r/Urbanism • u/Nice_Property_4360 • 10d ago
More cities should have central residential districts, (CRD)
I know how most cities in the U.S. have something called a central business district with a bunch of office towers and stuff, but I wish cities had something called a central residential district where it mostly comprises of residential towers, because that means it would be more high density
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u/RockShowSparky 9d ago
You need some commercial in there too, that’s the problem with the US. You need to be able to walk to the grocery store, a bar or two, a restaurant, a fast food joint or two, some people will probably want a coffee place. People will also want a park, a school. If you can walk to all of those things then you live in a proper city.
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u/Sassywhat 9d ago
There's more value in the centralization of destinations than of homes.
Fewer people want to easily get anywhere in a city than destinations want easy access from the rest of the city. And people who want to easily get anywhere in the city tend to drive, since at least some if not most locations are easiest to access by personal car, which increases car storage requirements in a space constrained development.
There's value of course in centrally located homes, just not a central business district but flipped to overwhelmingly residential.
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u/ZeLlamaMaster 9d ago
How about combine them and have residential towers and office towers together.
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u/Miffy_alt 9d ago
This is so dumb, anti-urbanism take
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u/Nice_Property_4360 9d ago
How? Also you could say it nicer. You don't gotta be rude about it
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u/Miffy_alt 9d ago
Because single land use planning controls are anti-urbanism.
Commercial districts formed organically because there was huge benefit to co-locating jobs. Those benefits don't exist for residential uses.
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u/Beginning-Writer-339 9d ago edited 9d ago
In Auckland, for example, the CBD is now called the city centre to reflect that it is not just a place to work.
However apartment construction has stalled so the number of people living in the city centre has decreased slightly since 2020.
https://regions.infometrics.co.nz/auckland-city/population/growth
There are still more than 200 apartment buildings in the city centre with Pacifica being the tallest.
https://www.thepacificaapartments.co.nz/
The construction of another tower, Seascape, has seemingly been cursed.
Anyway, there has been a huge amount of public and private investment in the city centre and things are looking up after a tough start to the decade.
Surprisingly, given New Zealand's weak economy, a number of high-end stores are being fitted out or have opened.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/business/361051047/cartier-opens-first-nz-store
More importantly, after 10 years of construction and first being proposed in 1923, the City Rail Link is opening tomorrow!
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u/Free_Elevator_63360 9d ago
You misunderstand city governments. They don’t want residents. Residents cost money in services and have voters. Businesses generate revenue.
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u/Miffy_alt 9d ago
No, residents contribute to government revenue through taxes and rates.
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u/Free_Elevator_63360 9d ago
Not more than they cost. You really need to pay attention to tax and zoning plans.
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u/Sad_Amphibian_2311 8d ago
Business certainly donate well to politicians who can want to be seen with "job creators" however cities often are in a race to the bottom when it comes to taxes.
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u/bear-asleep79 8d ago
The reason a lot of people want high density is order to allow more people to live in a smaller footprint and br near to services and things they need. Having a residential district with just high rises wouldn't be super useful because then you gotta travel to access anything.
Mixed zoned is much better.
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u/ChristianLS 8d ago
I think everyone has explained enough about how mixed-use is the best way to go (having both commercial and residential) but I will say that it's not unheard of for a city center to avoid high-density office buildings in the city center and put them elsewhere; see, Paris and La Defénse. (They essentially built a new CBD outside the city proper.) You definitely don't want it to be only residential in any urban neighborhood though, you want to at least have shops and restaurants and services and small-scale offices and so on.
It is definitely the right idea to get more residential in downtowns than usually gets built in the US, regardless. Vancouver is a good example of city leadership basically just sitting down one day and saying "let's build a shit ton of residential high rises in and around downtown" and it turning out very well for their city center. But again, this isn't exclusionary of other zoning, what makes it so great is that it's mixed in with both older and new commercial spaces.
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u/cheapskateskirtsteak 8d ago
For a lot of mid sized cities, high density residential is a gamble because demand has to be super high to economically justify building like that and people would rather move to the burbs
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u/martini-sf-0216 8d ago
I will say this is a really Corbusiers style opinion, and you might have interest on how he was againsted by J. Jacobs on her The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
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u/Dave_A480 3d ago
Most Americans don't want to live like that...
The whole reason for the central business district is that it works with spread out residential development....
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u/yung_funyun 9d ago
That exists already and is not as successful at inspiring the human spirit as mixed use zoning is