Mix of uses in a commercial district

Mix of uses in a commercial district
Originally uploaded by rllayman

This is one of the diagrams I've created for explaining how to plan for commercial district revitalization in a more nuanced fashion throughout the day and night. There are five points to the planning framework. This is the first.

It's not scintillating or new. But it makes the point that there are different types of uses. A lot of people don't think about this in a careful, thoughtful manner.

Not all commercial districts have every use. Traditionally, PDR is industrial, which wouldn't be present in a "Downtown," with maybe an exception or two for some gasoline stations with repair operations.

But this gets back to Jane Jacobs' point about "mixed primary uses," having different types of uses at different times of day, leveraging extant assets.

Her example was the creation of an arts district in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh, rather than leveraging the extant assets of the theaters in downtown. (This has changed over the intervening decades.)

She said that arts functions in Oakland required the creation of dedicated parking facilities, while for arts functions downtown, patrons having to drive could park in structures created to support downtown office workers during the day.