They won't let you live that Bob's Burgers life!

I think most old European cities have stores and people living above the store. Houses are way to expensive to not use them, and lots of small stores don't need 2 stories.
- North american cities had these too, many even had public transit street cars (basically a tram) running down the streets. Then the street cars were ripped out in favor of buses and cars then most of the buildings destroyed so people could park their cars, which everyone had now because the transit was demolished.

We've got a whole area of my Australian suburb dedicated to a bunch of these, all adjacent to a beautiful park and I believe they're all subsidised by our council if I recall correctly.

Think it's still allowed here in the UK. As a kid me and my family lived in a flat above the take away (take out restaurant) that my mother worked at.

Japan has a lot of these.

Hmmm just got back from lunch at a brew pub that had condos above it.
- But did the owner live there?

Not in many places in the US anymore, but in many other countries you still can.
- Not exactly the same but 5 over ones are getting more popular to build in the US. So you could own an apartment/condo over your shop.
  5 over 1: 5 stories of apartments/condos over one story of retail space.

Zones belong in Sonic games and nowhere else.
(I'm joking btw)
- The real estate prices in Green Hill Zone have gotten out of control so a lot of people can only afford a small apartment in Chemical Plant Zone.
- The one between the koreas is fairly interesting

I am passionate about this subject even if I don’t belong in this community.
Zoning is important. It’s what prevents a nuclear power plan next to your house.
The isn’t is that they don’t allow multi-use zoning. There’s very little reason you can’t have commercial below residential.
- Zoning is important. It’s what prevents a nuclear power plan next to your house.
  When looking at the Netherlands, you can both have a store at a house, AND a nuclear power plant that's not built right next to a village (it'll be a small kilometre away, since my country is rather densely populated).
- I see mixed-use zones in most of the towns in NJ, where a chunk of the work I do is in land use. I am assuming it must be different outside of NJ, because this is certainly not the first time I've heard this criticism of zoning.

I'm actually jealous of Bob. He has a wife that he loves, 3 kids that he loves, a rival across the street that easy to hate, because he went to the Jan 6th riot, another rival in the food inspector who's just mad at him because Bob stole his girl. He owns his own business doing what he loves, and has 2 close friends that visit him near daily.
Sure his finances aren't the best, and his resteraunt is struggling, but he's living his dream!
On top of that, he has sworn allegience from a biker gang. Plus Marshmellow loves him, and Marshmellow is awesome!
It's a little worrying that he has full delusional conversations with food and cooking tools though. That may be something he should see a therapist about. But hey, nobodys perfect.
- also, he only has to spend like 30 seconds a day commuting to work.
  
  I never even thought of that.
- No more Chad, is now Bob.
- You forgot one of the most important things, he loves his job and wouldn't change it for the world.
  P.S. Is anybody else disappointed by the new Marshmallow voice actress?
  
  He owns his own business doing what he loves,
  No I didn't.
  And yes, I am disappointed, but I always am with roles that get replaced.

Like yes, zoning is used for a whole bunch of bullshit, but the second you get anywhere even remotely urban this is extremely common. This sounds like it’s from someone who grew up in suburbia hell and really just wants to move into a city but doesn’t know that.
- A big part of the problem is in North America, they won't build that type of development anymore. New developments are almost exclusively either residential SFH or commercial strip malls. Prevously a building was flexible enough to go from a grocer with apartments above it then to a financial office then to full residential with relatively minor renovations in between. Now walmart has rules saying another big box store cant buy their abandoned big box store to prevent competition.
  
  I live in Jersey, and mixed use is very big just about everywhere (not including South Jersey, I don't know anything about South Jersey). The idea of a walkable downtown made a very big comeback in the last decade or so.
- A lot of those buildings were put in before the more strict zoning laws. In a lot of places, the good buildings are grandfathered in for mixed use or even just for existing. Besides, there's plenty of places that would benefit greatly from little micro downtowns built this way, but it's illegal to do so. Zoning that makes efficient housing and commercial development impossible is the devil.

Lots of shops like that in the Europes...
- And the rest of the world too.
- Plenty in the US, too --- I'm in San Francisco and there are tons of mixed use buildings, in both "sharp" and well-off neighborhoods alike.
  
  You ever been to a city that's not San Francisco? One that's newer? I think you'll find that those kind of places are vanishingly few.

Hear me out. Combo food truck/van life.
- That sounds like it would have a 0% chance of being approved by the health department.
  
  Well, to inspect me they'd have to catch me

When I was a kid, my parents bought a house/restaurant combination place that served fish and chips. It was frigging weird.

This is how I felt about all the one way streets in downtowns. Always hated them personally but assumed someone somewhere must have had a good reason behind it that I didn’t know.
But no… they’re just awful in basically every way.
- This doesn’t make sense to me; of all places, downtowns in cities are where one ways should exist. How would adding traffic in the other direction, wider roads, and more complex intersections benefit downtown?
  
  This is a misunderstanding of the issue. We aren’t talking about changing the road width here at all, just the lane number and direction. Most of these old, downtown streets were always narrow two-way roads. The difference is that oncoming traffic in the road and having only one lane in each direction dramatically lowers vehicle speeds, meaning these one ways are hugely more dangerous than the two way streets they replaced. In my city (which actually invented the downtown one-way!), 100% of pedestrians killed in the downtown area in recent years were killed on these one way streets. Yes, every single one.
  To explain the history in more detail, when the field of traffic engineering emerged and it was decided that rate of personal vehicle flow was to be the sole design criteria for all roads in the US, narrow two way streets presented a problem. They couldn’t be widened due to adjacent development, and they were frequently congested and did not allow high speeds because of the close proximity of oncoming traffic. It was theorized that by converting them to multi-lane one ways, higher traffic flow would be accomplished.
  As with other schemes to pack more vehicle throughput into urban areas, this seemed to work for a short period. It was deemed highly beneficial to the emerging political elites who had largely moved to the suburbs but worked in downtowns. Poor, minority, and other downtown residents who could no longer use or even safely cross the street on foot were deemed unimportant. Or more cynically, this danger and discomfort to the undesirables was another added benefit that might encourage them to leave the highly profitable business districts being built in their neighborhoods.
  Before long, the new infrastructure for commuters enticed more and more suburban development and virtually everyone who could afford it moved out of downtown, and with this, traffic congestion increased dramatically. This is where the benefits of increased traffic flow disappear—adding more lanes in tight city streets where there are many intersections doesn’t really speed up traffic much at all when you reach even moderate traffic density due to all of the turning and lane-crossing required to navigate. Actually, this slows traffic and makes downtown streets safer during rush hour, but unfortunately they’re still extremely deadly at off hours, especially at night when fewer cars are on the road and visibility is poor.
  In short, one way roads are dangerous and don’t really benefit anyone. In my city even local businesses have been agitating to get rid of them because they make it very difficult to pull over or cross the street to shop or eat. Eliminating them is a great and easy way to make city streets much safer and more pleasant without spending a lot of money or inconveniencing anyone.
- Hard disagree. Traffic flows so much better with one ways. If you can't figure out how alternating streets work, then that's a you problem. We got rid of them in my town because the bottom 10 percent of the bell curve just couldn't, and the results were predictable.
  
  Lol no. They don’t improve traffic and kill people. Don’t act smug because you don’t understand urban street design. There are very good reasons why so many cities are considering removing these.
  But even if it was true, the old “my commute is worth more than your child’s life” argument doesn’t hold water.
- But the unparalleled joy of being able to turn left on red when two one-way streets meet (in some states).
  
  It makes me very uncomfortable so I disagree. Red light turns are dangerous and shouldn’t be permitted.
- What’s the reason for one ways I didn’t know it was a thing really?
  
  The reason in theory is to allow multilane roads and higher traffic speeds. In practice this rarely improves things due to the high density of intersections and congestion in city centers. The real effect is just worse pedestrian and cyclist safety, in addition to making navigation much more difficult even for car drivers.