They won't let you live that Bob's Burgers life!
They won't let you live that Bob's Burgers life!
117 comments
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Soviet era commie blocks with stores and doctor's offices in first floor go brrr
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Just move to europe you can. Where i live theres a pizza place under and the guy running it is literally one of my neighbours(apartments) and literally the next house on the street is on top of a bakery/cafe, all owned by a family.
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In my last year at uni some of my mates lived over a curry house. It was brilliant as when I went round we’d inevitably put some videos on and order food from downstairs.
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You can only live above a curry restaurant for one, maybe two months before becoming medically obese.
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I mean that person was wrong, there are absolutely places where mixed use setups like that are a thing. It's rarer but it exists. Zoning laws suck and aren't a good reason, but it's also not a good reason because there are places that don't have this issue. Also if it was like that when it was built and has been used like that since forever they allow it by grandfathering it in, not a forever solution but it does happen.
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One of the things I absolutely loved in China was the almost systematic X over 1 buildings everywhere. It created so much life in the residential areas! A lot of residential areas would have some sort of pedestrian central hub, and then on the outer layer, business at ground level with convenience shops, fruit shop, noddle shop, etc. Coming back to France and its stupid zoning system is just so painful. Seeing all those lifeless suburbs, those lifeless housing estates, and everything concentrated in some shitty commercial areas separate from it all. Ugh.
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Huh, what city in France are you talking about? Every city I've ever visited had mixed zoning with shops and restaurants in the ground floor and flats above. Of cause there are also blocks of houses without shops, but that's mainly because you need more space to house a certain amount of people than for them to shop.
I there are also suburbs where every house has like a 1000m² of garden around it, and of course these houses don't have a shop in their basement. But that's because people choose to live like that and not because it's the only option.
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Yeah, it's a scale thing. In Lyon centre-ville, you'll see X over 1 along big avenues and boulevards. But I lived in the suburbs where it was tower after tower after tower, with all the shops only in the historic town center, which were just villages that had 100% residential areas tacked onto them. Sometimes you will have like a park or a commercial hub in bigger suburbs, but it's all segregated. Very different from what I experienced in China.
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That's how portland Oregon feels. They have houses and such all throughout many areas with shops. I'm sure it could get annoying for home owners to have cars parked outside their houses all the time, but not needing a car to go into town is probably a great trade off.
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The thing with that system is that all the people living in those areas don't need to go anywhere to get their daily needs, they can just walk down and around the block. Food, deliveries, house services and utilities, it was all there. And these are small shops so people from outside wouldn't really bother to come since they'd have their own where they live.
And whatever isn't there locally, you can just get delivered from across town by the army of electric scooters. And of course the public transit system is crazy good so I can just grab a cab, take a bus or the metro. I never missed my car, is what I'm saying.
But of course that's a giant city thing. The smaller the city, the less and less this is possible and the more people will use their car. I'm back in France now in a tiny town in the countryside (60k ppl) , and I couldn't function without a car.
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Zoning is one of the biggest issues facing major urban areas. Cutting down on it will be integral to facing the cost of living crisis.
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There are lots of places with apartments on the 2nd floor and businesses on the 1st floor?
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Yeah I don’t know what this post is really talking about. Unless it’s not in the US or something? I used to live above a restaurant in my early 20s. There were like 4 or 5 apartments above it
Obviously different cities and states have different laws and such, but generally speaking, it’s pretty common for people to live above businesses/in commercially zoned buildings. In fact in my experience commercially owned buildings have the most flexible usage whereas residential zoning has a lot more restrictions/auditing traps If you try to operate a business out of them
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I had a friend who rented a storefront. For 5 years, the "store" had a ladder, a bucket of paint, and a picture of the Pope. He lived in the back in a gigantic barely-converted "studio" space.
Interesting guy. I think he's clean now.
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Even outside of the US, it's been pretty common in my experience. Especially in cities that are a lot older where there isn't a lot of space for new builds and they generally went up instead of out.
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In america it entirely depends on local laws and how recently the law way changed to disallow it. My town does not allow mixed zoning in new buildings but all the older buildings can still keep their status.
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I think OP is talking about a single building with single-family occupancy and commercial storefront. At least in the US, a lot of single-family residential zones exclude commercial use.
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in firefighting, there's also the Taxpayer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxpayer_(building)
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Is it 'Firetrap'? Because when Mike in 302 leaves his stove on again, y'all get 3 minutes to get out before it burns up.
\clothes-on-my-back house fire survivor. No wood houses; never again.
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Nearly every old town square I've seen in the Midwest and the south has businesses on the first floor and apartments upstairs. And there are plenty of new urban apartment complexes being built with like 4 floors of apartments over restaurants and various shops. What idiot told this guy that this wasn't a thing?
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Yeah very common in small towns around the square. Many of them are offices upstairs now too.
It's where the small town lawyer always lives in a John Grisham book.
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Yeah very common in small towns around the square.
Yeah, "around the square." As in, only in the oldest part of town that existed before zoning.
If that's "common" relative to the total housing stock of the town, it means the town has stagnated for the past half-century or more. If it hasn't stagnated, then that building type is relatively incredibly rare compared to the single-family sprawl that would make up the entire rest of the town outside the square.
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There are lots of places with apartments on the 2nd floor and businesses on the 1st floor?
Yes. You may not believe it from the incredulous-sounding question as you've written it, but 'mixed-use' is the standard for new buildings here, for instance.
- pedestrian-targeted commercial on main/ground
- professional services - lawyers, accountants, physios, clinics, tech - on levels 2-5
- potentially hotel or low-income housing on 5-10, depending on need
- residential above that,
- rooftop patio/common space
Newer buildings here are getting loading bays in the garage: so 5-ton trucks just go into the parkade for a loading dock and a freight elevator. Buildings targeted to 'market rental' will often have a loading bay JUST for moving trucks.
The brand new 35fl building in this region may be targeted at new doctors interning at the local teaching hospital: they're just across the street. Rumours abound about posh SROs with in-suite W/D (perfect for new docs) and a skybridge connecting the pro-serv level to the hospital.
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There are lots of places with apartments on the 2nd floor and businesses on the 1st floor?
Yes. You may not believe it from the incredulous-sounding question as you’ve written it, but ‘mixed-use’ is the standard for new buildings here, for instance.
There's a vast difference between mixed-use being "standard for new buildings" and having "lots of places" (measured relative to the decades upon decades worth of existing housing stock, which is almost entirely Euclidean-zoned and single-family only) be mixed-use.
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No, there really aren't. Not compared to the vast swathes of suburban sprawl where they aren't allowed.
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Pff, much nicer to invent a situation and use that to justify destroying your country.
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This is a real thing, though. Most mixed use in the US falls into one of two categories: either it was built before zoning codes (like most of the small apartments over businesses) or it's large apartment/condo buildings. Mixed use has become a more popular concept in the past decade or so, but most residential zoning prevents the building of commercial buildings within the area and largely limits the size of dwellings to single family homes.
It's also why 2 and 3 unit housing is a rarity as well. You mostly see either single family housing or large apartment buildings/condo complexes because it's hard to get approved to build anything else - either through zoning laws themselves or NIMBYs killing any project.
You can thank Euclidian Zoning for that.
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I want every big box store and strip mall in America to be obligated to build enough housing on top and above as it would take to staff the store and their families at a minimum.
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Im not living on site and working at the company store...
The number of managers that would come upstairs to knock on your door to get you to cover a shift; it angers me just imagining it.
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It would be harassment and it should be made very clear that if your manager keeps showing up at your door after being told he's unwelcome and not to come back, you get to give them the old American ta-ta.
Imagine an America where managerial types are regularly legally filtered out from society by the combination of castle doctrine and their incessant need to bother staff.
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Oh no doubt. The actual staff wouldn't have to live there. They'd just have to have that much housing built up over the stores.
But also thinking strip malls that are often filled with small stores already owned and operated by a family. They'd only need one or two units overhead, thus being close to as described in the original post.
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I was under impression slavery was outlawed?
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Its a neat idea. A lot of their workers are kids or youngings living with folks anyway. Gives a option for workers with fewer options. Depending how its played gives people not working there affordable options maybe?
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There are those five-over-one constructions, which sort of fits, but they're cheap as hell. The construction isn't going to last.
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Zoning sounds terrible until your next door neighbor starts running an auto repair shop out of his garage.
"Mixed use" is also a thing. I know of plenty of examples here in the US, I have lived in one of them. New construction consisting of living space above retail is actually kinda trendy right now.
Also if you live above a greasy diner expect cockroaches
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Exhaust above the roof and full revisions each month. Problem solved.
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On the flip side, you're stuck in a peaceful quiet suburb that's a mile or more from any business.
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That however is just bad zoning. You don't want to have endless stretches of just living areas, instead you try to have organic town or area centres with mixed quarters. But you need to keep producing business and industry away from living areas.
Over here in Germany for example, auto repair shops are illegal in sole living areas, in normal living areas, they might be allowed under limitations and in mixed areas they are mostly allowed. This is the same for other businesses, but shops for local needs are allowed in every living area - your local grandmas shop
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Yes. Exactly.
sincerely,
the car manufacturers of America
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Zoning is a good tool used poorly. Restaurants and grocery stores being subject to zoning creates issues. My personal belief is neither should be subject to zoning (but still have the parking lots be.) Auto shops, manufacturing, and mining operation type things are examples of where zoning is good.
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Zoning sounds great until you want to start a small business on your property, and you have to spend years convincing several councils and review boards that a photography business is not going to destroy the neighborhood character... and then you need to pay for a traffic study to prove it won't negatively impact parking or meaningfully increase car travel on the street. And if it manages to get approved, then some retired busybody with no life will complain at every town council meeting that it's attracting a bad crowd, and there's too many people around now.
There is definitely a place for reasonable limits, but almost nowhere in the United States has that. People need to accept that neighborhoods change, and expecting them to be frozen in time is literally insane and fiscally irresponsible.
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Why is a next-door auto repair neighbour bad? Do you not have laws on noise?
If you live above a proper restaurant expect no roaches ever, because they can't afford for literally a single roach to be seen in their restaurant by their customers.
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FWIW, I used to take my car to an auto shop located in the middle of a residential neighborhood, next door to an ice cream and bait shop. It did not affect the neighbors in any way that I could see, and didn't affect the property values.
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I haven't read it yet, but arbitrary lines is a very cool book about the subject, and the exact opposite of what you are saying. The author defends that zoning is the wrong way of going about things and proposes other ways of controlling this issue.
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Unless they are a shitty mechanic... i see that as an easy way to get discounts on car repairs...
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Somehow works in the rest of the world? Maybe if americans weren't so disconnected and socially retarded you wouldn't have these issues.
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Bar I frequented in my 20s had apartments above it. Thought it would be so cool to live there
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I helped move some coworkers into an apartment directly over a bar in a decent sized bar district.
It was a cool pad, ancient, crazy 1800's storage warehouse vibe, a dozen great food options and breakfast places.
WOMP WOMP WOMP WOMP till 2am most nights. A vagrant that liked to crash on their doorstep and peed on the door most days. If they want out between X and Y hour, they'd have to shoo him off the little porch to get in.
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Yup. You can do any store that closes at a reasonable hour, not a bar or club.
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My last place was directly over a karaoke bar. It was weird how the sound of drunk off key singing became a comforting sleep sound. I missed it when they shut down.
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I used to live in an apartment building whose first floor had both a bar and a beer/wine retail store. It WAS so cool to live there!
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Alcoholic coded
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No fun allowed!
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Square coded.
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ITT: people who think mixed-use housing is way more common than it actually is.
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There's a little town near me where they allow that zoning. My favorite restaurant has an apartment above it and it is my goal in life to live there and eat there every day, maybe every meal.
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I lived in an apartment above a pizza place and they had parties every Sunday night until 11pm or later. It was not great for my sleep. Otherwise fairly nice
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Come to England! This is normal here!
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Also New York. And a lot of places, actually.
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You just gave the most famous outlier in the entire country as an example.
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It's normal in the US too. The person in the post doesn't have a clue WTF they are talking about. There are mixed use buildings everywhere in the US. Most town squares and new apartment complexes are mixed use.
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I've always wanted to live above a restaurant that had a dumbbell waiter into my apartment and I could just order anything on the menu brought up that way
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Imagine the look on their faces if you'd ever decide to order a pizza and it gets delivered at the restaurant.
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Oh, I want that too!
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Is this actually illegal in the US? If so, where is it legal? There's British comedy series called Black Books where the protagonist ran a bookstore on the first floor and lived on the second floor. My wife and I have always thought about opening a coffeeshop/bookstore hybrid and live right above it, partially inspired by this.
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It's totally a thing in the downtown of some older cities, and occasionally in some apartment complexes that have popped up recently, but I'd say that throughout the majority of the country, residential and commercial zones get drawn without overlap.
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I live in a town in the west that is a population of about 13,000 but is well within the Seattle metropolitan area.
All of the new build in the city is apartment buildings with commerce on the street level. Sure there are miles and miles of suburbs around the city but downtown is all mixed use for new builds.
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Is this actually illegal in the US? If so, where is it legal?
It varies by city, but typically the vast majority of land used for housing (upwards of 90% in some of the worst cases) is zoned for single-family detached houses only.
Small live-work places like this, with a single business on the ground floor and a single dwelling unit above, are likely typically in the single-digit percentages, in terms of land area zoned for that use.
(Even the vast majority of non-single-family detached housing wouldn't usually allow stuff like this, but would be medium to high-density apartment/condo buildings instead. The phenomenon of having a gap in housing density is so prevalent it even has a name: "missing middle".)
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Yeah it's coming back with 4 over 1s and 5 over 1s, assuming we do go into world war 3.
There's also a variant where They take a plot of land, like 500-1500 acres. Put up Luxury condos, a gaggle of townhomes and a decent number of large single family homes then shove in a stripmall, gas station and grocery store in with it. The residents can walk to the grocery and a couple of food places, maybe a gym, shipping store, electronics repair store.
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The old downtown area of the small town I had lived in most of my life had those kinds of buildings where there was retailers/restaurants/a bank below apartments. Shit, even the city hall building had apartments above it. One of my friends in high school lived in one of those above city hall.
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A lot of the new buildings in my city have stores and restaurants on the griund floor with apartments above. Also there are older places with apartments above a business in my city. It seems like its just post WW2 construction wanted to get away from it. We seem to be moving back towards that.
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Unless it's a four-over-one with a stupid name and a hideous facade, and then it has to be someone else's store, and it still costs too goddamn much.
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Ok, now it's driving me nuts figuring this out. I live in Oklahoma and yeah, minus some small exceptions, our commercial and res are strictly zoned, and maybe this applies to other places where the strip mall and Plaza are king, and there's more room in general? Our 'town squares' are nothing but beauracratic stuff, bars, and historical buildings.
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Why drive to the shops when they're just downstairs?
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Entire neighbourhoods are being built on this mixed-use setup and are almost self-contained. I work from home in a new but small rez block built like this, for instance, right near a metro line, and I haven't driven in about a year.
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Even Bob still rents though.
117 comments