Comment by davidw 3 days ago
Trying to re-legalize "neighborhood commercial" by right in the city I live in. Things like corner stores or small barber shops or coffee shops or converted restaurants. ACUs or Accessory Commercial Units, home conversions... different ways of doing it.
If you have a shop in a house in Thailand and a crazy person decides he likes the shop and stays in front of it all day yelling, in Thailand, the people in the house call the police, who make the crazy person leave. In the US, every person, crazy or not, has Freedoms and Rights, and the police won't do anything to help the people in the house because it would be wrong according the the US way of thinking to curtail the Rights and Freedoms of the crazy person (who is yelling all day near the shop, which is very near the house).
Consequently, owners of houses in the US try to make it as boring as possible and as useless as possible for any crazy person, homeless person or group of teenagers to hang around near the house. One way they do this is to make sure the house is surrounded only by other houses, trees, parking spaces and roads (and there is not anything as useful or interesting as a shop in easy walking distance).
This is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is directionally accurate.
No, it's mostly just car-brain where people think that cities should be designed around cars cars and cars, and then if there's room left over, maybe some shops and homes.
So they worry about a neighborhood shop taking up the precious, precious parking spots or causing 'traffic!' even if in reality it reduces it because people have something close by their home they could even walk or bike to.
So the root problem is not the American commitment to rights and freedoms (especially for the disadvantaged) that Americans discuss constantly -- often in heated, emotional or abstract terms and sometimes in frankly ideological terms. According to you the root problem is an irrational and destructive commitment to automobiles, which (at least after the 1960s) Americans talk about much less than they talk about rights and freedoms -- and when they talk about them, they talk mostly in pragmatic terms, e.g., miles per gallon, turning radius, maintenance costs and space for car seats for children.
Do people often yell at stores in commercial settings?
There's some writing up at https://bendyimby.com/ but it's not really 'documenting my experiences'. What would you like to see/know? Feel free to write me an email, I'm more than happy to chat about it!
I'll start with that link which - at a glance - looks great and covers the process of working through local government.
I admit this is mostly and idle curiosity for me but it's a good cause and hope others see your work.
Great. I assume you live in the US ? Your urban planning law are atrocious. In countries like thailand for instance it's very common to have a shop in the house. Things go nicely and it's more lively. Good luck, that a good project at the root of so many issues