New Urbanism for All?

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Key West corner store with cottages beyond

classic corner store in Key West


   We New Urbanists have an important choice to make, because our current rhetoric don't square up with our metrics in some important ways. If you listen to our aspirations, we'll tell you that 2/3 of Americans prefer thriving neighborhoods that are compact, mixed-use, and walkable over sprawling suburban subdivisions, and we'll tell you that those people should all be able to live that way… once we build enough of those neighborhoods and repair enough sprawl. But our rules of thumb sometimes tell a different story.

   Hazel Borys hosted a PlaceMaking@Work webinar in December with Bob Gibbs based on his new book, New Rules for Retail. The ensuing tweet chat is what started this whole Neighborhood Retail BlogOff. I haven't yet read Bob's book (it's on order) and I have high regard for him on many counts, but one of Bob's rules of thumb is that it requires 1,000 homes to support a single corner store, and more than that to support anything else. I responded by blogging that if that's so, then any neighborhood with less than 1,000 homes would have no hope of any mixed-use, and could therefore not ever be more than a residential subdivision.

brick corner store in German Village, Columbus, Ohio

one of several corner stores in Hazel's former neighborhood -

German Village, Columbus, Ohio

   Hazel's well-reasoned reply began with a foundation of physics, leading up to a discussion of where rules can be broken in urbanism. The post is full of useful facts, but she dismisses my post because it used Seaside as an illustration, and a resort doesn't follow normal rules of thumb.

Fair enough… but the questions at the end of this post are about everyday neighborhoods instead of resorts, so I'm curious to hear her thoughts on them.

boutique storefronts in New Haven, Connecticut

New Haven boutiques

   Sandy Sorlien posted next, with a plea to "be quotidian." It's cool to have friends who are a lot smarter than me, but it does make for lots of dictionary searches. "Quotidian," it turns out, means "everyday, ordinary, or average." She goes on to explain that neighborhood retail should first of all stock regular everyday needs before even thinking about boutique products. I completely agree, and that's the point of this post as well: where do you have to go to get your basic necessities? And can you walk or bike to get there?

Marsala's Market in New Town at St. Charles, Missouri

neighborhood market in New Town at St. Charles, Missouri

   Patrick Kennedy followed with pointed questions about subsidies of neighborhood retail. Without doubt, a corner store needs subsidies in a neighborhood's early years, but those subsidies boost sales because prospective homebuyers typically consider a corner store to be a significant "amenity." I put "amenity" in quotes because it's real estate jargon for something that should really be considered a necessity. Kaid Benfield tells why: because when shops and services are within walking distance, we walk more and drive less.

   John Olson makes an excellent point that retail should be adjacent to the neighborhood it serves, whereas some neighborhood diagrams show it centrally located, where it likely will fail. More on that in a later post. And then Chip Kaufman posted four additional rules of thumb for making neighborhood retail work.

Philadelphia townhouses

neighborhoods without a lot of townhouses are very unlikely to

exceed 10 homes per acre

   But let's get back to the central question: does the 1,000-home rule of thumb overturn our foundation principles? New Urbanists in the US have forever insisted on a quarter-mile radius as the limit of a neighborhood because that's about as far as US citizens will walk instead of driving. That radius encloses roughly 125 acres, but unless every street radiates from the center, the walks are longer, so the effective neighborhood size is closer to 100 acres. This means that unless the gross density is at least 1,000 homes / 100 acres = 10 homes/acre, you can't even have a corner store. I hate to break it to you, but only a tiny fraction of the American landscape contains more than 10 homes/acre.

   There's another way to make it work. You could have a corner store that serves 2-3 neighborhoods, but then only 1/2 to 1/3 of the people could walk to the store because everyone else would be too far away… and that only works when the gross density is at least 3-1/2 to 5 homes per acre.

   But this isn't New Urbanism for All. Instead, this is New Urbanism for the Few. Is that really what we stand for? Principles that add up to a niche market for the privileged few? I thought we were better than that… aren't we? If we're not satisfied with rules of thumb that prevent a mix of uses in every neighborhood (degrading the neighborhood to a residential subdivision) then how do we account for the experts' assertions that the retail will fail? What has to change in order for it to work? And not in some ideal future, but with the conditions on the ground today? More questions than answers… there is work to be done.


   ~Steve Mouzon


   Note: This post is part of an extended Blogoff on the viability of neighborhood retail. The most recent posts from BlogOff participants are as follows:


   1/31/12 - Chip Kaufman Guest Post - Neighborhood Retail, Chip Kaufman

   1/29/12 - Neighborhood Retail Dynamics, John Olson

   1/11/12 - When shops and services are within walking distance..., Kaid Benfield

   1/5/12 - Retail BlogOff, Patrick Kennedy

   12/28/11 - BlogOff: Neighborhood Retail, Sandy Sorlien

   12/23/11 - Retail: When it bends the rules and breaks the law, Hazel Borys

   12/21/11 - The Necessity of Hope, Steve Mouzon


© The Guild Foundation 2013