Mixed-Use Community Living

New Urban-ism, Intelligent Urban-ism, Smart Planning, the Compact City, walk-ability, work/live/play.

Redlands second floor lobby.  Photo by Dave Shultz

These terms have been taking center stage among those in the planning community, and for good reason.  A combination of increasing population, skyrocketing real estate, migraine-inducing traffic and the time lost each day commuting has led people to rethink what they
want from urban living, and what they are   willing to pay in time, money, and frustration. Planners have begun to design communities that address these issues, and occasionally these new communities featuring walk-ability and connectivity are billed as a new innovation. 

In reality, historic downtown's developed to provide mixed-use conveniences to residents, usually with retail and light commercial occupying the ground floor, with residential use filling upper stories. This intensive use pattern allowed emerging cities to accommodate the most economic activity with the least cost in infrastructure development and maintenance. The advent of the automobile and decades of relatively predictable fuel spurred a shift from mixed-use compact cities to single-use districts with increasingly remote suburban developments.

Looking down Oak Street from the Redlands.
Photo by Dave Shultz

It was conventional wisdom that young people, full of energy and enthusiasm, would move to the city. The established centers of culture and commerce, such as New York, kept a degree of their pre-existing urban density and layered uses, and residents sometimes identified more with particular neighborhood than the city as a whole. In newer cities, the boundaries expanded, and residential uses tended to be located far from the city core.

In today's environment, however, people on the verge of planning their lives find themselves facing hard choices. A brief review of headlines shed light on a few of the issues: "Why Homes in Major U.S. Cities Are Nearly Impossible to Afford", "This infamous Austin highway has the absolute worst traffic in Texas", "Trapped: There Are No Simple Solutions to Houston's Traffic Crisis".

Patio evenings at the Redlands.  Photo by Dve Shultz

A growing number of people, faced with unpalatable options, have decided to reject the status quo, and pursue alternative plans that increase their quality of life as well as provide financial value. As technological advances have allowed a growing number of people to work remotely, many people are re-discovering the urban core of small-to-middle sized towns as a viable place to live. A person can often purchase and rehabilitate a two-story building full of distinctive architectural character in a modest sized city for less cost than an efficiency in a major metropolitan area. Artists and entrepreneurs are especially discovering the benefits of living above their storefront. For such people, much of the attraction of large cities is that they tend to be generators of culture. They have discovered that small towns have this capacity as well, and artists' enclaves are popping up in historic downtown areas all across the nation. People discovered that in small towns, an individual can have a much greater impact and be more effectively engaged in civic life. People have discovered that there is no better place to participate in community than in a small town. Increasingly, people are discovering that a city's population has little to do with the probability of attaining the benefits of an urban lifestyle.

Author: Jacob Morris
Historic Preservation Officer
City of Palestine, Texas