These projects aren’t necessarily limited to major, high-density cities; they’ve proliferated in suburban areas as well as urban locales. One of the larger ones, for instance, is the Time Warner Center, an 80-story, 2.8-million-square-foot skyscraper in New York City. It combines the Shops at Columbus Circle, with 40 specialty retailers, a Whole Foods Market and an Equinox Fitness Club; the Restaurant and Bar Collection, featuring five high-end dining establishments; 1.1 million square feet of office space; television studios; a 248-room Mandarin Oriental hotel; and Jazz at Lincoln Center, a performance space that could accommodate up to 2,000 people. It also has two condo components—the One Central Park Condominiums, with 160 luxury units starting on the 52nd floor of the south tower, and the Residences at the Mandarin Oriental New York, located above the hotel, with 66 units on floors 64 to 80 in the north tower. Residences in both towers went for between $1.5 million and up to $45 million for penthouses.

In Chicago, there’s Water Tower Place, a major shopping destination for the region, with more than 100 stores in an eight-story atrium. But the 74-story tower, located at at 180 E. Pearson in the city’s Streeterville neighborhood, also contains 260 separate condos with parking. In Downtown Seattle, Vulcan Real Estate built two adjacent projects—2200 and 2201 Westlake. Delivered in 2006, the three-tower 2200 Westlake is known as the “Gateway to South Lake Union.” The 550,000-square-foot mixed-use project has several retailers including a 50,000-square-foot Whole Foods, a 160-room luxury Pan Pacific Hotel and 261 residential units. Vulcan’s next project, 2201 Westlake, opened last summer with 135 condos, 300,000 square feet of office space and 24,000 square feet of retail. Homes there ranged from $300,000 to over $2 million. And in Denver’s historic Lower Downtown District, the eight-story 16 Market Square project combines 25,000 square feet of restaurant and retail, 183,000 square feet of office space and 23 luxury residential penthouses atop a three-level underground parking garage.

These are just a few examples of dense, mixed-use projects. And they all “work,” in terms of attracting consumers and tenants. I’m sure it’s quite convenient to be able to run downstairs to the supermarket to pick up the necessities for a meal, or be able to simply carry one’s purchases up to your house instead of lugging the packages around the city.

But one has to ask what the negative implications are to those who choose to live in these developments. I, for one, wouldn’t want to have such public places so close to my home.
With these projects, there are the obvious concerns about noise, crowds, traffic, safety/security, visibility and having to fight with shoppers for a parking spot. And then there are other issues that arise, especially given the nature of this economy. If one of more of the project’s tenants go under, and their spaces go dark, does that diminish the quality of the overall project? Does the value of your condo go down? Or, if one of the restaurants or bars that are part of the project happens to be a popular hangout spot—does the noise from those establishments bother the residents of the building?

What makes the residential components of these projects so successful (and they are, if you were to just look at the prices paid for some of the units)? Are only certain types of people attracted to these projects? And how do developers and managers ensure that the projects’ residents remain happy with their living arrangements?

Perhaps these are non-issues; obviously, a lot of planning and collaboration goes into these developments before a shovel even hits the ground. I’m just in awe of people who can live in these large, dense, crowded complexes

Then again, this is also coming from a person who a) hates to shop, b) has no patient for crowds, and c) gets annoyed by the tourists that get in the way of my commute. I’m just cantankerous like that.