Reports: Mixed-use

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell
The “American Dream” has always included not only owning your own home but being your own boss. It is odd therefore that not nearly as much thought, effort, and money have gone into how to provide affordable workspace as into achieving affordable dwelling. If there is actually no right to decent housing for all, there is widespread recognition that its provision is highly desirable. The same ought to be true of good workspace, especially of the smaller, business-startup variety.

New Urban News Article with images, 7/1/2008
Belmar, an urban center in Colorado, offers cutting-edge ideas for incorporating large retailers into a mixed-use environment.
There are many ways to integrate large-format retail stores into a pedestrian-oriented environment. The choice depends on the budget and the unique circumstances of each main street or urban center. Belmar, a new urbanist grayfield development in Lakewood, Colorado, employs four strategies. A downtown that is being built on the site of a former regional mall, Belmar incorporates a Dick’s Sporting Goods of 80,000 square feet, a 65,000 sq. ft. Whole Foods, and a 64,000 sq. ft., 16-screen, multiplex theater. Belmar also includes a series of “mid-box” retailers like DSW, Pier 1, Linens ’n Things, and Party America. These large retail/entertainment uses fit into a downtown that will eventually have 1,400 residential units, offices, civic uses, a hotel, and scores of small shops and eateries.

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

Nothing better demonstrates the hardened arteries of the conventional American development system than its lag in understanding and producing true live-work units. Largely oblivious to changes in the character and stability of modern work, and to the evolution of household composition, the housing industry for the most part has continued to build, and municipalities to plan and code for, inflexibly residential building types. More than a mere niche market segment, the need for live-work dwellings cuts across the entire range of housing. Knowledgeable readaptation is long overdue.

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

In the following discussion of characteristic code issues with live-work units, three assumptions are made. The first is that the work component occurs on the ground floor only, directly accessible from a public face of the building. The second is that the dwelling either actively shares the work space, or alternatively is located separately above or behind it. And third, it is assumed the work activity occurs in a building that is primarily a dwelling and is set on its own lot. Other arrangements fall into other type categories, requiring their own practices.

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

There are reasons beyond developer inertia that true live-work units have not proliferated as society's need for them has expanded. Live-work production has not advanced as it should have, at a pace inversely corresponding to the recessional of the industrial age in North America. In good part, the market’s failure to respond to social and economic change is attributable to stifling codes and standards, and to an entrenched regime that never envisioned the workplace and the dwelling coexisting within the same building.

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

The previous Technical Page discussed the garage with respect to its use as parking, while arguing that its full potential lay as the principal domestic multi-use space. This consideration is not complete without exploration of the other auxiliary living or working spaces that a modern house may include. For the 21st Century, every dwelling, after all, will be to a lesser or greater extent a live-work unit.