Mixed-Use Neighborhoods: What Are They, and What Are the Benefits? - Cambrian Rise in Burlington, VT

Over the past twenty years, there has been a push for zoning reforms in urban and suburban areas. Inner-city economies have shifted from a basis on manufacturing to service and consumption. Downtowns are now hubs for entertainment and commerce and are increasingly also being seen as destinations for living. A new generation of people—empty nesters

For people to choose to walk, the walk must serve some purpose. In planning terms, that goal is achieved through mixed use or, more accurately, placing the proper balance of activities within walking distance of each other. While there are exceptions, most downtowns have an imbalance of uses that can be overcome only by increasing the housing suppl

What is that balance? Better to ask: what do humans do? Work, shop, eat, drink, learn, recreate, convene, worship, heal, visit, celebrate, sleep: these are all activities that people should not have to leave downtown to accomplish. While there are exceptions, most large and midsized American downtowns possess a good supply of all of the above excep

Walkable neighborhoods where an intergenerational mix of community members can bump into each other while they carry out the most frequent journeys of daily life (work, school, play, food, etc.) are the best way for people to see each other.

What sorts of new street uses and street buildings are possible? The general aim should be to bring in uses different from residence, because lack of enough mixed uses is precisely one of the causes of deadness, danger and plain inconvenience. These different uses can occupy entire new street-side buildings, or merely the first floors or basements

Neighborhoods that “improve” due to gentrification may do so in a manner that serves everyone living there—new sidewalks, more trees, more streetlights, cleaner streets—but how long can existing residents remain in a landscape that becomes rapidly unaffordable and alienating to them?