Mixed Use A Mixed Bag
BELLAGIO – No, not that Vegas hotel, but the ancient village of Bellagio, Italy – on the gorgeous rocky shores of Lake Como, a deep water lake that winds around the Dolomites in northern Italy. Here to cover a month-long summit about 21st century urban futures, I rented an apartment and rather quickly woke up to realize that, after many years writing about the virtues of mixed-use urban centers, I had never actually known a single residential night in one. Lots of nights in big hotels of course, but that’s not really the same thing as living in a residential unit of a small building over retail shops and restaurants. Like someone advocating for transit who’s never been on a bus, I suppose my affection for mixed use has been, while sincere and well informed, a bit abstract. The actual experience is a mixed bag of reactions.
Most buildings in Bellagio village are two or three stories. It is the kind of urban layout planners are forever urging on small cities and districts of larger ones. Here, the restaurants mostly cater to the tourists here for a few days, whose numbers swell every half hour or so as ferries deliver even more of them with their cameras and pockets full of euros. The tourists cross the piazza and stream up and down the salitas, a series of steeply tiered cobblestone walkways. I cannot help noticing how many of them are, well, carrying weight not suitable for these up and down climbs. But just try to find an overweight local. The reason: if you live here, you probably walk everywhere you go. Vehicles are permitted only on a narrow perimeter road which snakes around the village with an upper and lower spine connected by a series of blind curves. With pedestrian permission, cars and small delivery trucks navigate a counterclockwise course.
Every morning I climb the winding paths up a steep hill for about 15 minutes to the conference center. Coming down at day’s end, the immense advantages of mixed use and some irritating features become clear. The advantages: you’re never far from anywhere you need to go. No fossil fuels are in play. And there’s no need for those trunk-engorging trips to CostCo for a month’s worth of anything. Little shops are around for getting food and other necessities. There’s always something going on.
And that is the irritating side. Things are often going on when you would prefer to sleep. Locals working the restaurants head for bars where they noisily celebrate the night. Tourists, only seen during the day, take unnatural karaoke voice in sidewalk clubs at these late hours. Then, after precious few hours of calm, early morning vendor deliveries and refuse collectors unleash their talents for slamming doors and full pallets of supplies or emptied refuse barrels down on stone streets. Mercifully, the church bells do not thunder their theological reminders until 7:30.
After a couple more weeks, I’ll check my withdrawal symptoms on driving. But for now, the sense of living in a small but truly urban center is getting stronger – along with my legs.
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You can have cake and eat it too
I rented an apartment (sight unseen!) for a month in Paris. It ended up being in a very busy area above bars and restaurants, but it didn't matter a bit. Although the living room looked out on the noisy, entertaining street, the bedroom was on a quiet inner courtyard. I saw similar setups in many French and German apartments. It makes so much sense.
mixed-use districts
In europe, as in american cities, most people don't live above the restaurants and clubs of the entertainment/tourist district. A person sensitive to noise, like myself, would be foolish to seek out lodging on Las Ramblas in Barcelona just as I would be foolish to find a home in Old City or on South St. in Philadelphia.
In my rowhouse neighborhood most of the local grocers are closed by 8pm. The Chinese take-out joint across the street closes, as required by local ordinance, at 11pm. The convenience store on the corner closes at midnight. The neighborhood bar, open until 2am, pulls in all of their outdoor seating at 10pm during the week and midnight on the weekends.
5:30am trash collection and 7am church bells, on the other hand, are still a weekly, if not daily part of life.
Making Noises About Mixed Use
I appreciate your insights and comments into your experience "living" in a mixed-use project. Unfortunately, the closer the living quarters to another person or persons, the greater the tendency for increased and unwelcome noises.
However, noise is not only a by-product of mixed-use. Indeed, one of the major complaints of apartment and condo living is dealing with inconsiderate neighbors who feel free to share their arguments, music, love life, etc. with the rest of the world.
Fortunately, a well-designed and conceived mixed-use project can do much to alleviate noise concerns if attention is paid to sound-proofing engineering and site planning.
David M. Long, Esq.
Principal
Smart Growth Development Advisors, LLC
www.sgdadvisors.com
I hate to sound ageist...
but judging from your photo, you don't tend to fit the demographic that prefers mixed use (downtown) living. As you probably know, it's considered to be "bookend" demographics, younger and older people, older than you...retired.
As people get a bit older than young, get married, and have children, they tend to move out of places like Cleveland's Warehouse District... maybe they move back to the city when they retire, but maybe not to the Warehouse district.
Some people like the vibrance all the time. Or maybe they just have an easier time falling asleep, so they don't move. But it's rare...
Similarly, if you're not into time shifting of deliveries, don't live in buildings, including rowhouses and single family houses, that abut commercial districts like DC's H Street NE.
Mixing your bags.
And that is the irritating side. Things are often going on when you would prefer to sleep.
You'll adjust.
Best,
D
It's amazing what the human
It's amazing what the human body can adjust to, if people would just overcome a short period of discomfort. When I lived on 110th St in New York, on the 20th floor, at the corner of two major thoroughfares, I was able to sleep through all-night sirens, horn-honking, car alarms and loud conversations.
I heard once that in a neighborhood of New York that had an elevated train, there was a time period when the train was out of service, and many people found it difficult to sleep and would wake up once per hour on the train's schedule, their body disturbed by the *absence* of what it had adjusted to.
It's all about how we define mixed-use
Not every street has to be mixed-use to produce good urbanism. the NUist call for things to be "mixed use" isn't so literal. I think "mixed-use neighborhood" might be a clearer way of identifying this goal.
Traditional North American urbanism typically features neighborhoods composed mostly of residential-only streets with lively commercial corridors every six blocks or so.
Outside of a city center, I believe this best-of-both-worlds urbanism is the best kind for those who want some peace and quiet at night. Necessities are still within convenient walking distance, but still that far away to not be too much of an audible nuisance.
In NA, the New Urbanism movement embraces this type of built environment--the streetcar suburb dynamic.