Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I want to start
today by asking you to do something a little
bit uncomfortable. I want you to audit your life
for a second. Okay, I'm ready. Visualize your
average Tuesday. You wake up, you grab coffee,
you go to work, maybe that's a commute, maybe
it's, you know, a walk to the living room these
days. You go to the gym, you buy groceries. Now,
here's the question. How much friction is between
those points? Are you hopping in a car for 20
minutes just to buy a carton of milk? Or sitting
in gridlock to get to a gym that's in some concrete
industrial park? Exactly. And that friction,
that... That texture of your day, it isn't accidental,
is it? No, not at all. It's engineered. And how
you move between those points, whether you are
walking or sitting in traffic or hopping on a
train, that really defines the texture of your
day. We just accept it as just how things are,
but it's actually the result of a very specific,
very intentional operating system running underneath
our cities. A kind of invisible code. Totally.
And today... We're looking at the code behind
that operating system. It determines the whole
rhythm of a city. It's a concept that sounds
incredibly dry. Honestly, it sounds like the
title of a pamphlet you'd find in a dusty basement
at City Hall. It really does. But it is actually
the secret recipe for vibrant neighborhoods versus
those soulless, sprawling ghost towns. We are
talking about. mixed use development. It does
sound like homework. I'll give you that. But
if you peel back the zoning jargon, this is actually
the story of why some neighborhoods feel alive
and vibrant and why others just feel sterile.
Right. It explains human behavior, local economics,
and as we'll get into, even how different cities
weathered something like the pandemic. And we
have a massive stack of sources today. I mean,
we've got comprehensive urban planning strategies.
We've got these deep dives into zoning classifications.
And some really fascinating global case studies
from the high rises of New York to like the laneways
of Sydney and the neighborhoods of Toronto. So
the mission today is to really unpack how blending
these different spaces where we sleep, where
we shop, where we work actually changes the way
we live. Yeah. And we need to figure out if this
is the utopia that planners are always promising
or if it's just, you know, a buzzword for expensive
condos. I feel like it's a bit of both, honestly.
Yeah. But to understand that, we have to start
with the basics. Let's just let's unpack this.
Yeah. First things first. We need a definition.
What are we actually talking about when we say
mixed use development? OK, good place to start.
Because in my head, I just picture an apartment
building with like a Starbucks on the ground
floor. Is that it? That is the cliche. Yes. And
it's not wrong, but it's incomplete. Based on
the source material, the definition is actually
quite specific. It's not just random buildings
near each other. Mixed use development is a type
of urban development, design, or zoning that
blends multiple uses into one space. And we're
talking about a whole mixed residential, commercial,
cultural, institutional, or entertainment. So
it's the mashup. The intentional mashup. It is
the mashup, but with a really important caveat.
The key characteristic here is that these functions
have to be, to some degree, physically and functionally
integrated. And critically, they have to provide
pedestrian connections. That pedestrian part
seems huge. Integrated feels like the load -bearing
word there. Because if you have a massive mall
next to a massive apartment complex, but there's
a six -lane highway and a chain -link fence between
them, that doesn't count. Exactly. That is what
planners call... adjacent use not mixed use mixed
use implies integration it implies that you can
flow from one to the other without getting in
a car it's about the flow it's all about the
flow yeah and the scope can vary wildly it can
be a single building we call that a vertical
mix like your starbucks example or it could be
a whole block or an entire neighborhood but the
dna is the same the functions are blended together
on purpose okay so that's the what but here is
where it gets really interesting for me. The
why now or maybe more accurately, why did we
ever stop doing this? Because if you think about
history, I mean, didn't we always live like this?
The research points to this idea of. Great divergence.
That is the crucial context, because you're right.
Historically, human settlements were always mixed
use by default. It was the only way. There was
no other option. None. If you go back to, say,
the year 1700, a blacksmith didn't commute 45
minutes to an industrial park. He lived above
the forge. The baker lived above the bakery.
The apprentice slept in the back room. There
was no zoning. The city was just this organic
mashup. People lived where they worked because
they had to. Transportation was limited to your
feet or maybe a horse. And then everything changed.
Then we hit the great divergence. Industrialization.
Ah, right. The factories. The smoke. Suddenly,
work wasn't just baking bread or shoeing horses.
It was heavy manufacturing. It brought smoke.
noise, pollution, dangerous machinery. You couldn't
live above that. It would literally kill you.
So for the first time, separating where you work
from where you live became a matter of life and
death. And that's where the government steps
in and says, OK, hold on. We need to separate
these things. Precisely. Governments introduced
zoning regulations specifically to separate functions.
The original motivation was public health and,
you know, the protection of property values.
You separate the negative externalities, that's
the planner speak for air, noise and light pollution,
from where people sleep. Which makes total sense.
I mean, you don't want a steel mill next to a
nursery school. That's a good idea. It is a good
idea. But it feels like we took that one good
idea and then just really ran with it, especially
in North America. We applied it to everything.
We did. We applied it to an extreme. And this
is where the divergence between North America
and Europe becomes so stark. In the United States,
zoning for single -family residential use became
a powerful tool. A tool for what, though? Not
just safety. No. Yes, it was about health, but
the sources are very clear that it was also constructed
because of racial and class tensions. Okay, that's
a heavy layer to add to zoning codes. It wasn't
just about keeping smoke away. It was about keeping
people away. Correct. Think about it. If you
zone an area strictly for single -family homes
on large lots... You artificially inflate the
price of entry. You price people out. You price
people out. You keep out the boarding houses,
the small apartments, the duplexes, and by extension,
the lower income workers who would live in them.
It became a tool for exclusion. And then culturally,
you have this powerful narrative of the American
dream layered on top of it. The white picket
fence. After World War II, that dream became
just, inextricably linked to private property
and the 1950s suburban home. The lawn, the fence,
the two -car garage, the separation? Yes, the
separation itself became a status symbol. We
started to view success as the ability to separate
yourself from the chaos, the noise, the diversity
of the city. Meanwhile, Europe just... didn't
go down that same road. Not to the same extent
at all. Europe remained mixed use by default
for the most part. The sources give this fascinating
example. In England, hotels are classified under
the residential umbrella. Wait, really? A hotel
is a business. It's commercial. To us, yes. But
in their zoning logic, people sleep there so
it sits with residential uses. Whereas in the
U .S., a hotel is strictly commercial. It's a
totally different mindset. That's wild. What
about other places? In France, much of Paris
is simply zoned general urban. That allows for
a huge variety of uses side by side. It's a permissive
zoning, not a restrictive one. So it's about
what you can do, not what you can't. Exactly.
And even in Germany and Russia, the zoning codes
often don't distinguish between... different
types of housing. They didn't have that cultural
and legal obsession with single family exclusivity.
So while Europe kept mixing, the U .S. went full
separation. And I feel like there's a specific
villain in this story, or at least a very controversial
figure when it comes to American cities. Oh,
yeah. We have to talk about the Clash of Titans.
You are thinking of Robert Moses versus Jane
Jacobs. This is the heavyweight title fight of
20th century urban planning. The man who loved
a superhighway versus the woman who loved a sidewalk.
It's almost poetic. Robert Moses was the New
York City Parks Commissioner, but really he was
the master builder. He was the absolute champion
of this separation philosophy post -WWII. You
saw the city as a machine. A machine that needed
to be organized and segmented. He pushed for
superhighways specifically to break up functions
and neighborhoods, to move cars efficiently from
the bedroom zone to the work zone and back again.
He wanted to slice through neighborhoods to build
expressways. He looked at a crowded, messy street
and just saw chaos. He saw blight. That was his
word for it. And on the other side of the ring,
you have Jane Jacobs. She was the complete antithesis
to Moses. She wasn't a planner. She was an activist
and a writer living in Greenwich Village. She
was a local. She was a local who was paying attention.
And she argued that this so -called chaos, this
mixed -use fabric, was essential for organic,
diverse, and vibrant streetscapes. She looked
at that same crowded street and didn't see chaos
at all. She saw ballet. That's her famous metaphor.
She saw the shopkeeper sweeping the sidewalk,
the kids playing, the residents watching from
their windows. She argued that this mess was
actually a complex, self -organizing system that
kept people safe. Right. She coined the term
eyes on the street. That's her. The idea that
a well -used street is a safe street because
people are always watching. It's the classic
battle. The top -down planner with the grand
vision versus the grassroots observer saying,
hey, wait a minute, you're destroying something
that actually works. And for a long, long time
in the U .S., Moses was winning. We built the
highways. We built the suburbs. We sprawled.
We're still living with the consequences of that.
Absolutely. But the source material notes that
since the 1990s, the pendulum has really been...
begun to swing back toward Jacobs. Mixed use
is now seen as the tool to combat urban sprawl
and bring that economic vitality back to our
cities. We realize that the machine city is actually
kind of miserable to live in. We did. It's inefficient,
it's isolating, and it's environmentally disastrous.
So let's fast forward to today. If we are swinging
back to mixed use, what does that actually look
like? Because I feel like I see it in different
flavors. It's not always just a Brooklyn brownstone
or a historic European village. No, absolutely
not. That's a great point. The sources identify
several distinct contexts where we are seeing
this crop up. It's like a menu of options depending
on where you are. Okay, let's run through the
menu. What's the first option? First, you have
traditional urban neighborhoods. This is often
described as infill development. Infill. So filling
in the gaps. Exactly. You take a neighborhood
that's already there, maybe it has some gaps,
some old parking lots, some underused buildings,
and you upgrade them or build new things that
fit in. Okay, that makes sense. The sources mention
places like Barracks Row in Washington, D .C.
or East Liberty in Pittsburgh. You're taking
existing fabric and weaving in new uses, making
it denser and more vibrant. It's like urban dentistry.
You're filling the cavities in the city smile.
I like that. That's a good way to put it. Then
you have my personal favorite, which is the suburbs
trying to invent a downtown from scratch. Yes,
the traditional suburbs context. Places like
Bethesda, Maryland, or St. Louis Park in Minnesota,
these are places that were billed as bedroom
communities, strictly residential, and now they
are realizing they have no center, no heart.
No there there. No there there. So they are adding
these dense, mixed -use developments to create
a center of gravity, a downtown feel where there
wasn't one before. That always feels a little...
uncanny to me. Like you drive past miles and
miles of cul -de -sacs and then suddenly you
hit a four block radius of density that feels
like a movie set. It can feel artificial for
sure. A little bit Truman Show. But for the residents
it provides amenities and a walkable space they
never had before. Fair enough. But then there's
the one that always fascinates me. The Greenfield
or Edge City development. This is when they just
build a whole city out of thin air. This is the
build it and they will come model. That seems
so risky. It's hugely risky. This is new construction
on previously undeveloped land. In the 2010s,
these started getting labeled as urban villages.
The example given is Avalon in Alpharetta, Georgia.
Right. You drive out to the edge of the metro
area where it's mostly trees and highways. And
then suddenly, boom, there's this perfectly curated,
dense, walkable, mixed -use center. It's like
a little island of urbanism. A lifestyle center.
Surrounded by a sea of sprawl. It's a very strange
juxtaposition. But there is one more context
that I think is becoming super relevant lately,
especially with all the economic shifts we're
seeing. The dead mall. Oh, yeah. The retail apocalypse.
This is a huge driver for mixed use right now.
It has to be. Shopping malls are losing their
anchor stores. I mean, department stores are
folding left and right. They can't rent the space.
So what do developers do? They have to get creative.
They intensify development around the mall or
even repurpose the mall itself. They add residential
units next to the old Macy's or in some cases
inside the old Macy's. Which makes perfect sense.
If the shoppers aren't driving there from 10
miles away anymore, you just move the shoppers
onto the property. You create. a captive audience.
Exactly. You create a built in customer base
for the food court and the remaining shops. It's
a survival strategy for these massive failing
properties. So within these contexts, the zoning
itself gets pretty specific. I didn't realize
there were so many types of mixed use. It's not
just apartments over shops. No, that's the classic
one. And it's called Main Street residential
commercial. Usually two or three stories shop
on the bottom living on. top, but the menu is
much, much larger. Okay, so what else is there?
Give me some other flavors. Well, you have live
work. This is distinct because the resident is
actually operating a small business in their
dwelling. Oh, so it's not just living above the
shop. The shop is in your home, like the potter
or the blacksmith we mentioned earlier. Exactly.
Or, you know, an accountant with a front office,
a therapist, a graphic designer. The unit itself
is the hybrid. That feels like a real return
to the old way. It is. Then you have something
a bit grittier. studio light industrial where
artists or makers live and work in the same spot
think of like loft conversions for welders or
furniture makers it's crucial for keeping that
kind of production inside cities instead of pushing
it all out to the exurbs right and on the much
simpler side there's something called convenience
zoning was that which is huge for livability
but sounds so small that's just allowing a single
convenience store or a bodega or a little cafe
in an otherwise strict residential area. Oh I
love that. It seems like a minor thing but being
able to walk to get milk or a coffee completely
changes the traffic patterns and the social fabric
of a neighborhood. It creates a node. A place
where neighbors actually bump into each other
instead of just waving from their car windows.
That's the whole idea. So we know what it is
and we know where it's happening. But now I really
want to get into the why. Why do we want this?
Because developers don't just do things for fun,
and cities don't rezone for no reason. There
has to be a pretty compelling benefit package
here. There is, and the research breaks it down
into a kind of three -pronged stool. Social benefits,
environmental benefits, and economic benefits.
Okay, let's start with the social side. We mentioned
Jane Jacobs earlier, this idea of live, work,
play. Right. One of the biggest social shifts
is moving from what's called an eight -hour district
to an 18 -hour community. Let's define that for
me. Because I think of an eight -hour district
as just a place for work. Exactly. Think of a
traditional central business district in any
major city. From 9 .00 a .m. to 5 .00 p .m.,
it's bustling. Suits everywhere, delivery trucks,
food carts. But what happens at 6 .00 p .m.?
It's a ghost town. Tumbleweeds. Complete ghost
town. And that is an incredibly inefficient use
of infrastructure. You have sewers, roads, and
power grids that are being used at capacity for
one third of the day and are then basically abandoned.
And it feels creepy at night. It doesn't feel
safe. Exactly. When you introduce mixed use,
you add residential buildings, cafes that stay
open late, bars, nightclubs, theaters. You extend
the life of that street. People are there in
the morning getting coffee. They are there working
during the day. And they are there socializing
at night. You get an 18 -hour city. And that
links back directly to safety. Right. The eyes
on the street. 100 percent. The sources mentioned
that perceived safety increases dramatically
when there are people around for longer hours.
It just makes intuitive sense. It does. And it
fosters community because you have employees,
residents and visitors all sharing the same sphere.
You don't need a cop on every corner if you have
a grandmother watching from a window and a bartender
watching from a door. I feel safer walking down
a street with open restaurants and people on
patios than I do walking past a block of dark.
monolithic office buildings. Precisely. Everybody
does. Okay. What about the environmental side?
This is the one that's tricky for me because
usually development sounds like bad news for
the environment. But here, the argument is about
efficiency and resilience. It is. And it's about
reducing carbon emissions through behavior change.
The most striking example in the research comes
from the COVID -19 pandemic. Oh, interesting.
How so? Well, if you look at a city like New
York, The retailers that were on long, commercially
zoned only blocks suffered severely. I mean,
they were wiped out. Why? Because they relied
entirely on passersby commuters coming into the
office and tourists. When both of those vanished
overnight, their customer base disappeared. The
businesses died. OK, that makes sense. But the
mixed use districts, they had a built in population.
The residents were still there. They were working
from home and they still needed food and coffee
and services. Those neighborhoods showed much,
much more economic resilience. That's fascinating.
So the mix actually acts as an insurance policy
for the local businesses. It protects them from
external shock. It absolutely does. And then,
of course, there's the big one, transportation.
Right. Getting people out of their cars. There
was a study from Guangzhou, China, that found
that taxis in mixed -use regions had greatly
reduced traveling distances. Because everything
is closer. You don't need to take a cab across
town. Yes. The trips are shorter. And shorter
distances support what planners call micromobility.
Walking and biking. Walking, biking, scooters.
If your grocery store is three blocks away, you
might walk. If it's three miles away, you're
getting in the car. It's as simple as that. Mixed
use promotes the density that makes walking a
viable option. But wait, I saw a counterpoint
in the notes about something called hybrid metropolises.
What's that about? Because we have to be careful
not to just greenwash this and say all density
is good. That's a really important nuance. A
hybrid metropolis, and you can think of really
massive, tall buildings that mix public and private
interests, almost like a city in one building,
did not necessarily show a decrease in carbon
emissions. Why not? If everything is in one building,
shouldn't it be super efficient? You'd think
so. But the theory is that they become such powerful
destinations, or magnets, that they actually
attract a huge amount of car traffic from visitors
coming from far away. Oh, I see. So while the
residents who live there might walk downstairs
to the grocery store, you have thousands of other
people driving to the complex to shop or eat
or stay at the hotel, completely canceling out
the carbon savings. That is a really critical
distinction. It's not a magic bullet. You can't
just build a magnet for cars and call it sustainable.
Density doesn't automatically equal sustainability
if you are still designing it to be accessed
by car. Exactly. The design of the surrounding
network matters just as much. Okay, let's talk
money. Economic incentives. This is the real
driver. This is what gets developers to the table.
For them, it's a portfolio diversification strategy.
How so? Well, think about it. If you own a big
office building and the market for office space
crashes, as we've seen recently, you are in serious
trouble. You're toast. But if you own a building
that is 30 % office, 30 % retail, and 40 % residential,
you have a buffer. If one market goes down, the
others might hold steady or even go up. It's
basically diversifying your investment, but physically,
in concrete and steel. Correct. Plus, developers
can often repurpose undervalued land -old industrial
sites, rail yards, waterfronts, and dramatically
increase the land value. And critically for cities,
it increases housing variety. More apartments,
not just single -family homes. Exactly. You get
multifamily units, which increases density and
provides more housing options. It helps to balance
the supply and demand of both jobs and housing
in one specific area. So it sounds like a win
-win -win. Socially vibrant, environmentally
better, economically sound, but... I know it's
not that simple. Nothing in urban planning is
ever that simple. No, it is definitely not. So
let's get into the drawbacks and the controversies.
Because when I look around at some of these new,
shiny, mixed -use developments, especially the
big new ones, I have to ask the hard question.
Who is this actually for? That is the equity
issue. And it is by far the biggest and most
valid criticism of modern mixed -use projects.
It just feels like it's often very, very high
-end. That's what the research calls the luxury
trap. The sources explain that these projects
are incredibly speculative and risky to build.
And because they're so risky, developers need
a very high return on investment to justify the
loan from the bank. So they have to aim for the
wealthiest customers. They have to. They target
high -end residential tenants and what's called
Class A office space, basically the newest, fanciest,
most expensive office space on the market. So
you end up with a mixed -use building that's
a luxury condo on top of a SoulCycle, a high
-end boutique, and maybe a really expensive organic
grocery store. Exactly. And a study by the Journal
of the American Planning Association highlighted
a really troubling outcome of this. We found
that a focus on homeownership in these zone -selling
condos versus building rentals predominantly
excludes the very people who work there. The
service workers, the people who staff those shops
and gyms. Right, the teachers, the tradespeople,
the baristas, the retail clerks, the manufacturing
workers. They are completely excluded from living
in the amenity -rich centers that they help service.
So they have to commute in from further and further
away, which completely defeats the whole short
commute environmental benefit we were just talking
about. It creates a deep and troubling paradox.
You build a walkable neighborhood that the people
who work there can't afford to walk to. It becomes
a theme park for the wealthy, serviced by a commuting
underclass. And what about things like density
bonuses? I hear that term a lot. Cities let developers
build taller if they include some public benefits.
They do, but affordable housing often isn't prioritized
enough to make a real dent. It's often a token
gesture, a handful of units in a... tower of
hundreds. And even then, affordable can be a
very slippery term. And then there's the financing
side itself. Yeah. You mentioned risk. Is it
just fundamentally harder to get one of these
things built? Much harder, yes. Financing a building
with multiple different types of tenants is extremely
complex. The risks for commercial retail are
different from the risks for residential apartments.
And a bank has to underwrite all of that. Right.
A bank looks at an apartment building and knows
the risk profile. They look at a shopping mall
and know that risk profile. When you mash them
together into one project, the math gets messy
and the bankers get nervous. Speaking of messy
math and nervous bankers, we have to talk about
Hudson Yards in New York City. The elephant in
the room, the death star of mixed -use development.
It is the ultimate mega mixed -use project, and
the numbers are just staggering. It's built on
a platform over a massive active rail yard on
the west side of Manhattan. It cost New York
City over $2 .2 billion in taxpayer money, mostly
through infrastructure extensions like the Seven
Trains subway line. But the controversy isn't
just the price tag, right? Yeah. It's how it
was funded. It's a bit sneaky. It's very controversial.
They use TIFs, right, tax increment financing.
Can we explain that simply? Because it sounds
complicated. I'll try. Simply put, the city says
this area is blighted and generates basically
no tax money right now. If we help you build
this shiny new thing, it will generate a lot
of tax money in the future. So we will let you,
the developer, keep that future tax money to
pay back the loans for the construction costs.
So the developer gets to use the future taxes
generated by their own building to pay for their
own building. Effectively, yes, it's a subsidy.
Critically, in New York, this mechanism bypassed
the traditional city budgeting process. It didn't
require voter approval, which is a huge deal.
And then there was the visa thing. They used
the EB -5 visa program. What was that about?
Yes, this is often called the visas for sale
program. It provides green cards to overseas
investors in exchange for them putting a minimum
of $500 ,000 into a U .S. real estate project
that creates jobs. But isn't that program supposed
to help? like struggling rural areas or places
with high unemployment? It is. It's supposed
to be for poverty alleviation. But Hudson Yards
is in one of the wealthiest parts of Manhattan.
So how did they qualify? They gerrymandered the
map. They drew a district that connected Hudson
Yards via a thin, nonsensical strip of land all
the way up to Harlem, a high unemployment area,
just to qualify for the funding. That is deeply
cynical. It's technically legal, but highly,
highly controversial. So you have all this public
subsidy, all this creative financing. And what
was the result? Did it create the economic boom
they promised? Oh, did it? That depends entirely
on your definition of create. A study by JLL,
that's Jones Lang LaSalle, a massive real estate
firm, found that 90 % of Hudson Yards office
tenants didn't move there from out of state or
out of the country. They just relocated from
Midtown. So they just moved a few blocks west.
Basically. They moved from 42nd Street to 34th
Street. It raises the fundamental question. Did
this project create new economic activity for
New York City? Or did it just shift it from one
neighborhood to another? And was it worth billions
in taxpayer subsidies just to shuffle the deck
chairs on the Titanic? That is the multi -billion
dollar question. And it highlights the intense
debate over whether public money should be used
to support these kinds of mega projects that
primarily benefit private developers and luxury
tenants. That is a perfect segue into our global
case study section. Because Hudson Yards is one
way to do it. The top -down, mega -project, publicly
subsidized way. But the rest of the world is
tackling this too, often with very different
priorities. Right, there are other models. Let's
start with Australia. Sydney provides a really
interesting counter narrative to the American
sprawl we talked about earlier. Yeah, Sydney's
approach is really instructive. Historically,
way back in 1968, they launched something called
the Sydney Region Outline Plan. That's early.
They were ahead of the curve. They saw the population
booming and said, wait a minute, we cannot just
let this sprawl endlessly into the bush. It's
unsustainable. So they made a plan to decentralize.
So instead of one giant congested blob in the
center. They plan for multiple centers. Exactly.
They plan for growth corridors along transit
lines. And if you look at the modern results,
you can see it's working. 2021 data from the
Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that mixed
zoning now accounts for over 9 % of all new housing
approvals. That sounds really significant. It
is. And they are actively prioritizing the revitalization
of inner city industrial land. They are taking
those old factories and warehouses and turning
them into vibrant mixed use hubs, densifying
the center so people don't have to drive everywhere.
And they're doing it along the train lines, which
is key. That's the crucial part. It's integrated
with their public transit. network. Okay, let's
hop over to Canada, Toronto. There's a specific
project here that sounds a lot friendlier than
Hudson Yards. Mirvish Village. Mirvish Village
is a fascinating case study. In many ways, it
feels like the anti -Hudson Yards. It was built
on the site of a very famous, very kitschy, iconic
store called Honest Ed's. I've heard of Honest
Ed's, the big, crazy flashing sign. The gig sign.
23 ,000 light bulbs. It was a local landmark.
So replacing a cultural icon like that is always
tricky. People were terrified that it would just
become another generic glass condo tower. That
would be too. But what the developers did was
really unique. First, and most importantly, it's
a rental -focused development. It's not just
condos for sale. Oh, that directly addresses
the equity and accessibility issue we just discussed.
Partially, yes. It creates more stability for
long -term tenants and offers a different entry
point than a million -dollar mortgage. It also
includes a public market and a lot of small unit
retail. Why does the size of the retail unit
matter so much? This is key to creating character.
If you build a giant 10 ,000 square foot retail
space, only a bank or a chain drugstore can afford
the rent. Right. If you build a bunch of small
500 square foot units, then small businesses,
local booksellers, barbers, independent cafes
can actually afford to set up shop. It keeps
the business and the money local. And didn't
they keep some of the old houses on the site?
This is the best part. They preserved 23 of the
27 heritage Victorian houses that were on the
site. They physically lifted them up, built the
underground parking, and then put them back down,
integrating them right into the new development.
See, that sounds like soul. That sounds like
keeping the flavor and the history of the neighborhood
while still increasing density. It's not a tabula
rasa approach. Not at all. And the zoning reflects
that. It's zoned commercial residential, which
in Toronto is a very flexible category that allows
parks, institutions, and homes all to exist together.
It's a much more holistic, community -focused
approach. Finally, let's bring it back to the
U .S., but let's go to the other coast, Portland,
Oregon. Portland has been the poster child for
this kind of planning since the 1990s. Their
strategy was explicit and decades long. Use mixed
use zoning to fight car oriented development.
And their weapon of choice was light rail. Right.
The MAX. the Metropolitan Area Express. It is
the absolute spine of the city. Their zoning
code aggressively encourages high density, specifically
near these transit stops. It's the classic transit
-oriented development model. It is. The goal
was to create what they call main street corridors
that serve as gathering places. So instead of
a highway strip mall with a giant parking lot,
you get a dense, walkable corridor where the
train drops you off right in the middle of shops,
apartments, and offices. It fundamentally changes
the geometry of the city. To favor the pedestrian
over the car. It's a completely different way
of thinking about how a city should grow. So
we've traveled from the Industrial Revolution
to the luxury canyons of New York to the preserved
heritage homes of Toronto. What does this all
mean when we put it together? I think if we synthesize
all of this, the biggest takeaway is that mixed
use isn't some new radical invention. It's a
return to tradition. It's how we used to live
before the car and the factory split our lives
into these neat, separate boxes. We're just trying
to glue our lives back together, basically. That's
a good way to put it. It offers that 18 -hour
life, the vibrancy, the walkability, the economic
and social resilience. But... and this is the
big but, it comes with these significant risks
we've talked about. As we saw with the contrast
between Hudson Yards and Mirvish Village, the
execution matters more than anything. Absolutely.
There is a very real danger of gentrification,
of creating these luxury islands that actually
worsen inequality by excluding the service class
that makes them run. It's such a delicate ecosystem.
The sources mention that preconditions for success
are employment, population and consumer spending.
You can't just change the zoning and hope people
come. The economic fundamentals have to be there.
Correct. You need the people and you need to
be designing it for people, not just for capital.
So here is the so what for you, the listener.
The next time you walk out your front door, I
want you to look around. Look at your own neighborhood
with these fresh eyes. Is it zoned for sleep?
Is it just rows and rows of houses where nothing
happens until everyone drives home at 6 p .m.?
Or is it zoned for life? Can you accomplish multiple
parts of your day without getting in a car? And
ask yourself about that friction we talked about
at the very start. How hard is it for you to
get a loaf of bread or a cup of coffee? Because
that difficulty level, that friction, is a direct
result of these zoning decisions made decades
ago. And they can be unmade. Exactly. So we want
to leave you with one final, maybe slightly provocative
thought to mull over. We know mixed use creates
efficiency. We know it can create vitality. But
as we look at the contrast between a project
like Hudson Yards, funded by overseas investors
and filled with corporate tenants, and a project
like Mirvish Village, focused on rentals and
local markets, the real question isn't if we
should mix uses. We probably should. The real
question is, who are we mixing them for? Are
we building communities? Or are we just building
vertically integrated investment vehicles? Something
to think about the next time you see a construction
crane go up in your city. Thanks for listening
to The Deep Dive. See you next time.