What’s In the Mix?: Nearby Amenities – The Complete Community, Part 2

This is Part 2 of a 5-part series describing the Complete Community.

• The Complete Community: Beyond ‘Complete Streets’ – Part 1
• What’s In the Mix?: Nearby Amenities – Part 2
• The Payoff: Productive Communities – Part 3
• The Blueprint: How to Get There – Part 4
• The Vision: Conclusions – Part 5

In the first part of this series, we defined the “Complete Community” as full of essential destinations—the counterpart to the “Complete Street” corridor. We established that our car-dependent suburban design isn’t a failure of spirit but a failure of design, one that isolates us and forces us to drive for nearly every errand.

So, what exactly is in a Complete Community? What are these valuable, walkable destinations that we’ve systematically zoned out of existence?

When I talk about a Complete Community, I’m not talking about massive big-box stores or sprawling commercial centres. I’m talking about a fine-grained mix of “low-impact, neighborhood-serving commercial uses” that can be woven directly into the fabric of a residential area.

This includes:

• Daily Needs: A corner store for that carton of milk, a small grocery, a bakery, or a pharmacy.
• Social Hubs: A local coffee shop, a small pub or restaurant, or a community-oriented daycare.
• Local Services: A barber shop, a hair salon, or a small medical clinic.
• Public Spaces: Parks, schools, and community centres that are accessible on foot, not just by car.

This is the fabric of a traditional, pre-war neighbourhood. But these amenities will be stretched thin on their own without any other changes to the community. A corner store will have a hard time sustaining itself if its main or regular customers are limited a few hundred single-family homes spread out over a wide area.

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This brings us to the second, essential ingredient of a Complete Community, increased density.

Density is a scary term for many suburban residents, but it shouldn’t be. We are not talking about high-rise towers. Increased density is a simple means to having a wider variety of housing options. It means allowing duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, and small, two- or three-story walk-up apartments to be built alongside single-family homes.

This housing mix is the engine that makes the Complete Community work. It provides the necessary customer base to support the local coffee shop and corner store. It also provides a wider range of housing options for people at different stages of life—young professionals, new families, and seniors looking to downsize in the neighbourhood they love.

The problem? In most of Orleans, both of these things are illegal.

Our current single-family-exclusive zoning by-laws, particularly the most restrictive “N1” and “N2” zones, explicitly make this kind of mixed-use, denser neighbourhood a huge challenge to work towards. They don’t just discourage a convenient nearby corner store; they make it a crime to build one basically everywhere.

To build a Complete Community, we must move away from restricting and instead incentivize the gradual, organic evolution of our neighbourhoods. We need to remove the regulations that prevent a neighbourhood from naturally evolving to meet the needs of its residents.

This isn’t about forcing a new lifestyle on any individual homeowner. It’s about restoring the freedom to build the kind of resilient, connected, and walkable places that people clearly value. How do we know they value them? It’s the Vacation Paradox—many of us spend thousands of dollars a year to vacation in the very kinds of dense, vibrant, walkable places we have forbidden ourselves from building at home.

Now that we know what a Complete Community is made of, the next article will explore the massive perks—for our social lives, our health, and our personal and municipal finances.

See the rest of the Complete Community series as they are published.

• The Complete Community: Beyond ‘Complete Streets’ – Part 1
• What’s In the Mix?: Nearby Amenities – Part 2
• The Payoff: Productive Communities – Part 3
• The Blueprint: How to Get There – Part 4
• The Vision: Conclusions – Part 5