Where Is the Café? The Challenge of Making Retail Uses Viable in Mixed-use Suburban Developments

Abstract

Contemporary planners see mixing residential, retail and other compatible uses as an essential planning principle. This paper explores the challenges that planners, developers and municipal councillors encounter in trying to implement retail uses as part of the mix in suburban areas in three Canadian cities. The study finds that planners employ evolutionary theories of urban development to naturalise their normative visions of walkable and sociable communities. By contrast, developers point to consumer behaviour to explain why planners' ideas on mix do not work. In a society where people shop at big-box outlets, making the local café or pub commercially viable proves increasingly challenging.

Seeking density and mix in the suburbs: challenges for mid-sized cities

“…Higher unit densities may not produce desired population densities because the number of residents declines in smaller units. Different kinds of households and consumers live in the suburbs than in the urban core: aging baby boomers may want different amenities than young professionals (Grant & Perrott, 2011). Thus the characteristics of residents affect the kinds of businesses that can thrive in mixed-use environments.…”

Examining Consumer Behavior and Travel Choices

“…This resulted in increased separation of residential areas and shopping districts, making accessing retail locations by non-automobile mode inconvenient and sometimes unsafe. The result is a retail built environment that tends to favor car accessibility over other modes of transportation (Grant and Perrot, 2011).…”

Analyzing Accessibility Using Parcel Data: Is There Still an Access–Space Trade-Off in Long Beach, California?

“…Though adaptive reuse of nonresidential buildings occurred, the more likely explanation is an increase in neighborhood businesses in areas with older buildings. The strong relationship between age and accessibility suggests that business location rather than new 22 residential construction plays an outsized role in promoting accessibility, though a future study could jointly consider these two processes in a simultaneous equation setting. The increase in high-rise construction can explain some of the accessibility increase found for larger homes.…”