want a super quiet place like the suburbs; or some like the in between, quiet street but businesses in a few blocks from their house; or right in the middle of it all.
@@jonnopop Show up to your local city planning meetings! Most zoning restrictions are implemented locally, even if they just copy the national standards
Yes, by all means. Reintegrate residences and commerce. The idea that vast swaths of the landscape should be sacrificed to an outmoded social construct is a blight on society and the environment. On my block, there is only 1 building people can enter freely and there is no open public space. How can a sense of community arise and thrive under such restrictive circumstances?
As someone who grew up in suburbia, if felt like the only "local" businesses were MLM scams. It'd be a dream to have front yard businesses. It's a shame that this is even hard to find in parts of parge cities like Boston. Mixed use is best use!
While I like the idea, things are just different now. There's so much more traffic & neighborhoods just aren't built for customer parking & congestion. There's also the noise issue. Towns don't have the money to pursue violations on a large scale, so if there's a business on your block, like there is illegally on mine, the noise can be really obnoxious. 4 doors from me someone installs auto sound systems. So the cars waiting to be fixed are lined up in the street & when a car is picked up, they do sound demos often for a long time & into the night. There would be thousands of examples like this.
The housing issue is because people use the equity in a home to purchase other homes at the same mortgage rate that a first-time homeowner has. Can you please do a video on tiered mortgage rates? The benefit of them is landlords would purchase apartment buildings and not multiple homes becoming a slumlord not fixing up the home and just trying to maximize returns. A first-time homeowner would invest in the home building equity.
In the UK, suburban areas like these are always designed with a block somewhere in the middle that's devoted to small businesses with houses on top, a mixed-use block that's accessible to everyone in the neighbourhood on foot. You shouldn't ever be more than 10-15 minutes away from groceries if you live in a suburban area (and, of course, there are busses that take you into a city proper if you need more.) Because all these businesses are in a little clump, they don't "spoil the view" for anyone in the surrounding area, and it's convenient that they're all together if you need to visit more than one of them. Generally there'll be one small local "supermarket" chain that drives traffic to the area, and a little courtyard with a small amount of parking. The other businesses: bakeries, hairdressers, food takeaway, newsagents etc. benefit from all the visitors to the supermarket for groceries, and their businesses do well because of it. It's a good way for Suburbia to get the benefits of local businesses while letting people still feel like their streets are peaceful and away from traffic. Typically we do the same things with small parks and play areas for children - we'll drop one into a suburban area so people have a place to hang out, kids have a place to run around, and dog-walkers can actually walk their dogs. Here are a couple of google map co-ordinates from places near I live to give you the idea. They don't look particularly fancy, and they wouldn't really feature in a techbro brochure trying to make everything look clean and modern, but they're very functional. www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.2661378,-2.9229036,3a,75y,134.24h,87.89t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s2eqDuTyfYRzC3DOQfKBJBw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu - this is "hope farm" in the north-east of England. www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.2205066,0.1118764,3a,75y,269.42h,89.65t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1suM74bmKt64J-v4UyuE5uDA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu this is "Histon Road" in the south-west of England. In both cases, you can see that the roads around these shops are just normal suburban homes. ----- I think something like this would be an excellent start to solving the problems of American suburbia. Single family homes are a drain on municipal funds, people, especially kids, have nowhere to go in their spare time, and you have to drive for an hour to buy groceries. Just planning to include a little block like this in the local area helps offset or solve all these issues, without having to make any major changes to anything else.
Mexico and many latin countries have front yard business! Some houses that have big lots or are second story homes usually have a business down front like a small grocery store, barbershop, pharmacies, internet cafes, even some drs have their office at home! I remember getting sick in Mexico and visited a small dr in my grandmas neighborhood!
Growing up my favorite part about visiting Mexico was that every single neighborhood had a corner store out of someone’s house that you could just walk too . Something I miss dearly
God forbid a coffe shop be near a church. Won't someone PLEASE think of the children. Many years ago, I was dunking on the suburbs and urban sprawl. A co-worker told me that when I start a family, I'll love them. I countered by saying that there wasd a major grocery store and train station within blocks of where I lived (in the inner city), a number of schools not far away, and otherwise everything I needed. Why do so many sprawled communities and the cars that live there refuse to allow for proper zoning? Why do so many people refuse to have spaces that are livable?
Over the years I have seen beautiful neighborhoods get devoured by business. Cottage City and Hyattsville, Maryland are two that pop into my head. I feel It is okay to build in a multiuse environment if that was its original intent. I know I don't want to live nextdoor to a mulch processor or a restaurant (rodents and smells). Even look at new york, in the early 1900s it had some of the most beautiful homes. Washington DC is going down this road now. Urbanization is hard to recover from and once it starts, wow it gets ugly quick. But what do I know? I just a guy that lives in a formally rural area that has hundreds 4000sf townhouses and gasoline stations and mega shopping centers and commercial facilities all built in the last five years backed by rich companies filling the pockets of politicians in one way or another. We have RATS now! Not field mice MMA grand champion rats. Oh and we voiced our opinions, the had a big switch pulled in the end. Beware of what your asking for.
Hello Uytae, Thank you for this video. Overall I like this idea, but I would suggest another approach. To start with, we should realize that unlike housing we have “healthy” supply of small to medium size retail spaces here in Vancouver: “Areas of the city that have vacancies rates over 15 per cent include Strathcona at 27 per cent, Hastings Crossing at 22 per cent, Point Grey Village and Dunbar Village at 17 per cent, and Chinatown at 16 per cent. These were followed by South Granville and Mount Pleasant at 14 per cent, Marpole at 13 per cent, Robson Street at 12 per cent, and Gastown and Kitsilano-Fourth Avenue at 11 per cent. .... Areas in the city with lower percentages of storefront vacancies include Fraser Street and Kerrisdale at five per cent, Victoria Drive, Cambie Village and Yaletown at six per cent, and West Broadway, Commercial Drive and Downtown at seven per cent. Across all these districts, an average of 11 per cent of commercial-retail units or storefronts were counted as empty, based on visual inspection, business license data and online research, according to a 2021 inventory conducted by the city. A range between four and 10 per cent, fluctuating due to renovations and turnover, is considered balanced.” (vancouversun.com/news/local-news/troubling-trend-as-more-of-vancouvers-retail-spaces-sit-empty) There are many reasons for such vacancy rates: e-commerce, COVID, and affordability. Affordability would be the most relevant to the topic of your video. It is not only about rental rates for the shops, but also about living wages for employees and their housing. Basically, I would say, that real estate affordability should be the goal and more commercial spaces will come as a bonus. Many examples in your video came in to existence as an attempt to address some community needs. And if the community needs a cornerstone there will be little to no resistance. We have no sidewalks in many areas of the city, so we need to address walkability and density first and businesses will follow. To address our affordability crisis, I would suggest ending single family exclusive zoning and rising property taxes. Sincerely, Anton
One problem of the affordibility problem is the neccesity to travel by car, and not by foot, bike or public transit. That creates Value gaps by zone rather than by indivudual apartment/house. Small buisnesses help to solve that part of the problem, its not a "either small buisnesses or walkability first" its "if people can walk to the small buisnesses rather than driving, they do it"
Having lots of empty retail space and addressing amenity/barriers to entry/property rights/access/lack of civic spaces etc. aren’t the same thing. They could count up empty box stores on the outskirts and say there’s a glut of retail but that’s not what this is trying to solve. This is a zoning and bylaw problem.
Hello im an african architect and a strongly believe in the concept of multi uses in the urban spaces, in my country, Mozambique the center of the city is built as a mixed use, but the newer Neiborhood's are becoming more car centered spaces just like the USA, i would like to ear your opinion on how can emerging countries in Africa can apply the multi use concept
The solution is much simpler than this. Instead of regulating what you can do on your property, regulate how annoying whatever is you are doing can be and expect that everything is generally allowed unless it is annoying above the regulated level (annoying things taht could be regulated: noise levels, noxious fumes, large vehicle traffic). One can look at Germany as an example of how to do this. The other simple solution is for provinces to override the local nimbys and stuff zoning change down their throats based on provincial need. Japan has excellent examples of how to also do this to everyone's great benefit.
City Council elections are coming up. This is the prime time to contact your City councillors. Outside of Vancouver, these councillors are looking for a lot of attention and opinions outside of the regular NIMBYs and Karens who attend council meetings.
I've seen good implementation of this in the new cities of Korea and Japan. It only works when proper transportation and accessibility is achieved in the environment. Along with a good ratio of long term residents like families raising kids and diverse job varieties in the area.(since that way the city has to enforce more laws and eyes in the area, barring away bad influences)
Rule #1: Stop listening to Karens, if you want to close an existing business - get a petition where the neighborhood unanimously agrees. Rule #2: It's going to be challenging to do this in existing neighborhoods. New builds will be a much easier transition because it will attract the people who actually want to live in the neighborhoods vs forcing people to adapt.
My municipal mayor recently blamed provincial and federal regulation on stalled housing, meanwhile a good portion of our city looks like those suburbs, and the sections that aren’t are in near squalor. I wish I could send this to her.
@@handsfortoothpicks governement is the bird (Fenix) with 2 wings. Humans are Born free to be guided by their own morality not to be steerd like cattle. All the best
There’s a reason mixed use is not implemented into a suburban subdivision. Most people who live there wouldn’t want a bar in their front yard or their neighbors. It makes sense to be able to do this in cities though.
@@eaauto6182 No one is saying we should put a bar in every neighborhood. But a small cafe, laundromat, corner store, etc for the entire neighborhood to enjoy can be a great addition to a neighborhood without bringing significant traffic or noise to the neighborhood. The idea is that people should be able to get groceries, grab coffee, or do simple chores without having to drive and leave the neighborhood.
I love mixed community uses. There's always someone who complains though. It really sucks because a lot of start ups will die in regular commercial buildings and I see it in my home town downtown. Corporate owned buildings want a lot and a startup lacks the funds and customer base to pay the rent. So most start ups fail because they're not making rent.
I love this! It’s crazy how the simplistic things of the past seem so innovative. Life really is a cycle. Inner city neighborhoods do this all the time. I feel we need a little of this in my surburbia, people are so emotionally distant. Old upper middle class Money. Businesses would make people build relationships. My first luxury apartment building had work/live storefront spaces on the ground floor. It had so much potential but everyone here is a techie. One place had a hair stylist. The other was something. Who knows. The rest just had home offices. No community.
