The problem is that US zoning and finance has basically killed off the small upstart developer; think of the general concept of a house flipper, but instead of remodeling the interior they replace one home with two or three smaller homes on the same lot.

This still happens on a smaller scale in older urban areas, simply because price per square foot in places like New York make it hard to assemble a full city block unless you have half a billion on hand, and even if you did land parcels don't become available all at once like that.

This type of "missing middle" development still happens where I currently live in Seattle to a limited extent, but I would really like to see regulations limiting horizontal massing of individual buildings to prevent this problem.

I'm not sure that's the problem. I stayed in a mixed-use development in Southern California and the people who lived there straight up didn't visit any of the commercial space. I don't think mixed-use really works on a local scale without the crossover.

If the commercial space had even one store that people wanted, like a Trader Joes, it could have worked.

I see this in Reston VA.

Real estate prices tend to be high. The mixed use development might have a few fancy restaurants, high-end boutiques, etc - but nothing to fill the daily needs of the residents. The local residents often have to drive to get to a normal grocer or mom & pop retail.

part of that, for LA at least, is that the mixed-use here still requires parking, which is expensive. so it's designed with low commercial square footage to make room for ground-level and above ground parking, which is cheaper than subterranean parking. the commercial space is minimized to a token amount likely to meet the necessary zoning/permitting restrictions to get the benefit of higher floor area ratios (FAR) for the least cost. then the businesses that can fit in the space, given the high rents, aren't nearly as attractive to residents, who are also paying high rents.

The apartment I rented in LA shared space with a Trader Joe, was across the street from Target and UCLA was a couple blocks away. Super expensive, however.

The Embarcadero Centre is mixed-use and pretty popular./