What is “mixed use”?

This morning’s Breakfast Links chided the Washington Business Journal for calling a 59-house suburban project with a school a “walkable, mixed-use development.”

It appears they were taken in by the name of the zone, “Planned Mixed Residential,” and this press release from the developer, which emphasizes the proximity of the houses to a nearby shopping center and park, and quotes a supervisor calling it “walkable” because the roads will have sidewalks.

Jay Rickey asked on Twitter whether there’s a real definition of “mixed use.” David Bodamer of Retail Traffic pointed out a 2006 article on the issue. Many developers are trying to use the label even on projects that aren’t really mixed use.

ULI defined mixed use in 1976 as requiring three elements: “three or more significant revenue producing uses; significant functional and physical integration; and conformance to a coherent plan.” A suburban subdivision with a school fails right away on the first prong, with only one revenue-producing use.

This definition isn’t perfect; if someone builds a building in an urban neighborhood with retail on the ground floor and apartments above, it’s probably mixed use. The term depends on scale; a mixed-use building has multiple uses in a single structure, but a single-use commercial building could be part of a mixed-use complex. Wikipedia defines mixed-use development as “the practice of allowing more than one type of use in a building or set of buildings.”

Steve Suprenant of HDR Architecture defines mixed-use development (PDF) as “an appropriate combination of multiple uses, inside a single structure or place within a neighborhood, where a variety of different living activities (live, work, shop and play) are in close proximity (walking distance) to most residents.”

Either way, this project is definitely not mixed use. Shopping and playing would be in walking distance to most residents, but it’s not all integrated into a “single structure or place.” If the developer were building the shopping center next to the houses, it might be tricky to determine if that fits into these definitions or not, but the developer isn’t.

Mixed-use also applies to zoning. Zoning can allow different uses on the same parcels of land; in this case, the zoning for this property only allows residential development, classifying the area “Suburban Residential Low” in the Comprehensive Plan.

The plan amendment and rezoning also provide a fascinating insight into how officials justify cookie-cutter suburban development regardless of larger planning objectives. The County’s Housing Plan calls for a mix of affordable housing which isn’t part of the project, but yet, “on balance, this application is found to be consistent with the relevant portions of the Housing Plan.”

Prince William County’s plan calls for transit-oriented development and there is no bus service anywhere near this property, but that didn’t even make the list of weaknesses against the transportation plan.

On the other hand, it does avoid culs-de-sac, which actually required a waiver from the County’s Design and Construction Standards Manual forbidding four-way intersections.

The Planning Board recommended denial of the plan, but the County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved it.